Finally, some talk about beer

Blair (roommate) and I had a conversation recently concerning the fact that there isn’t enough beer in the world. Fortunately, Blair had realized this atrocity years ago, and had attempted to put things to balance by making his own beer.

However, in recent years his motivation had been waning, partially due to some brewing projects with poor outcomes. His most recent solo attempt, Goat Scrotum Ale (all homebrewed beer has weird names,… more on that later) was only mildly tolerable and lacked “that certain special something”. It was later discovered that the “something” was flavor and any sort of distinguishable character. It was beer, but just barely. I tried one of the last bottles of the GSA. I didn’t think it was as bad as Blair claimed it was. In fact, it was just good enough (i.e. had enough alcohol in it) that I reckoned we could at LEAST recreate a beer of similar quality,… maybe even better.

Charged with the enthusiasm of youth (me), we agreed to concoct a mutual batch. Blair decided that summer wheat/ hefeweizen ale was the way to go. It was also decided that local ripening blackberries would be introduced into mix.

So Blair dusted off and bleached down all the old equipment: Buckets, Carboys, percolators, thermometers, strainers, tubes, tubs, etc. Whilst he did most of the actual work at the start, I started to think about what we might name this beast of a brew, which leads us to,..

Homebrew Rule #1: All beer is given a clever and meaningful name.

As far as I know, this rule came from my dad, but he may just be carrying on some ancient tradition that I’m not aware of. Regardless, it is absolutely critical that the brew have a clever name, at least to those involved in the creation.

Blair soon acquired the necessary ingredients, and we set about the brewing.

I had no idea what was going on. I told Blair as much.

So he stepped me through it, one hazy, ill-interpreted instruction at a time. After each step I would ask Blair what we did next. There was usually a long pause, a swig of beer (previously bought or made), and then some sort of answer that was clearly made up on the spot. Which gives us two more rules,…

Homebrew Rule #2: It takes beer to make beer. No beer shall be made without the consumptive sacrifice of other beer. (All this fancy wording really just means that you drink beer while you make beer)

Homebrew Rule #3: No two beer making processes shall be the same, even if the exact same beer is being made. Those who break this rule will end up with a consistent product, which is boring and ridiculous.

It was clear to me that we were following Rule #3 to the letter. I know this because I came up with some ideas on how to do certain things, (like this crazy rig to the left) and Blair would say, “Hey, that sounds good. I never thought of that.” It was kind of scary, but thrilling at the same time. Two engineers proceeding with no real set plan in the beginning would normally lead to a coma-resultant panic attack. Thankfully, the beer input into our systems was allowing us to hold it together for now.

Then, disaster struck.

In one part of the process, you have to throw a bunch of malt (grainy looking stuff) into water and let it boil for awhile. Now, you don’t really want this chunky stuff in your final product, so you can put it in a mesh bag and “dangle” it into the boiling water. Think of a teabag going into tea. Same deal. You want the flavor of the tea leaves, but not the chunks.

Sadly, our mesh bag “dangled” a little to low in the tub, and eventually a hole was burned through the bottom of it. Malt grains permeated the mixture.

This wasn’t the end of the world it turned out, just a massive pain in the rear. After the boiling stage, we had to double and even triple filter the entire batch through tiny screens to get the slop out. You can see Blair accomplishing that exact task, which took about an hour.
The major work was done now, so we sealed up the would-be brew and let it “do its business”. A couple days later, our wounded mesh bag temporarily repaired, we “dangled” a couple pounds of fresh blackberries into the mix. After a few days of that, we extracted said berries and let the brew fester for a few more weeks. Finally, we bottled the lot and let it carbonate.

At this point, the name of this beer came to me: DangleBerrry Blowout.

Why? Because we “dangled” “berries” into the sauce at one point, and we had a “blowout” of the mesh bag at one point.
Also, the word “dangleberry” closely resembles another, not so pleasant word,…and that is just funny.

Here is something else funny,..

Homebrew Rule #4: Tacky foot apparel is a must for homebrewing.
Just look at the pictures. It’s pretty obvious that we took this rule seriously. In fact, Blair earns bonus points in my book for wearing the strangest boots/slippers/galoshes I have ever seen.

I am happy to report that we recently sampled the experiment, with good results. Blair seemed very surprised that it turned out so well. I was pleased we hadn’t ruined it with our antics, but vowed to do better. We both agreed it was better than GSA.

So, with enthusiasm high, we started a second batch this weekend. It will be a Porter, yet to be named. This time, an even more complicated brewing process seemed to go a little more smoothly than the first round, so maybe that is a good sign.
I hope to learn many of the brewing secrets from Blair in our time together, and maybe someday do my own homebrewing. It just seems like a cool thing to be able to do. And I’m a cool guy, so it just seems like a good fit.