Happy Accidents

It is an interesting fact that Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by accident, and that Isaac Newton discovered gravity as a result of an apple falling from a tree and hitting him. In the same way – though admittedly on a smaller scale – some brewing mistakes and happy accidents can lead to a different and unique taste in a brew that makes for a worthwhile addition to your rotation. Admittedly, more accidents go wrong than right, but it is worth noting that the process can work in your favor even when mistakes are made.

This kind of happy accident can have the most unexpected results. If you add too much of something, too little of something else, add something at the wrong time or leave too much or too little time for something to happen, all of this can change the taste of the finished product quite markedly. As a result you can end up with something that you are happy to drink for the rest of your time as a home brewer. For this reason as well as many others, it is a good idea to keep a notebook detailing what you do during the brewing process.

Of course, people are slow to admit to mistakes, especially when the results are such that the mistake turns out to be a winning move. So we will never know how many of the beers out there on the market were the result of clever research and sound practice, and how many resulted from one person’s slip up. And maybe that would destroy the magic.

Home Brewing 101: FAQs

Four weeks ago I bottled a new batch of beer and set it out in the garden shed. I opened one today and it doesn’t taste right. What’s up?

The chances are that it’s nothing you’ve done in the brewing process. Remember, brewing is a temperamental process and the most likely reason for your beer not coming out right is that you moved it from somewhere warm to somewhere cold. It is probably that the yeast you used needs to be at brewing temperature – that is, in the same room where you are brewing – in order to carbonate your beer. Leave it in the brewing room for two weeks before moving it outside next time.

This is the first batch I’ve brewed and it actually tastes OK but … it’s a little watery. What does it sound like I did wrong?

Just one thing, and it’s easily remedied. What you need to do is use blended sugars – something more attuned to the brewing process. What you have described sounds to me a lot like you have used white sugars in the brewing process. What comes out of that normally tastes a bit like cider – as you say, it doesn’t taste horrible, it just doesn’t taste like beer.

My first brew is really cloudy, having been in the keg for three weeks. I would have expected it to be mostly, if not totally clear by now. What’s happened?

It sounds like you have done things pretty much right, but to avoid this happening you could try leaving it in the fermentation vessel for four or five more days next time.

An Exchange Of Information

The entire world has changed with the advent of the Internet. You can talk live to people living as far away from you as it is possible to get, you can buy items from a Mom’n'Pop store in a village in another country, and you can watch sporting events taking place in front of a few hundred people in a country you’ve never been to. Everything has been touched by the Internet, and home brewing is no exception.

The Internet has exploded in no small part due to its social aspect. We have social networking (which takes up so much of people’s time it has been dubbed “social not working”), blogs and online forums that allow people to share information, debate and request help. And for a first time brewer, there is a real advantage to having this capability. You will surely take a couple of attempts to get your home brew just right, and you may wonder what you are doing wrong – the Internet is your friend.

Many people on Internet forums devoted to brewing will have had the exact same problems you have when you first home brew a batch of beer. They will know how they got around the problem and will be able to share this information with you. As most home brewers are non-commercial, they will not see you as a competitor in a serious sense and will be glad to help out. In the early days, this can make all the difference to a new brewer.

Brewing Safely

There is an almost endless stream of jokes to be made about home brewing beer, and most of them center around the idea of cutting out the middleman and just getting drunk without anyone else’s help. However, there is a certain seriousness behind those jokes, and one that needs to be taken note of by anyone planning to home brew beer.

Beer contains alcohol, which is an intoxicant. We all know that. When you home brew beer, this gives you an important responsibility. First of all, you need to make sure that what you are brewing is safely drinkable. Too high an alcohol level and it could make you or anyone who drinks it ill. Bear in mind also that the critical capabilities drop after a few drinks, so if you break into the home brew after polishing off a supply of store-bought beer you may not be in a position to judge if it is “right”.

Aside from that, there is also the fact that to brew properly, you will at times need to heat the mix to boiling point, and stir it when it is hot. For this reason, you should always be sober when you are treating the home brew mixture. Just having easy access to beer is not a green light to drink it all the time. Although beer is fun, brewing it is serious and you don’t want to be the one who spoils the party. Be careful and observe best practice if you want to brew at home.

It’s Not Just About Beer

The words “home brewing” send just about every mind off in the same direction. Beer, and probably fairly dark beer at that. But variety in home brewing isn’t just about making a drinkable lager, or amping up the darkness and producing a stout. In reality, there is a lot more you could be doing if you are prepared to diversify your portfolio (and, in some cases, invest in more equipment). It might not be advisable to try making hard liquor (the margin of error is narrower and getting it wrong could blind you) but there is more you can do.

A good change-up from beer is cider. It is, of course, an entirely different drink and some of the ingredients are completely changed. The most obvious is the central ingredient. Beer is made with hops, cider is usually made with apples. And indeed, for your first few efforts you should not make cider with anything else. Get the hang of apples and you can then look at brewing more interesting ciders – there is a fashion in a few countries right now for pear cider (otherwise known as “perry”), as well as other, sweeter flavors.

If you fancy an even bigger change, then it is possible to make wine at home too. Indeed, this is a pretty common practice in France. Even some of the wines on sale in stores close to you were not made from grapes grown in a giant vineyard – some of them are from true family businesses in California, France and elsewhere. Obviously, the fresher the grapes the more delicate the wine will be – but if you can grow your own or find good fresh ones nearby it is worth the effort.

