After many years of watching Bill homebrew, I’ve decided to get out of my comfort zone and try homebrewing on Learn to Homebrew Day.
To try to get ready, I started looking through “How to Brew” by John Palmer. I was flipping through the book to get an idea of what the nuts and bolts of the process would be.
MRW playing Dark Souls 2 and I poisoned in the Earthen Peak… again
That was a mistake. There are charts. There are symbols I haven’t seen since high school chemistry. There’s lingo. So. Much. Lingo. But after going back and starting at the introduction, I felt a little bit better. As Palmer says on page 1:
You may think that it’s complicated and worry that you can’t do it, but I want to assure that you can; it’s no harder than any other cooking process. If you can heat a can of soup, make scrambled eggs, or bake muffins from a mix, then you can brew beer.
I’m not going to lie: I’m not completely convinced that Palmer is right. I’ve watched Bill homebrew for over 8 years and what I’ve seen has been enough for me to avoid trying it for about 8 years. But, I’ve never been a fan of avoiding something just because it looks difficult or tedious. That whole “opening a bookstore” thing proved that. So, what finally got me to the point that I’m willing to try brewing on my own? The type of beer and brewing I want to try is really different from what Bill prefers. He’s focused on making the best beer possible. I’m more interested in doing really small batches and having fun with ingredients and the process. Like: Can you actually brew a beer in an Instant Pot? What happens when you take Mad Elf and put a pumpkin spin on it? Is it possible to make an apple cider-flavored lager? I’m not sure if I’ll get around to trying all or any of that, but I definitely want to see if the process is so hard that I won’t want to try. So, here’s my plan:
Step One: Sign up for Learn to Homebrew Day (November 6th, 2021)
I went to the American Homebrewer’s Association site and pledged to brew on Learn to Homebrew Day so I won’t chicken out. Accountability and stuff.
Step Two: Come up with a game-plan
I came up with a plan for how I wanted to do this. My overall objective here is to see what the experience is like, but I don’t want it to feel like a chore. To keep things as fun as possible for myself, I decided to go for ease and speed. Which means that I’m not doing whole grain and I’m only going to do a 1 or 2 gallon batch. Bill told me that most homebrewers still dip some type of grain something or other into the kettle even when they’re doing extract brewing because it adds flavor. I’m not doing that. I’m doing a straightforward, extract barleywine kit.
Step Three: Prepare for disaster
I’m going to write down as much as I can about the process in case I want to do it again and in case I do something wrong and need to retrace my steps and troubleshoot.
Step Four: Manage expectations
I’m going to keep my expectations nice and low.
Step Five: Show and Tell
When I’m done with the process, I’ll let you all know about what I thought of the whole experience.
