I’ve always kind of wanted to make beer and/or wine…there’s something magical about creating alcohol, an intoxicant that has been around for a good long time and a part of most cultures around the world. Beer used to be one of the staples of the British peasant diet and, as long as they were eating it with whole wheat bread and not white bread, it provided a pretty good diet.
I would say that I have a healthy respect for alcohol as a drug. I am very mistrustful of it, and mistrustful of drinking it too often. I’ve seen alcoholism, both in the older-person-sending-themselves-down-the-drain way, in the younger-person-not-getting-much-done-but-drinking way, and in the person-of-any-age-needing-to-stay-a-little-high-all-the-time way. None of them are all that pleasant fo the observer, friend, lover, child, or co-worker, and I imagine they aren’t all that pleasant for the drinker either. I don’t have a problem with more-than-slight amounts of alcohol as part of celebration rituals, or with a drink with dinner, or with the occaisional alcohol-linked holiday (i.e. New Years Eve in this country), but I don’t like it as a ubiquotous social lubricant, as a form of escape, as a crutch to relax, or as a right of passage into adulthood. I also don’t like binge drinking – personally, because I don’t like the hangovers, and I view any activity that makes you want to die the morning after with a certain amount skepticism – and intellectually because it feeds into to so many problems – violence, rape, and cultures of drinking and unconsciousness. It is difficult to live fully consciously when you are drunk.
That said, I like good beer (more so than good wine). I think it tastes great…it’s food. Monks brew it (Omegang Abbey Ale is a new favorite of mine), and I bet it made the abbey glow a little brighter. I love the idea of taking quality ingredients, performing a little magic, and turning it into something people have been drinking for centuries. Since it’s made 5 gallons at a time, and doesn’t keep forever, I imagine I will be giving away a good amount of beer I brew myself, but I’m ok with that…I think I will probably also be expanding my repetoire of food recipes containing beer. I’ve always loved dishes made with alcohol.
There is currently a five gallon class jug filled with brewing beer sitting on my kitchen table…there is a thick plastic tube stuck in the mouth of said jug, siphoning off some of the foam, parts that, according to my brewing book, would make my beer taste yeasty and bitter. Given the yeasty smell of the foam coming out of this tube, I believe the book.
This batch of beer was made with a packaged malt extract kit, flavored to make Porter. My opinion is that the yeast that came with the kit was a bit old, since it didn’t make the wort (unfermented beer) start to ferment…I added a second package of fresher yeast, that came out of a refrigerator rather than off a shelf, and the magic started. It seems like there are varrying degrees of processed in terms of what you make beer from – you can purchase cans of thick, gooey malt extract that is flavored with hops and everything and just boil it in water and go, you can purchase dried malt extract that needs to have hops added (hops can be added as flowers or as processed pellets), or you can make the beer from actual malted barley and whatever other flavors you want to add, straining the pieces out before you start the fermenting process.
For the first time, I thought I’d try a kit, but next I think I’ll go for broke and use an actual recipe. I’m not a huge drinker, but I do really love a good beer, and I can imagine having a lot of fun becoming a brewmaster over the next few years (although I think I’ll have to give away a good amount of beer in the process). There seem to be so many different ingredients you can use, and there are so many different types of beer (I was spoiled in this regard by going to graduate school in an area with some good breweries)…I’m thinking I’ll try an herbed, dry honey mead next time.
