MISADVENTURES IN HOME BREWING PART TWO

 So last thursday was the big day—when our beer was finally ready to be tested. We started brewing it on the 8th of September, and bottled on the 21st of September. We had a great bottling system, where I would pour the bottles and hand them over to Graeme who would cap them. During this process, we both called dibs on two bottles: Graeme claimed the first bottle, while I claimed the first bottle I actually managed pour nicely (the ones before that were a bit hit and miss in terms of amount). So when Graeme left for the UK this week, he took his bottle with him so that we could have our big beer testing over FaceTime.

So If you read my previous post about how our misadventures in home brewing even started, you might be pleasantly surprised to hear it that the beer was definitely drinkable. Our first day of brewing was a bit of a shambles, and I’ll be the first to admit that we didn’t necessarily give the brew as much attention as we probably should have during the fermentation process either. I kept a brewing journal, but there’s a couple of times towards the end where we should have been keeping a close watch on our brew and measuring the gravity of it on a regular basis, but somehow we managed to forget about it for a couple of days. We also kept our brew in a room with heated flooring, which kept it at a temperature around 27°C, which was too high for an accurate hydrometer reading and probably a little warmer than it should have been in general. So all in all, our expectations for the beer were pretty low, and the fact that we actually produced a drinkable beer felt like quite the accomplishment!

And it was quite an enjoyable beer too! Having said that, our beer was pretty dark considering it was supposed to be an IPA. It looked more like a brown ale or something. It also had varying degrees of carbonation, in that Graeme’s bottle seemed pretty normal yet mine started fizzing like mad when I first uncapped it. Not sure why this happened, as we mixed in our priming sugar in the whole batch (rather than the individual bottles) before bottling to avoid this. But all in all, we're pretty happy, and I'm looking forward to enjoying a few of these this weekend. “We’ve done well, considering!”

UPDATE: So turns out we were a little bit early with our first tasting. After leaving the brew for a couple of weeks longer and having a second taste, we found that carbonation was more regular and the taste had developed significantly. Every day's a school day, right?

MISADVENTURES IN HOME BREWING

I originally planned on calling this post “Adventures in Home Brewing”, but after this weekend’s brewing shambles “Misadventures” seemed far more appropriate. Months ago over a few bottles of beer, Graeme and I decided we wanted to give home brewing a go. Graeme ordered The Complete Joy of Home Brewing by Charlie Papazi, and we waited eagerly by our post box. It took approximately 57 days before it arrived, not that we were counting. We played around with names for our make-belief brewery, and contemplated just trying out a brewing kit while we waited. In the end we decided we’d be patient and wait for the book, only to learn that trying out a brewing kit was the first thing the book recommended. So for our first misadventures in beer brewing, we opted to make an India Pale Ale by St Peters Brewery.

Now, throughout the Especially for the Beginner chapter, the one thing the author really stresses is to relax and enjoy the brewing process. In fact, not only is it repeated several times, it is also in capital letters. RELAX. DON’T WORRY. I would also like to add that I do not particularly recommend trying to brew your first brew the morning after a night out. Even if you think you feel fine, your brain does not work the way it should. So for us, things got unnecessarily complicated. Our syrup boiled over. Our bleach didn't seem to smell of anything, which made us worry that it’d gone off (does bleach go off?) and wasn't actually disinfecting anything. Our syrup boiled over again. The temperature wasn't going down to 20°C, and we were running out of time. We were absolutely not relaxing. We were worrying, and we were getting stressed out and cranky. “I’m never brewing beer with you again!” Graeme declared in a huff as he stormed out of the kitchen. I questioned how we would be able to deal with anything in life as a married couple, if we couldn't even work together to brew a simple beer. Over dramatic? What?

And that’s when we realized how ridiculous the situation had become, and we couldn't really do anything other than laugh. And then we couldn't stop laughing for a while, and finally started enjoying ourselves. Our first attempt at brewing did not exactly go as planned, but it is our first attempt after all. If it doesn't turn out, it doesn't turn out. I took plenty of notes during the process, so we definitely know what we need to do next time to improve. Like relax and not worry, for example. And invest in a new bottle of bleach. So far the brew even seems to be doing what it should be, and it’s smelling rather delicious too. Fingers crossed it stays that way!