gunhaus
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- Mar 8, 2006
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I almost titled this it is not THAT hard.
I have a “brew buddy” who, for many years, has come by on brew days to lend a helping hand. Over time he has honed his skills, and developed his talents, to the point that he now almost miraculously arrives just as the chilled wort is ready to pour into the fermenter. After a brief hand with the heavy lifting he then settles back with a fresh drawn brew, and offers creative criticisms while watching me clean my gear.
I have long hounded my pal to try his own hand at brewing, but until recently he has balked. But at long last with the encouragement of his wife he finally took the plunge. He dove in, and bought buckets, and gadgets, and gear. He sweated over recipes for a while, and I finally talked him into the extract version of BierMunchers Centennial Blond – A beer I have done multiple times as all-grain and one which he really loves. He even jumped right in and bought one of those kegging start up kits. (Gotta love commitment!)
So all the boxes arrived. The inaugural day was set. My friends wife left for the day, muttering something about not wanting to watch this. (I should mention that my friends general cooking skills are pretty well restricted to grilled hot dogs on the 4th of July, and microwaving sandwiches from the wheel-of-death in the lunch room. Thus his wife’s nervous doubts) I arrived and suggested that we set everything out on the table, double check it, and get him rolling. Everyone was a beginner once, and I am sure I don’t need to explain that it is a sure bet something will be missing; a handy tool, an ingredient, something. Heck I forgot to buy sanitizer on my first go and it was NUMBER on on my shopping list! Had to do an 80 mile round trip that day to find some. Live and learn! Everything was laid out, checked off, I got him mixing up some StarSan, and then it hit me – There was ONE little thing he seemed to have over looked; No brew pot. Needless to say this presented certain challenges to a first brew-day.
First we . . . I . . had a really good laugh. Then we set forth to remedy the situation. The natural solution would have been for me to run home and grab a pot for the boil BUT, my friend was clearly rattled a bit by this slightly glaring omission – and I should explain that my friend is one of those hyper confident-try-anything- jump in feet first- sort of guys. Nothing seems to intimidate him, and he has the scars to prove it! Most of our mutual friends refer to this as being a natural born PITA – So I thought we would just dig around his kitchen and see if we could come up with an alternative. While I enjoyed his embarrassment and growing agitation.
After some cupboard crawling we came up with a little bitty stainless stock pot of about 3 gallons total capacity. I said “Here we go.” My friend said,”You’re nuts!” You see he had been reading the forums, and all the books, and had very studiously trained himself into a full-fledged neophyte expert. He told me that the little kettle not only could not produce a “proper” full-boil extract. It was too wimpy to even perform a partial boil. All was lost, disaster and dangerous and possibly deadly flavors would ensue! He used three or four really big brewing related words that did not apply in any way to the problem at hand, then went to sulk for a few minutes. Having endured a fair degree of cockiness, that never seemed to improve with the addition of beers, from my friend over the years it was kind of fun to see him “off his game” It’s good to get out of the comfort zone one in a while right? At least it was fun for me.
So I said,” Tell ya what, lets just give it a try, and if it stinks I’ll buy you new ingredients.” He is a free stuff sort of guy so this brightened him considerably. So I had him put about 3-1/2 gallons of water in his sanitized fermenter, set the lid lightly in place and set it outside (It was about 10 degrees) Then we put around 2-1/2 gallons into the pot along with half the dry malt, and the grains to steep and started the fires.
I do not need to bore you with process, you all know it. At the end of the boil, and the assorted hop additions and the final malt at flameout, We plopped the pot in an ice bath and started it cooling before pouring it into the now COLD water in the bucket. A quick temp check, and OG reading, pitch the Notty, lid, air lock, and tuck it away in a nice cool pantry that holds 64-65 all the time. Then I got to sit back and drink my friends beer while I watched him clean his stuff – All the while listening to him grumbling about what a “disaster” this brew day was turning into! AHHHH! Schadenfreude.
Two weeks later, I helped him rack the beer to his keg, and set things up. He was still convinced that all was lost – in spite of the fact we had basically hit the OG and now FG almost on the head, and that the flat room temp sample was the same tasty stuff it had been in the past.
Two more weeks rolled by, and it was time for the end results. According to his wife my friend was SO SURE that this was all wrong that he had not even tried to sneak an early one (HOW dejected is that that you won’t even try to sample your first brew early!!!!!) We broke out the glasses, and poured out the servings. The beer was clear, had a nifty little head on top, and wonderful little bubbles from all the splitting beer atoms. My pal looked doubtful, his beautiful bride, the trooper she is, put on her best I-won’t-cringe-no-matter-how-bad-it-is-face. And we all took a long swig.
It was BierMunchers Centennial Blond Ale – Of course it tasted just fine. Their eyes lit up, little bells seemed to go off. And a new brewer was born!!!!! As I said at the top It does NOT have to be THAT hard, and little mistakes and compromises can be over come without disastrous results. If you are new to brewing – don’t fret – just enjoy. It’s all fun and games.
