When I thought about what I wanted to write in this column, I got this stuffed, “I ate too much” feeling. I couldn’t think of anything to tempt my palate, and if my palate wasn’t tempted, how could I presume to tempt yours?
One thing I did notice over the holidays, after eating heaps of delicious roast meats and perfectly cooked veggies, after my second helping of some decadently sweet concoction, and when my belt had been loosened just a tad, there was always a little bit of room left for that last sip of good beer.
I never seem to get tired of good micro-brewed beer and lucky for me, we live in a part of the country where micro-breweries are sprouting up like weeds and there are always new and exciting beers to explore.
My husband, Jon, and I enjoy sharing a good beer together almost every night. You could say we’re a bit obsessed with beer. We’ve traveled to Portland for beer festivals (the Winter Ale Fest was amazing) and we look for local breweries in every town and city we visit. We have a beer bottle collection that threatens to take over the house and the growler collection is on the brink of getting out of hand.
For at least a year, and maybe more like three, we’ve been kicking around the idea of making our own beer. We’ve obviously talked about it long enough for Jon’s two sons to get sick of hearing about our dreams of home-brewing and do something about it. They bought us a home-brewing kit for Christmas. We were like two little kids on Christmas Day. All we could talk about was what we would brew first.
The kit included all the equipment we would need to brew our first batch but not the ingredients. For that we needed to make a trip to Jim’s Home Brew Supplies in Spokane. We’d been to Jim’s before to fawn over the beer-making kits and buy unusual and delicious beers from around the world. This time we were slightly out of our element. We knew we wanted ingredients to make something delicious but where to start? We didn’t need to worry. The folks at Jim’s knew what they were doing (they’ve been selling homebrew supplies since 1955) and weren’t afraid to share what they knew. We left with ingredients to make three different batches of beer and big smiles on our faces.
The boxes of ingredients sat on the counter in the kitchen for a few days, filling the room with the smell of hops and tempting us to throw all our chores and family obligations to the wind. In bed at night, we quickly read through the first section of the home-brewing bible, “The Complete Joy of Home Brewing” by Charlie Papazian. By the time we got to the end of the first section, we felt like we were ready to brew our first beers (it didn’t hurt that every other sentence in the book ends with “relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew”)
Last Saturday morning dawned dark and cold and dreary (like so many of the days lately). It was the perfect day to brew. After fueling up with one of Jon’s famous breakfasts, we got out our pot and our carboy and had to make the first big decision of the day. Which of the three types of beer for which we had ingredients would we brew first? We had the makings for a Scottish Ale, an IPA and a Porter. We looked at each other and both said Scottish at the same time. It was decided.
Mr. Papazian is right, brewing beer isn’t that complicated (at least so far). We boiled up all the ingredients in the order and length of time the recipe called for. We sanitized all of our equipment and carefully measured temperatures. We had a great time (even if it was only 11 in the morning and we didn’t succumb to Charlie’s insistent pleas to have a homebrew).
We had to wait a few hours for our wort (the liquid we created that will eventually ferment into, we hope, delectable beer) to cool enough to “pitch the yeast” (basically adding yeast to the wort but we are well on our way to becoming brewing geeks).
Once the yeast is added the magic begins. Who needs TV when you can sit next to your carboy and watch the bubbles rise up through your beer? There was some serious action happening in that big glass bottle. Foam began to escape from the blow out tube. The beer seemed to be speaking to us in this blub, blub, blub voice. It was fascinating.
After three days, the action has died down somewhat. The fermentation lock is still bubbling away but the foam has subsided. Now comes the hardest part of beer making, waiting. It will be at least a week before we can bottle the beer and then at least another week before it is ready to drink. Sure, we can have a little taste to see if it’s turning out okay while we bottle, but we won’t get the full effect until the end of the month. At the moment, that seems like forever.
