How to Make Beer

Finally bottled my first batch of home brew. At the beginning of the summer my brother Jim was talking about how he used to be really into making his own beer. Actually, he's still into it, but like a lot of us, there's not enough time in the day to do everything we want to do. Somehow making a living and raising a family has to fit in there. Sleeping takes up a lot of time. Then you throw in reading random articles at Digg.com and watching marginally valuable videos on youtube.com and then you can't forget blogging! Well, after all these tasks making home brew has to fit in between the end of the work day and dinner on a Friday night when my wife is out with her girlfriends.

Essentially, the whole process is about cleaning...and then cleaning again....and then cleaning one more time just to make sure....and then rinse.....and rinse again.....and rinse one more time just to be sure. And like a museum, you have to make sure not to touch anything, especially whatever would be really handy to touch.

We made a batch earlier in the summer that didn't turn out too well. Perhaps it was because we only cleaned the instruments a couple times instead of a whole bunch of times. It also could have been the yeast. Maybe we had too many bad cells in the bunch. We did find that if you mixed it with a beer you bought from the store it was quite palatable, though it would make your stomach feel a little funny. Sounds a little scary, but then again, Cici's Pizza will do the same thing to you.

There are a few more steps after the cleansing of every surface in your kitchen.

1. Heat a big pot of water with the magic beer beans. These are grains which flavor the beer. You put a bunch of it in a big sock (clean sock preferably) and then heat to a hot temperature.

2. Drink store beer while you wait for the magic beer beans to do their thing. (about an hour)

3. Transfer to big glass bottle, add yeast and water to fill to top.

4. Put cork thing in bottle that lets gas escape but nothing can come in.

5. Wait a couple days for the big bottle to stop fizzing. We waited much longer than necessary but that's ok. As long as you don't mind, we don't mind.

6. Transfer to another cleaned big bottle using a pump/siphon thing. Make sure it has been cleaned.

7. Clean a bunch of beer bottles.

8. Put beer in bottles and then cap.

9. Wait for 5 more weeks and you can enjoy!

So in recap, the whole process is a labor of love from what I can tell. I love to cook. I like smoking pork shoulders and making my own sauce. However, even the toughest pork is ready to eat within 24 hours. 5 weeks just seems a like a long time to wait when I could buy beer in the store today and not have to clean like the cleaning Olympics.

There were, however, some undeniable benefits.

1. Got to hang out with Jim, which is always fun.
2. Learned how to make beer in case Prohibition returns.
3. I will have a cool beer with its own label to show off at Liz's upcoming birthday party.

I think that last one is the real kicker. Look at me. I made this beer. See how cool I am because I made this beer. Care for another?

One more thing. If you click the title of this post it will take you to the Mr. Beer website. They have an ad there that crosses out the word "easier" and replaces it with "cheaper". Does that mean you send them less money and they write you a postcard that says:

1. Get some water.
2. Get some grain (magic beer beans)
3. Make Beer

Certainly cheaper and definitely not easier.