Confession time: I don’t really understand the brewing process. I don’t know what wort is. I don’t really care to. I have too much knocking around in my head already – why clutter it with more knowledge? Y’know?
So what if certain people will write me off as a phony for not understanding these complex procedures? It’s not exactly a deterrent for appreciating the intoxicating effects of the beer, right?
That was my thinking, anyway. I’ve been thinking lately that if I’m going to be respected in any way as a Beer Guy, I should understand how beer is actually created. It’s basic journalist practice, to thoroughly understand one’s subject.
And so, I’m going to start home brewing.
This is what I knew about home brewing going in: a bucket is essential and drinking Howe Sound Brewing is a fun and delicious way to collect reusable bottles. That’s about it.
As a primer, I reached out to Parallel 49 head brewer Graham With, a home brewing success story par excellence. He started brewing while earning his engineering degree, eventually founding VanBrewers where he earned a reputation as such a badass home brewer that the P49 head honchos tapped him on the shoulder. These days, he claims to spend more time creating Excel spreadsheets for the company than actually brewing, but that’s OK.
With says getting started is extraordinarily simple: Go to Dan’s Homebrewing Supplies in East Vancouver and buy the home brew kit. It comes with all the necessities: a fermentation bucket, a secondary fermentation carboy, a racking wand, an airlock and some instructions, obviously, for how to do it.
“There are other places you can go,” he says, “but Dan’s is the place that can take you from, ‘I just put this bag of sugary wort into a bucket and threw yeast at it,’ all the way to, ‘I’m crushing the grains and using them myself.’”
I was too embarrassed to ask him what wort is.
The good news is that beginners don’t really need to know this stuff. Homebrew shops give you all the basic ingredients and I can literally put everything in the bucket, follow the instructions and, three to four weeks later, start drinking it.
“But that’s kind of dissuading because [the beer] really doesn’t taste very good,” With says. “If the key thing is you want to get drunk and save money on beer, and you don’t care what it tastes like, those kits are good for that.”
The next step would be to take some malt extract in syrup form and some specialty grains, then brew with that. The beer will taste better, but it takes a bit more effort to wrap your head around it. But we’ll wait to get there.
He says it’s easier to start brewing stouts or pale ales – they’re much easier to brew than lagers.
Aaaaaand that’s about all the advice he could give me. “Buy start up kit, follow instructions.” Not really worth a 500-word story, is it? Sorry folks. Maybe I am a phony.
Stay tuned for more exciting Adventures in Homebrew!
