A Boy and His Fermenter

Following the discovery of craft breweries a few years back, I’ve reclassified myself as a bit of a beer snob. The guy that struggles to hide revulsion at the mention of Coors or Bud Light and rarely leaves the grocery store without at least looking for something new on the build-your-own six pack aisle.

I’m just a riot at parties.

This smug attitude toward beverage choice doesn’t quite reach my previously mentioned foray into being a vegetarian (You meant pescatarian?). But I’m still every bit as vocal.

The community of beer lovers here is pretty great. Most of them share their favorites and suggest new breweries whilst stroking majestic beards and generally being manly. The really cool ones though, the ones that reach that next level of beer knowledge and respect, they BREW their own beer. At home. Like freaking alchemists.

Bill Nye would be proud.

Hearing about these contraptions and the process involved in creating small-batch beer was fascinating. I knew I wanted to try my hand, but the cost of entry was just way too high for something I considered “kind of cool”.

Enter Matt. My new friend from work with a history of impulse purchases and a penchant for following even the smallest of whims through to their conclusion.

He also likes beer, and has always wondered what making it would be like. We dipped our proverbial toes into the waters to find out cost and time commitment at our local brew shop (http://amarillobrewingsupply.net/).

The owner was super helpful and graciously answered our numerous and terribly uninformed questions. I knew the cost was too high to jump in right away so we left Matt whipped out his wallet and bought us a conical fermenter and all the fixings to brew our first American Pale Ale.

Our first brew night started around 7:30. On a Tuesday. Something something choosay. Drizzy. Yolo. Trill.

This was too late, as we would soon discover, but alas, skill and knowledge are drowned by ambition.

The whole process, for those curious, was actually more involved than I initially believed. We thought we would drink a few beers whilst casually brewing and playing darts. Instead, we were frantically sanitizing, re-sanitizing, fretting about stuff we had sanitized, and sorting ingredients and reading directions like we were on the absolute worst episode of Iron Chef you’ve ever seen.

At around 11:45pm we realized how misguided our “quick brew” ideas were and regretted this inceptive attempt falling on a work night. We poured our “wort” into the fermenter and then really screwed up by forgetting the wise words of our local brew master. I still honestly don’t remember his exact words but we followed directions from our kit that didn’t match our fermenter and made a gloriously solid yeast-malt-grain-sediment cake at the base of our system. Matt graciously resolved this by cutting through the sludge and removing as much as possible. Thing is, we won’t know how much we screwed up for another week or two, after we bottle.

I still had a blast. And it’s pretty fun learning about the beverage I’ve grown so fond of. But don’t expect to see any how-to blogs on here for a while. Or if you do see one, don’t follow it. I have no idea what I’m doing.

tl;dr: Beer snobbery does not a chemist make.

Stuff above linked below:

Conical Fermenter we used: Fermenter

Stainless Steel pot for wort: Big Pot

Thermometer: Gauge