Brewing Stories – Page 3

Homebrewing Doesn’t Make Sense

For most people

Please be patient with me while I try to articulate my thoughts on this. Also, the real thing I’m saying is, “Homebrewing doesn’t make sense for most people.”

But for those of us who love it, and people who are curious, it’s definitely worth trying and getting involved.

What Beer Lovers Want

Amber ale backlit by garage window — A delicious, clear amber ale I enjoyed while cleaning the garage.

I mean, let’s get down to brass tacks. Beer lovers want good beer. And there is a plethora of great beer available at reasonable prices almost anywhere. I mean, what’s reasonable varies quite a bit. I saw some beer prices from Australia and New Zealand and did not think they were reasonable.

But I’m pretty spoiled with access to great beer. And it makes it pretty easy to skip making a batch when I can go to the store and grab a reliably great beer without giving up a fairly large chunk of time.

The Main Thing That Doesn’t Make Sense

Homebrewing requires gear. Much of the gear doesn’t get used for any other purpose, at least for myself and my friends who brew. And that can lead to some storage chaos, as illustrated by the picture of my garage below.

This isn’t really a problem, or a barrier. I know lots of homebrewers with minimal gear who make great beer. You don’t need a huge setup, and you can tailor your gear to the space you have. But like most hobbies, once you know you love it, there’s always new, interesting gear.

The Important Thing that Doesn’t Make Sense

Homebrewing takes time. Each batch requires time on multiple days, and may take weeks from brew day until it’s ready to drink. 5 gallon batches will require at least a few hours on brew day, assuming you have your ingredients ready.

Packaging day (bottling, kegging) requires another time investment to get the beer from your fermenter to your package of choice.

And the wait for your beer to carbonate seems to drag forever.

But Homebrewing is Still Worth It

Homebrewing is, first and foremost, a hobby. And like most hobbies, they don’t make sense to people not involved in them.

But if you love beer, you really should pick up a kit (affiliate link) and try homebrewing. Even if it’s just one batch to experience the process, it will give you an greater understanding of the beer in your glass.

Many of my homebrewing friends enjoy cooking and experimenting with flavors, and making beer at home gives an outlet for both passions at once.

So I would recommend you try homebrewing. Just don’t blame me when you run out of space to store your gear.

Brew up an adventure!

Don’t Just Chase the New!

We all love experimenting with new hop varieties in the beer we make. But don’t forget about some of the varieties that have been around for a while. Especially if you haven’t brewed with a hop, it’s a new variety to you!

Brewers Be Crazy

When a new variety comes on the brewing scene, there are always a few that become the darlings of home and commercial brewers. For a few years, it was almost impossible to get Citra® (affiliate link), at least at a price I was willing to pay. But its unique citrus, peach, and tropical fruit character put it in high demand.

Currently, El Dorado™ (affiliate link) is a hop that is still waiting for production to catch up with demand. The mango, pineapple, and candy-like flavors are calling to brewers everywhere.

The new hops are always a fun adventure, especially as a homebrewer. Getting to make a beer with a single hop variety is a great way to really learn about its character and get inspiration for using it with other hops.

Sometimes I Have to Settle

There are only a few options when you can’t get your hands on the ingredients you want for a batch of beer:

Pick something similar
Pick something you haven’t used
~~Don’t brew~~

OK, realistically, there are only two options since we’re going to brew, right?

One day, when I was assembling a recipe, I was offered a good deal on a variety I hadn’t used before: Brewer’s Gold(affiliate link). This was a hop I knew very little about, but I knew it had been around a while. A quick search reveals it’s a hop that was released in 1919.

I brewed up a pale ale recipe I had made many times before, and substituted brewer’s gold hops for all of the additions. I adjusted the additions to compensate for alpha acids using “home bittering units” to estimate bittering levels.

Given the age of the hop variety, I was expecting the character to be focused on floral and spicy notes. My first taste was an epiphany: fruit character abounded in this hop. I tasted some spice notes in the background, but the flavor was dominated by blueberry and blackberry fruitiness.

I wonder what other surprises are waiting to be rediscovered in the world of hops. Personally, I think cascade and centennial are both foundational hops that are still well known and drive their own demand. Are there any hop varieties that have been around a while you consider to be underrated? What characters do you like about them? Tweet at me with #BrewUpHopAdventures

The Best News of October 2020

2020 has been an interesting year; filled with uncertainty, fear, change, and anger. But there’s one October tradition that remains a bright spot in a dreary year: Zymurgy Magazine’s Best Beers in America.

This isn’t your typical top 10 list, where someone sits down and comes up with a list of their favorites. Zymurgy magazine is the official magazine of the American Homebrewers’ Association. Every year, they poll their membership of over 45,000 avid homebrewers. These are some of the nerdiest of beer nerds, with a passion for exploring flavors and recognizing quality brews.

Due to the nature of the organization (being nationwide), and the size of the membership, the beers that populate this list may not qualify as the truly best beers in America. Not to say these beers aren’t amazing, but simply that the beers that bubble to the top of this list must be widespread enough or have enough notoriety to be consumed nationwide.

The Top 3

Looking at the top 3 Best Beers in America, the names are easily recognizable. At least to those of us who’ve been homebrewing for a while, these 3 beers are probably 3 of the most common recipes brewed, tweaked, and traded among homebrewers:

#1 – Bell’s Two Hearted Ale – This beer has been brewed for many years by Bell’s Brewing. One of the unique things about Two Hearted is the fact they use a single hop variety for the entire recipe: bittering, flavor, aroma, and dry hop are all Centennial hops. The recipe has been available to homebrewers for years, and we enjoy the beer both for its flavor and as a test of our brewing ability.

#2 – Russian River Pliny the Elder – Vinnie Cilurzo, the founder of Russian River Brewing released the recipe for Pliny as soon as people started asking for it. He knew few people would able to enjoy this beer at his brewery in California. This beer was one of the original “double IPA” beers. Aggressively hopped, bursting with flavor and aroma, this beer set the bar for hop heads when it first released. Pliny is a powerhouse. It was voted the #1 beer in America for 8 of the first 15 years of its existence, even though its distribution is significantly more limited than the current availability of Bell’s Two Hearted Ale.

#3 – Sierra Nevada Pale Ale – The argument has been made this is the most important beer in America’s brewing history. SN Pale Ale is a beer that changed what people thought beer had to be and launched the craft beer industry as we know it. Other similar beers emerged as contemporaries to Sierra Nevada, but none of the others have survived since 1979. At a time when beer was defined by light lagers, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale came blasting out of the gates loaded with bitterness, citrus hop aroma and the flavor of grapefruit balanced against a mild malt sweetness that hints at toast & marmalade.

Not Just Great Beers

These beers are not just delicious beers I would be happy to enjoy any day with good friends. The brewers who made these beers looked at what was available and said, “That’s not good enough!” and set out to make beers that satisfied their tastes.

I am grateful to the brewers of these beers that stepped out of what was expected and paved the way for brewers (both homebrewers and commercials) to explore unique and interesting flavors in beer.

That mindset is part of the inspiration behind the line I close many of posts with: “Brew up an adventure!”

#BrewUpAnAdventure