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Relax, Have a Homebrew!

So I started homebrewing in early 2008 after getting a beginner's kit as a Christmas gift. I actually asked for it since I had seen my father-in-law homebrewing for a few months (he had actually done it for years but stopped for a while and had just started again) and thought that it would be a fun hobby to take on. I think the bane of my existence is the rather wide variety of hobbies that I have. They can be time consuming if you don't watch it.

The wonderful thing about homebrewing coupled with the fact that I'm a pretty curious fellow--meaning that I am interested in knowing how the world works and why it works the way it does--is that it can be as involved as you want it to be. After a few times, you can make pretty good beer at a fraction of the cost of what you'd find in the grocery stores. Plus, the horse piss they call beer (e.g. Budweiser, Miller, etc) pales in comparison to the stuff you can make--even early on. In the beginning, I enjoyed making my own beer because...well, just because I could enjoy something that I had made myself. It tasted good and cost on average about $0.50 per bottle. Over time, however, it has become more of a science to me. I am fascinated by the fact that so many variables can be changed over the course of brewing a batch of beer that can affect it in drastic ways. In effect, you start with a bunch of grains (mostly malted barley), some flowers (hops), water, and yeast. That's it! After a few weeks, you can bottle your beer. A few weeks later (usually a month in total), you have perfectly drinkable beer! And it lasts a good while too. As opposed to drinking your beer very quickly as you might do with beers you purchase in the store, you can keep your homebrews for a year or more. I've had some good brews (e.g. stouts) that were in the bottle for over a year and tasted incredible!

I initially began brewing extract brews. So in addition to the four ingredients to brewing mentioned above (grain, hops, water, and yeast), there's also malt extract; that's just a syrup or dry powder that's derived from steeping malted barley at certain temperatures for a duration in order to extract the fermentable sugars contained within the grain. Using malt extract saves you a lot of time and the headache of trying to extract those sugars yourself which is usually not as efficient and requires additional equipment, techniques, and a lot of patience. Plus, the variables I mentioned before increase exponentially; there are more of them to worry about! Lately, I've transitioned to all grain brewing where I extract those fermentable sugars myself. I still brew using both methods, but it depends how much time I have: a little time means I'll brew with extract.

If you're interested, you can take a look at my brewing process. I also used to keep a fairly detailed brew log, although it's old now and I've started a newer form of record keeping that I'll post online soon. Unfortunately, I didn't start it until I had already brewed a good number of batches. If I had one piece of advice to convey to anyone interested in homebrewing, it would be to keep a detailed beer log. Of course, that's in addition to the most important thing in brewing: cleanliness and sanitation. That's like 75% of everything you'll do in the homebrewing world.

Current inventory:

Upcoming brews (this changes all the time):

Brew History:

All new brewsheets are in PDF format. These are my brews since switching to a nice spreadsheet I designed for calculations. I recommend a spreadsheet over brewing software primarily because it's free and open source. But it's also easily modified and you can see the calculations being performed (which means you can learn, understand and change them). And yes, I use OpenOffice (not MS Office) since it is both free and open source. Can you tell that I like free and open source stuff? Oh, and its designers don't constantly come up with a new version with different proprietary file formats to make it difficult for everyone to open such formats unless they purchase a new version or upgrade every time. That's a no-brainer for me. I protect my spreadsheets (without a password) so that I don't accidentally change or delete a formula. They can be easily unprotected should you feel the need to change something. FYI, these are in reverse chronological order.

2010 (15 batches brewed for a total of 75 gallons/800 bottles):

2009 (8 batches brewed for a total of 40 gallons/426 bottles):

2008 (12 batches brewed for a total of 60 gallons/640 bottles):

A few pints:

Irish Stout
Bock
Canadian Ale
Sweet Raspberry Wheat
Liberty Cream Ale
Hop Scare IPA
Hopfully IPA (r), clone of Green Flash West Coast IPA (l)
Hakuna Matata Pale Ale (r), clone of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (l)
Purple Daze (Abita Purple Haze clone)
Ska Modus Hoperandi IPA clone

Harpooned IPA v2.0 (Harpoon IPA clone)
Hopfully IPA v2.0 (Green Flash West Coast IPA clone)

More pics here!

When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging.
Last updated: 2010-08-17 15:29