In honor of Craft Brew week 2013 7/14

Today is my last day off until next Wednesday. I will be traveling to Houston to spend time with my kids and then bring them home for a couple weeks.

I always like days like today when its quiet, the kitchen is clean and I have a brew batch waiting to be soaked into its destiny on my stove, mixed with the correct amount of hops I am sure I will have my best brew yet.

For those of you who haven't guessed, I'm a home brewer. Legalized in 1978 here in the states, it has become a backwoods sort of pastime, with enough convenience even the biggest "city boy or girl" could do it themselves.

The kits come in a few ways. The guys at the home brew store in Ozark can set you up with a kit, meaning that a portion of the grains needed for sugar breakdown in the beer are supplied so that you can steep them in a meslun bag, sparge the sugars with water and then bring your beer to a boil.

After the boil begins you add what is call a DME or dry malt extract. Depending upon your style, you want to add hops in intervals on your recipe card. Beer recipes can be found everywhere, from down home good old style brew, to something you prefer the most. In the world of brewing we like to call them clones for lack of better terms.

After the boil completes, its necessary to drop the temperature of the beer, which at this time tastes like nothing but pure sugar. The starches in the grain turn to sugar at higher temperatures, which is what you want. The sugars in the beer interact with the yeast (comes later) that cause fermentation. You do want alcohol in your beer right?

Once the beer is chilled you siphon it off into the fermenter, this is a highly technical process involving a garden hose.. haha! Just kidding, you use an auto siphon, you put one end in the pot, and the other in the fermenter and pull the tube out, and pressing lightly into a larger tube it all comes out flowing naturally all of its sugary goodness, down into the fermenter. When the temperature of the beer reaches close to 75 degrees I pitch the yeast into the beer and then put an airlock on the lid.

 The airlock is a tube that is two sided, one with air and the other with a liquor of some sort. I use bourbon, but a lot of people use vodka. The liquor is heavier than water and can resist the gases that will come up out of the beer. Yes, the beer is very very gassy. It doesn't smell, it just sounds like it should.

After a week or so the fermentation slows and drops to the bottom of the beer, using irish moss from my boil the irish moss gains a thickness to it, dragging all the hop residue, and any other malt extract residue to the bottom of the beer. I then re-siphon into a second fermenter for another half a week for clarity.

Before bottling I take a measurement of cane sugar or dextrose and mix it into the beer with a little water. The sugar will interact with the alcohol and small amounts of yeast in the bottles and create CO2 which is what makes beer bubbly..

Making beer has me saving bottles a lot. So old Sam Adams bottles, Blue Moon bottles etc are washed, boiled, and then washed, boiled again. Then they are  set to dry before bottling. I have capper that squeezes the caps onto the bottles for me.

I let these bottles sit in a cool dark place for about a week to two. You want these to stay out of the fridge because coolness makes yeast live and you want the yest alive to create the co2.

Popping the top of a beer of my choosing I can hear that small hissss coming from the top tells me its ready, I pour into a mug and taste, I am looking for some things here, if the hops have blended with the grain, if the head of the beer lasts, and if it tastes good. If not, they stay out of the fridge for another week or so; a good beer will not be refrigerated for nearly a month before you cool it to drink.

I think I will grill tonight, some grilled peaches, ground raised potatoes in my wife's grandfathers garden, and some grass fed beef purchased this weekend at the farmers market.

So remember the next time you go to a bar, or a restaurant and ask for a cold one, the travels that beer made came from someone standing over a brew pot, mixing, straining, cleaning, hopping and checking it for ph, co2 and the best taste so that you can enjoy this moment with friends, family and other loved ones. Its a great hobby, completely inexpensive and its a lot of fun.

Cheers!