Welcome to the New Brewer Chronicals!

One of the first things I want to do is welcome everyone reading to an adventure I've been on since June of 2010. Exploring the home brewing of beer is arguably a very tough task. First, you have to decide where you want to be on the scale of difficulty. There are three in the case of home brewing. Extract brewing, which uses a concentrated malt powder or liquid to achieve a wort, partial mash brewing which uses malt extract and a combination of special grain steeping to get the style of beer you are going for, and lastly all grain, which uses whole malt grain steeped in water of a certain temperature for a certain amount of time and rinsed with water of a certain temperature to make the wort.

Before I reveal the one that chose me, I have a story behind it.

I've been a drinker of beer since I was very young, far too young to be drinking. It's been about 10 years now. I met beer for the first time like most youth discover beer, in dad's refrigerator! Honestly, it tasted like piss to me, like the most popular brews did at the time. We had an off and off relationship. I'd have one, and not like it very much, then have one again the next month. I'm sure there were great craft brews, but they weren't in the fridge and I didn't have a license that said "21" on it.

When I got to college in 2004, I didn't expect debauchery and parties because it was a small business school. Not much can really happen. But there I met new styles of brew that I hadn't known before. Granted, I was still too young to drink, but not all of my college buddies were. That and a less than strict pizza place ended up being a sweet key to awesome new frontiers in brew for a guy like I was. Pitchers of pure greatness were met with new appreciation of beer and how it can vary in taste. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (a very established craft brew by many standards) was one of the first I drank beyond the big three (Coors, Miller, Bud). Amazingly hoppy and a wonderful light orange color introduced me to what beer could be. After graduation, and finally being 21, I started expanding my horizons into new craft brews. Microbrews that somehow ended up at BevMo pushed me to taste them to see how good brew could really be. Coworkers would steer me toward certain regional beers like Belgian, Russian, and German. I tasted the goodness that was Duvel, Affligem, Old Rasputin, Stone, and Stella. I gained more appreciation for different beers than I ever had before.

I had always thought of what it would be like to brew the beers I loved, but never thought it was within my capacity to really brew them or even my own for that matter. I didnt have the equipment or the time to wait or the money to afford the hobby.

Just when the thought was out of sight out of mind, a coworker told me he was moving out of state and needed to offload his brewing setup. We're talking thousands of dollars in stuff here. After sleeping on it, I took the offer, with a small stake put in by my mom. Neither of us really knew how much stuff it really was. It took up half of the garage and more space on the back patio. There was a mash tun, a hot liquor tank, boil kettle, carboys, cooling coils, kegs, carbon dioxide tanks, ingredients, bottling setup, anything and everything for home brewing great beers was sitting at my lap for a pittance of what it was really worth. Sometimes I even regret taking it all for such a small price, almost like I ripped him off or something.

So when I say the brewing style chose me and not the other way around, I'm serious. I was chosen by all grain brewing. All I kept hearing from most people was about how hard all grain brewing was. I think most of that difficulty comes in the form of money being put into the hobby, not the pure difficulty of the activity. I realize that I'm probably the luckiest guy on earth to own what I own for the price I got it for. So be it.

My next post will be about the first brew I ever did, a pale ale, 1 week after I got all the stuff home.