About Me

I grew up with American beers: Schlitz, Stroh’s, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Little Kings, Mickey’s Big Mouth, and Busch. I enjoyed the variety.

At some point in my career I got a job that required much travel over long distances for long periods of time. By necessity, I drank the local beers: Australian, Japanese, Pilsener in Northern Germany, Helles in the South, Austrian beers, and French. All good in their own way. Then I got sent to England where it seemed that each town had its own brewery. Ah the variety.

I was married by then and my wife also became enamored of English beers. Returning home, my old standby beers left me wanting and my wife disgusted, so we started to look for ways to get the taste of the world beers we remembered.

She had a friend who was into home brewing. He and his wife brought their equipment over to our house and walked us through what was involved in making your own. It seemed simple enough, so on my thirty-fourth birthday, my wife got me a starter equipment kit, some ingredients, the Papazian books, and a membership to the American Homebrewers Association. I do not use the phrase “perfect woman” lightly.

I made a few batches — I even managed to make a passable stout that we still talk about — but I never really understood what was happening. When a batch did not turn out I did not know why.

Feeling a little frustrated, we turned back to the commercial market to find the budding craft brewing movement. Suddenly there were interesting local beers. Some were trying to reproduce authentic English ales. Others were experimenting with distinctly new styles. The market was full of interesting beer and you can only drink so much, so there was less need for me to brew my own haphazard beers.

While many of the craft brewers were good at making beer, some had problems with consistency and scale. Others were good brewers but not good business people. Still others simply succumbed to competition. The result of all this being that the market started to get stale again. The other issue was geographic. I live on the East coast and most of the interesting brewing was happening on the West coast. Oh, there were still good beers, but nothing like the craft brewing heyday. All of this left my heart to wander.

While all this was going on, a wonderful thing happened: The Internet. With it came electronic publishing, e-commerce, discussion forums, social networking, and podcasts. Thank you, Al Gore.

At the same time, all these people were learning new techniques for brewing, and understanding more about why things work and what happens at a chemical level, and they shared what they learned. New products were also coming to market: liquid yeasts, more interesting hop varieties, better malt extracts.

One of the new techniques that intrigued me was small-batch brewing. One day I happened upon the Basic Brewing Video podcast and the episode “A Six-pack of IPA.” James Spencer and Steve Wilkes showed how they made a simple American IPA in a one-gallon glass jug with minimal equipment or ingredients investment. I figured I could do that. I rounded up a maple syrup jug, ordered a drilled stopper, some hops, malt extract, and yeast, found the airlock from my original equipment kit, and tried it out. To my surprise, it worked.

I made a few more small batches and started experimenting with recipes. This time when something did not work out, the Internet was there to help me. I could ask in any number of forums, populated by experienced and dedicated brewers, what went wrong. If it had this smell, or this flavor, or this floating thing, what did it mean? If I wanted a certain flavor, color, aroma, or mouthfeel, how could I get it? I started to learn and I loved it.

I learned that temperature control is important. I never did anything special before to control temperature and frequently got rocket fuel. It was not very good, but I am a possum, so I drank it anyway. While I did not start out controlling the temperature, at least I decided to measure it. I bought myself a fermometer and stuck it to the side of my carboy. It taught me that working yeast can easily raise the fermentation temperature by 8°F. That meant that if my ambient temperature was 72°F — warm, but within the range of some ale yeasts — the fermentation was taking place at 80°F, which makes some nasty Fusel Alcohol. Yuck, nice and spicy! The lesson: Fermentation temperature is of the wort, not the ambient air. Since then I have moved to a thermowell to measure the fermentation temperature and have built a fermentation chiller with a modified home thermostat for temperature control.

I always knew that sanitation was important, but I was naive about it. It never occurred to me that my top-up water should be sterile. Even where I was cleaning appropriately, I was using bleach and did not understand the effects chlorine could have on beer. I really did not understand the difference between cleaning and sanitation. Now I use PBW and Starsan.

I certainly did not know about melanoidin production or hop utilization or DMS precursors. I have moved to a full-boil kettle to try to give better control here. The other thing about hops is the volatility of the flavor and aroma components. To help out here, I now have an immersion wort chiller.

I am still learning, but I think I am to the point where I can make a consistent extract brew. When I am confident I have it down pat, I will be ready to move on to the challenges of all-grain brewing.

Of course, others have found these tools and the craft brewing movement seems to be having a resurgence. Hopefully, it will serve as inspiration for me to brew more and better beers and not as an excuse to quit. We shall see.