Becoming a brewmeister
With a little patience, you too can enter the ranks of the ale elite.
By Kelsie Smith, Jayplay writer
Hey, you - put down that Pabst Blue Ribbon. Seriously, you can do better.
Yeah, we know. It's cheap, and you're poor. But since that beer belly already proves guzzling Budweiser has quickly become your favorite extracurricular activity post-high school graduation, you really could afford moving on to better brews.
Home beer brewing is an increasingly popular pastime and, although challenging, leaves you with a finished product you just can't get from a can. So force yourself away from that Kwik Shop cooler tempting you with cheap cases of Keystone Light and take a new approach: Quality over quantity.
OK, catch your breath. No one is saying you toss the cheap stuff completely, but give something new a try, attempt to learn why it is that this stuff tastes so good. First you have to understand what beer really is. Sounds silly, but really, do you know what's in there?
According to Brew Your Own magazine's Web site, www.byo.com, beer is simply a fermented, alcoholic beverage. It has four main ingredients, although many types of fruits and nuts can be used in the brewing process to add various flavors: water, malt, flowers called hops (didn't know they were flowers, did you?) and yeast.
Now your first time brewing might seem a bit overwhelming. You'll want to set aside an hour to make sure you don't rush things, so you'll have ample time to follow the equipment sanitization processes, which is really the only part of home brewing that can prove to be tricky. It's essential, though, because if your equipment isn't properly sterilized the bacteria on it can mar the taste of your batch of beer.
Once you have finished the initial brewing stages, fermentation (you can stick your beer in a closet for this part) and bottle conditioning time add up to about four weeks, but don't let that stop you. Rob Dewwhirst, president of the Lawrence Brewer's Guild, promises it will all be worth it in the end.
"Homebrewed beer typically has a lot more flavor than beer bought in the store," Dewhirst says. "For one thing, it's something you've created. It's not something that mass produced. Just like any other things that you ingest, you have far more control over it."
Brewing basics
Dewwhirst insists that all a determined person needs to brew beer is a big pot, a stove, a clean bucket, a hose and the ingredients, of course. A little patience also helps. But Dewwhirst admits that a good brew might come with, well, better equipment. He points to the Web site www.howtobrew.com, where an entire book on beer brewing is available to read and print out, for free.
The site, maintained by brew master John Palmer, suggests you have the following tools at your disposal: a 20-quart brew pot (large canning pot), a large stirring spoon (non-wood), an ordinary table spoon, a measuring cup (preferably Pyrex glass), a glass jar (at least 12 ounces), a fermentor (food-grade plastic bucket or glass carboy that you can get from a homebrew shop), an airlock (also found at homebrew shops), sanitizer (chlorine bleach or other) and a thermometer (optional but recommended).
Dewhirst says ingredients for a small batch of beer can be bought at a homebrew store for around $20.There are no such stores in Lawrence, so you'll have to jump on K-10.Check out Bacchus and Barleycorn in Lenexa or the Homebrew Pro Shop in Olathe.A host of online companies also sell beer brewing kits which contain all the supplies you need for anywhere from $60 and up.Web sites also sell ingredient kits for around $20 each.
Say it with me: san-i-tize
Once you get your stuff, there's one rule you have to promise you'll follow: be sanitary. Not clean, Dewhirst says, but not sterile, either. Sanitary. It's somewhere in between clean and sterile, he says. This is an especially important element for college students, who generally hold that if something is aesthetically free of grime, it must be clean enough. Not the case. Dewhirst says the typical kitchen might look clean, but is not devoid of organisms that spoil beer. The website, howtobrew.com gives detailed explanations on how to sanitize your brewing equipment. Check it out. Dewhirst says your beer will taste better as result.
So yeah, it takes a little time. Brewing your first batch will take about an hour, and you can't just walk away. Things need to be monitored, equipment needs to be cleaned and so forth.
Uh, this sounds hard
If all of this sounds great, but getting started seems too daunting a task, you have options. The Lawrence Brewers Guild holds meetings the second Thursday of every month. Visit their Web site www.lawrencebrewers.org for more information. The group puts together seminars and runs an e-mail list where members (dues are $18 a year and are pro-rated) and nonmembers are welcome to ask questions. And if you're one of those visual learners, Guild members often open up brewing sessions to an audience, so feel free to hit one of those up to learn how the veterans do things.
Dewhirst says the Guild, at about 35 members, is the biggest it's ever been. He says college students have been members in the past, but because it takes kitchen space, it can be tough for some students to find the room. You do, of course, have to be 21 in Kansas to brew beer. (Although Dewhirst points out that you can legally brew at 18 unless your state has a drinking age of 21+).
"It has become trendy," Dewhirst says of homebrewing's recent popularity surge. "I think it took a while to ramp up, but homebrewed beer is finally getting beyond the reputation of the stuff grandpa used to make that we just tolerated. The quality control was awful. In the last 10 years, there have been many many more yeast suppliers and you can get laboratory-grade yeast. People are finally developing an appreciation for beer like they have wine."
So come on, try it out. Become a beer snob.
If that's true, if beer is like wine, then PBR is like drinking merlot straight from the box. And you know you've moved beyond that.
The fantastic four The role of each ingredient
- Water—Tap water is perfectly fine to use - some famous brewing water has very high mineral content.
- Malt—Cereal grain (usually barley, but wheat and rye are other cereal grains) that is moistened will germinate and begin to sprout. The starch in the grain becomes "activated" at this time. But if you dry the grain to stop the sprouting, you have made malt. Malt, germinated then dried, is the heart of beer. It provides food for the yeast (maltose, a sugar); it lends body and color to the beer; and it gives beer its nutty, grain flavor. For your first batch of beer, avoid using non-malt fermentables such as corn, rice, or sugar and stick with the basics.
- Hops-These flowers are the spice of the beer. Pleasant bitter flavors and herbal aromas come from hops.Think of them in beer as the oregano in spaghetti sauce; while the tomato might be the heart of the sauce, it just wouldn't be the same without seasoning.Malt flavors alone in beer would be far less interesting without snappy hops to balance the rich sweetness of malt.
- Yeast -The magic ingredient in beer is a single-celled organism (actually many millions of them per batch) that eats sugar, multiplies and produces alcohol and carbon dioxide as waste products.The most elusive flavors in beer seem to be the ones produced by the yeast during the process of fermentation.
09.08.05 Jayplay
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