THE first thing I did when I left my parents’ house was buy a beer brewing set.
It seemed blindingly clear. Beer is mainly water and tax. So a home brew set is a magical porridge pot, an endless supply of lager at a lower price.
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But my attempt left a bad taste in my mouth and an incredibly sore head the next day.
Dare I give it another bash?
With the price of a pub pint After rising 6.9 percent this month due to inflation, of course I would.
You can brew your own lager for as little as 60 cents a pint. . . the last time you got a beer this cheap in the neighborhood was in the eighties.
i used the LoveBrewing.co.uk bearing set, which costs £66.51 for 40 pints.
Here is my home brewing diary. . .
DAY 0
STEP ONE: Order the supplies. Kits for beginners really make everything as easy as possible and offer absolutely everything you need to make more beer than you can lift for around £35 online.
Subsequent batches will cost much less because you can reuse all of the equipment. The ingredients cost next to nothing.
DAY 1
STEP 2: Set up and sterilize. “What’s the worst that could happen?” I said to my children as I eagerly unpacked all the satisfyingly sized packages of beer-making supplies.
“Um, you give all your friends food poisoning with an untrustworthy concoction and they all die?” said the youngest.
She had a point. You do have to make sure everything is spotless before you start.
You get quite a bit of gear for your money and it all needs careful scrubbing, the most challenging part of the venture.
It’s a bit cumbersome. The good news is that if you can wash dishes, you can make beer.
You should take an afternoon to read the instructions, wash and sterilize everything to kill all those deadly bacteria, then you are ready to start your brew.
IS. . . STILL DAY 1
STEP 3: Mix ingredients together. Be warned, as with barbecues and bonfires, making beer is apparently one of those things that is guaranteed to draw a crowd and one where all the men are seemingly leading experts.
“Ah,” says the milkman, “Really, you should boil your hops.”
“Mmm”, says a delivery person: “You have to add extra sugar.”
“Phhh,” says the postman, “You have to ferment your mash first.”
Do not listen. Simply heat up the included silver bag of malted barley, place in the clean bin and top up with water.
The stuff in the silver pouch smells divine and tastes somewhere between cinder toffee and burnt Coca-Cola.
There must be a lot of amazing natural sugars in it.
Mix, mix, mix together and then add the premium lager yeast, step back and let the fermentation begin while you call and scoop all your friends.
DAY 14
STEP 4: Sprinkle hops. Kits come with a hydrometer to measure the specific gravity (SG) of the beer.
I don’t know what specific gravity is, but it doesn’t matter. When the SG hits the target on the hydrometer, you can sprinkle on your hops.
They are for tastemakers. There are many different types of hops, but the nice thing is that they are all members of the same aromatic plant family as cannabis.
At this point, every time I entered the room where the beer was brewing, I was filled with a sense of anticipation and pride. It smelled absolutely delicious.
I think this was the problem the last time I tried home brewing.
I came home from the pub and really felt like another drink and it smelled ready so I broke into it. Didn’t feel so good the next day.
DAY 21
STEP FIVE: Drain. The hardest part about the last step is trying not to drink it all at once before you have it in the bottles.
Ah, the rich aroma of a fresh brew, the satisfaction of good work, the splendor of ice-cold beer in the sun. The whole process took about three weeks. Happy Days.
JUDGMENT
Far from being a chore, I found the whole process an absolute joy.
It was remarkably satisfying and enjoyable and it gives you something to talk about in the pub. It basically gives you your own pub.
A brewery can have up to 26 stages in the process, but beginner kits are designed to be as simple and foolproof as possible. As long as you keep everything spotlessly clean, you really can’t go wrong.
The beer is definitely cheap and it tastes pretty good too.
Good, but maybe not as good as my favorite lager. And maybe that’s why I haven’t bothered making it since I was a teenager.
It’s just not that pretty, and that’s not surprising for a first try.
I think making something even tastier than anything you can buy would certainly be an achievable goal, but just like baking your own bread, it would just take time and dedication.
Beer has more flavor components than wine and, let’s face it, it’s pretty good value – even at twice the price. However, I’m really glad I tried it again and learned a little more about one of the things I love the most. Cheers!
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