I have a “brew buddy” who, for many years, has come by on brew days to lend a helping hand. Over time he has honed his skills, and developed his talents, to the point that he now almost miraculously arrives just as the chilled wort is ready to pour into the fermenter. After a brief hand with the heavy lifting he then settles back with a fresh drawn brew, and offers creative criticisms while watching me clean my gear.
I have long hounded my pal to try his own hand at brewing, but until recently he has balked. But at long last with the encouragement of his wife he finally took the plunge. He dove in, and bought buckets, and gadgets, and gear. He sweated over recipes for a while, and I finally talked him into the extract version of BierMunchers Centennial Blond – A beer I have done multiple times as all-grain and one which he really loves. He even jumped right in and bought one of those kegging start up kits. (Gotta love commitment!)
So all the boxes arrived. The inaugural day was set. My friends wife left for the day, muttering something about not wanting to watch this. (I should mention that my friends general cooking skills are pretty well restricted to grilled hot dogs on the 4th of July, and microwaving sandwiches from the wheel-of-death in the lunch room. Thus his wife’s nervous doubts) I arrived and suggested that we set everything out on the table, double check it, and get him rolling. Everyone was a beginner once, and I am sure I don’t need to explain that it is a sure bet something will be missing; a handy tool, an ingredient, something. Heck I forgot to buy sanitizer on my first go and it was NUMBER on on my shopping list! Had to do an 80 mile round trip that day to find some. Live and learn! Everything was laid out, checked off, I got him mixing up some StarSan, and then it hit me – There was ONE little thing he seemed to have over looked; No brew pot. Needless to say this presented certain challenges to a first brew-day.
First we . . . I . . had a really good laugh. Then we set forth to remedy the situation. The natural solution would have been for me to run home and grab a pot for the boil BUT, my friend was clearly rattled a bit by this slightly glaring omission – and I should explain that my friend is one of those hyper confident-try-anything- jump in feet first- sort of guys. Nothing seems to intimidate him, and he has the scars to prove it! Most of our mutual friends refer to this as being a natural born PITA – So I thought we would just dig around his kitchen and see if we could come up with an alternative. While I enjoyed his embarrassment and growing agitation.
After some cupboard crawling we came up with a little bitty stainless stock pot of about 3 gallons total capacity. I said “Here we go.” My friend said,”You’re nuts!” You see he had been reading the forums, and all the books, and had very studiously trained himself into a full-fledged neophyte expert. He told me that the little kettle not only could not produce a “proper” full-boil extract. It was too wimpy to even perform a partial boil. All was lost, disaster and dangerous and possibly deadly flavors would ensue! He used three or four really big brewing related words that did not apply in any way to the problem at hand, then went to sulk for a few minutes. Having endured a fair degree of cockiness, that never seemed to improve with the addition of beers, from my friend over the years it was kind of fun to see him “off his game” It’s good to get out of the comfort zone one in a while right? At least it was fun for me.
So I said,” Tell ya what, lets just give it a try, and if it stinks I’ll buy you new ingredients.” He is a free stuff sort of guy so this brightened him considerably. So I had him put about 3-1/2 gallons of water in his sanitized fermenter, set the lid lightly in place and set it outside (It was about 10 degrees) Then we put around 2-1/2 gallons into the pot along with half the dry malt, and the grains to steep and started the fires.
I do not need to bore you with process, you all know it. At the end of the boil, and the assorted hop additions and the final malt at flameout, We plopped the pot in an ice bath and started it cooling before pouring it into the now COLD water in the bucket. A quick temp check, and OG reading, pitch the Notty, lid, air lock, and tuck it away in a nice cool pantry that holds 64-65 all the time. Then I got to sit back and drink my friends beer while I watched him clean his stuff – All the while listening to him grumbling about what a “disaster” this brew day was turning into! AHHHH! Schadenfreude.
Two weeks later, I helped him rack the beer to his keg, and set things up. He was still convinced that all was lost – in spite of the fact we had basically hit the OG and now FG almost on the head, and that the flat room temp sample was the same tasty stuff it had been in the past.
Two more weeks rolled by, and it was time for the end results. According to his wife my friend was SO SURE that this was all wrong that he had not even tried to sneak an early one (HOW dejected is that that you won’t even try to sample your first brew early!!!!!) We broke out the glasses, and poured out the servings. The beer was clear, had a nifty little head on top, and wonderful little bubbles from all the splitting beer atoms. My pal looked doubtful, his beautiful bride, the trooper she is, put on her best I-won’t-cringe-no-matter-how-bad-it-is-face. And we all took a long swig.
It was BierMunchers Centennial Blond Ale – Of course it tasted just fine. Their eyes lit up, little bells seemed to go off. And a new brewer was born!!!!! As I said at the top It does NOT have to be THAT hard, and little mistakes and compromises can be over come without disastrous results. If you are new to brewing – don’t fret – just enjoy. It’s all fun and games.
