Believe it or not, before this year I thought I did not like beer. I relegated every beverage under this title to a category of watery, mild, boring, luke-warm liquids. My first few experiences of college parties are to blame for this unfortunate perception. By some miracle my uncle sensed the situation and came to my rescue with some of his recent homebrews. My first taste was from one he called Speckled Heifer-what I now recognize to be a play on the popular Wisconsin beer Spotted Cow- and it was DELICIOUS! That was last summer and since then I have tested my palate with various brews from the Great Dane, Brickhouse Barbecue and other Madison establishments.
This project has been a journey of discovering my beer preferences as well as an intense, hands-on learning experience. I had absolutely no idea what went into beer brewing; from choosing the grains to discovering what the yeasty beasties actually do.
At the outset my partners and I faced a trail overgrown with inaccurate, uneducated, or plain old incorrect information on beer brewing on the internet. Little did we know that a clear, smooth path was inches away paved by a lovely little book called The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. It was from reading this Beer Bible that we identified the myriad of brewing crimes we had committed. That’s the thing about beer, though, once it’s in the carboy, there’s not a whole lot you can do to alter the brew...you’ve just got to let the yeasties do their thing and hope for the best!
Despite our various mistakes we were very thorough and conscious when it came to the sanitization of all the equipment, about which the scripture insists, “SANITIZING YOUR EQUPMENT IS ONE OF THE EASIEST AND MOST FUNDAMENTALLY IMPORTANT THINGS THAT YOU WILL DO.” (Papazian p.20)
This project has been a journey of discovering my beer preferences as well as an intense, hands-on learning experience. I had absolutely no idea what went into beer brewing; from choosing the grains to discovering what the yeasty beasties actually do.
At the outset my partners and I faced a trail overgrown with inaccurate, uneducated, or plain old incorrect information on beer brewing on the internet. Little did we know that a clear, smooth path was inches away paved by a lovely little book called The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. It was from reading this Beer Bible that we identified the myriad of brewing crimes we had committed. That’s the thing about beer, though, once it’s in the carboy, there’s not a whole lot you can do to alter the brew...you’ve just got to let the yeasties do their thing and hope for the best!
Despite our various mistakes we were very thorough and conscious when it came to the sanitization of all the equipment, about which the scripture insists, “SANITIZING YOUR EQUPMENT IS ONE OF THE EASIEST AND MOST FUNDAMENTALLY IMPORTANT THINGS THAT YOU WILL DO.” (Papazian p.20)
Now, here, at the end of the adventure-what is really just the beginning of the life-long adventure I plan to enjoy with beer- I am extremely proud of the beer we produced and I feel confident that I could explain the beer brewing process and teach someone else to spread the joy with me!
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