Last year, Coley and I made an anti-consumerist pact to never buy unwanted, expensive crap for eachother for Xmas. Last year, we simply took eachother out to nice dinners. This year we really upped the ante. We gave ourselves the gift of homebrew!We sampled a bunch of yummy darker brews last weekend
to try to decide what to make for our first batch. My advanced brewing friend Andy recommended darker beers as "easier not to f*!$ up on your first try." We settled on an Alaskan Amber. Then yesterday, Andy accompanied Coley and I to Brew Your Own Brew to help us pick out our equipment. (More like, to dictate exactly what to put in our pile. When the employees saw us with Andy, a regular at the store, they totally backed off and went back to their internet porn searches.)On this lazy-pajama Sunday, we started the actual brewing process. So far, so good. So far, so FUN! You start by just boiling a giant pot of water on your stove, with your chosen grains
bobbling around in there in a net. It looks like you're steeping tea for a giant. After it's steeped enough, you add in the yummy, yummy malt powder (tastes just like the malt sugar in Whoppers). Then you bring it to a boil. Andy started to warn me on the phone about the pot boiling over when I added the hops. But then he just said, "well, you'll see," like it was just inevitable the first time anyway. Inevitable indeed. After cleaning off the stove-top and boiling some more, the next step is to pour it into a big fermenter (glorified plastic bucket) and add some water, and then wait for it to cool before adding yeast. We just did that, and put it in a dark closet now for a few days. I think all that's left is transferring it at some point to another bucket, and then waiting a few more weeks, and then bottling it, and then waiting some more. And then the drinking part!!! I can't wait to taste our home-made beer.