Variety Is The Spice

There are several great lies about beer. One of those is that it makes you funnier. It doesn’t, it only makes other people more likely to laugh at your jokes, and they need to be drinking too. Another, and a more serious one, is that all beer tastes the same. This line is so untrue that there should be disclaimers issued on national TV every time someone says it. One can only wonder how many people are sitting in bars, drinking just to get drunk, who have only ever tasted a couple of beers and don’t really like them.

When you brew your own beer, you come to appreciate just how much variety there is in the process of making certain beers and in the taste of the end result. Many home brewers never make two batches that taste exactly alike. One small change to the brewing process can lead to vastly different results. It might not be a change you enjoy, but it will certainly be different.

There are so many different kinds of beer that the idea of them all tasting the same is flawed right from the get-go. You have light, crisp lagers and heavy, dark ales. You have thick stouts and sharp white beers, and these are just a few of the options out there. That is before we even get to the stage of adding flavors, experimenting with strengths and other variations that can produce incredible results. All beers taste the same? No. No, they don’t.

A False Economy?

There are some people who feel that their main push towards home brewing was the high prices charged for commercial beers in stores and bars. This is understandable, too. After all, the companies who produce the world’s most popular beers are making a huge profit because it doesn’t cost them anything like as much to produce a bottle of their product than it does for us to buy one. As an economic move, brewing your own beer can be a sensible step.

However, there are many people who will look at the amount of equipment they need in order to make a batch of beer and go off the idea immediately. It is a big outlay to start off with, and for the same price you could easily go into a store and buy several crates of beer. The question you need to ask yourself is: Am I committed enough to this to make it work – to the point where I will make enough beer to break even on the deal?

That may take some time, and when ingredients are taken into account you will not break even in the early months unless you are drinking so much of the home brewed beer that you would be in no fit state to operate the equipment. You will need to really be committed, and do this long term, to make it an economical move. Of course, you may not be doing this for economy. If you are just doing it for the enjoyment and the craft, then you are likely to stick with it for longer.

A Lot Of Effort For Little Reward?

One thing that must be said for home brewing beer is that it is a long process. If you are looking for a quick and easy way to get beer, then a trip to the liquor store is going to be your friend. Expecting to be able to make your own beer in the space of hours or even a few days is only going to set you up for disappointment. It might produce something that you can drink, theoretically, and it might even get you a little bit buzzed, but it won’t be beer and it won’t taste like it.

No, you have to be in it for the long haul and this is what puts a lot of people off home brewing beer. The process takes time and, if you spend long hours tinkering to get it right and days waiting for it to be ready, you are going to feel a little bit cheated if you then pour your first glass and find that it tastes appalling. At that point, you have the choice to either give up or work out what you are doing wrong.

Many people will take the first option, feeling that home brewing is not for them. Those who take the latter option may have a limited supply of patience in the aftermath and give up after another failed batch. But this is the key – brewing is something that requires a great deal of patience. You can be sure that the monks who brewed those delicious Belgian beers had some false starts when they first set to brewing – and they couldn’t even scream obscenities when something went wrong. So make sure that you have the patience of a saint before you start home brewing.

A Voyage Of Discovery

Brewing your own beer is something that takes time. If you are thirsty and want a beer, then the time is not right to start mixing ingredients and waiting for the mix to be ready. In fact, from start to finish, brewing a beer may take weeks. It is because of this long process that brewing beer is such a voyage of discovery.

The first time you brew a beer you should not diverge from the instructions given with the kit. You need to work to a recipe – home brewing is one of the most exact sciences there is – and to stick to that recipe come hell or high water. If you vary from the instructions for even one small part of the process, the results are going to be undrinkable.

You can make changes to the process, but only after you have brewed a batch that tastes right. It is only at this point that you can trace the process and recognize where there is room for something to be changed. It may be with the addition of more hops, with the substitution of some hops for another ingredient, or something so minor that it would seem irrelevant. One way or the other, it is important to know the process before you try to change it.

Once you know what you are doing, the world is your oyster. Home brewing is a popular hobby, to the extent where people will attend conventions and sell their own brews and equipment. You may find, if your home brew is good enough, that it is commercially viable to start selling it.

Home Brew vs Factory Brew – Whose Side Are You On?

There is an understandable assumption made by many people that the beers available in supermarkets and liquor stores were all brewed by factory workers employed by some faceless corporation. It’s natural to associate a big seller with a big producer. However, a lot of people would be surprised to see just how many of the beers sold commercially were actually produced in a setting not totally dissimilar to your own home brewing station. Some of the more diverse beers, especially, were produced by independent brewers.

Many of the Belgian beers available commercially – the bottled ones which are often flavored with ingredients such as raspberry – are actually made by Trappist monks. Yes, those guys who live their entire lives barely speaking a word are actually making beers that will make hundreds of other people very talkative. The cloistered nature of their living and working conditions means that they can keep their brewing secrets very secret indeed, and as a result their brews are among the most unique and interesting on the market.

This does not mean that your own brewing will necessarily be so unique. You can go conventional if you want. If you enjoy the taste of a commercial lager, it is not impossible to achieve it with home brewing. You just need to follow the right instructions and be prepared to experiment in getting it absolutely right. But if you’re that keen on getting the taste of a commercial lager then it might be better and more economical to just buy it. You can lose a lot of money chasing a specific taste.

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