I am off to a bit of a slow start on both blogging and brewing this year... I finally decided to move my blog. I started the old blog at the start of my deployment to Afghanistan, and underwent several evolutionary changes in the time since then. This new blog will be much more focused on my hobbies and how I spend my freetime - the name (which means middle of the night in Latin) reflects this. If you know me, you understand the name...
About three years ago, I brewed my very first batch of beer. Wow. I fully blame my buddy Robert for getting me into this hobby - here is how it started:
At the end of August 2006 in Afghanistan, I decided that I would go out with one of our teams - Robert's team. This was going to be different from other times I had gone out on "command visits" because I was going to replace one of the operators on Robert's team. Robert was the team leader, and I'm sure he was probably less than comfortable with having his First Sergeant join him on an extended operation - nothing like having senior leadership meddling in your day-to-day affairs! Meddling, however, was not my intention; it was Rob's team, and I was just a strap-hanger that was filling a shift on the team.
After only two or three days into what ended up being about thirty days, it was fully evident that Rob and I were definitely among the geezers on hill. Most of the younger guys spent their downtime talking about things like "hot chicks", fast cars, and how they were going to spend all of their money when they got home. We had not even seen most of the movies or TV shows these guys were talking about, and at nearly 40, our interests were significantly different.
I'm not sure who mentioned it first, but one of us brought up how much we missed good beer. As the conversation continued, Robert lamented the fact that he had a batch of unbottled homebrew sitting in a carboy back at his apartment, and how it would have spent over a year in the carboy by the time he got back to bottle it. I didn't really even know what a carboy was, but had been interested in getting into homebrewing for a long time.
Robert was full of great info, and most of our non-mission-related conversation for the rest of the operation revolved around beer and homebrewing. He told me that the best starting point was Charlie Papazian's
The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing. He said that it was sure to get me started off on the right foot, and was an entertaining read to boot! As Rob described it, it sounded akin to
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, philosophy and practical information rolled into one.
After thirty days without a shower or a hot meal, one of the first things I did was get online and order the book, along with
The Homebrewer's Companion, also by Papazian (OK, the real order of events upon arriving back on base was more like this: 1) check back in with my commander; 2) attend our battalion's weekly command & staff meeting; 3) hot dinner - KBR never tasted so good; 4) hot shower and clean uniform; 5) amazon.com to order the book). After so much thinking about beer, I broke down and drank my first non-acloholic beer – Bitburger Drive – not great, but OK when it was ice cold, by the way.
Once Rob's team went back out, I had nobody to talk to about beer... It was going to be at least another week before my amazon.com order... I was going crazy doing internet searches... Then I discovered a couple of podcasts: Basic Brewing Radio and the Brewing Network. I downloaded everything I could, and spent a lot of time listening. When the books arrived, I read them over and over – three times before I got home.
My wife and I talked about delaying Christmas until I returned sometime in January 2007. When the topic about my gift came up, I took advantage and told her I wanted a homebrew starter kit. My wife must really love me, because she knows how I get about my hobbies (she often says I don't have hobbies – I have obsessions), but she still bought me that setup and my first beer kit. The shop owner (Bill at Olympic Brewing Supplies in Bremerton, WA) asked her what kind of beer I liked, then set me up with a decent all-extract Cooper's English Bitter kit (one can of Cooper's, supplemented with additional malt extract, and dry yeast).
I brewed it at the start of February, and when I drank the first bottle towards the end of the month, I thought it was the best beer I had ever tasted! It was probably pretty good, but we all know how our opinions are colored by our amazement on our first few batches. I followed up with a stout, modified from Papazian's Toad Spit Stout, which I dubbed “Dark Horse”, and ready in time for St. Patrick's Day. This one got rave reviews from more than just my family, and I was off and running!
I was still addicted to surfing the internet for all things beer and homebrew, and was interested in brewing software... I downloaded many trial versions and tried them all out. I discovered Beer Tools, which offered a free online (simplified) recipe formulator. I used that to help me modify a few recipes from Papazian's books and from the homebrew shop. Then I ordered Beer Tools Pro, which was available for Mac, and I upgraded to a gold membership on their website...
By the time June rolled around, I had already brewed six batches, and was ready to move beyond extract batches with steeping grains. I think I ended up with 11 or 12 batches (at 5 gallons each) that first year, and I learned quite a bit about recipes and basic processes. That was a big year for me, and many of my friends had begun to ask me about my brewing, perhaps in part to get more homebrew!
As I look back over the past three years, I chuckle a bit about how much I thought I had learned and how much I though I knew at the end of that first year. Two of my biggest learning experiences actually stemmed from failures: one a probable sanitation problem that resulted in iodiney-gushers (bummer – my first all-grain batch!), and the other a drastic underpitch on my big holiday beer (anybody like flat banana beer?)... It is true that I did progress quite a bit in my brewing, but I had yet to make any changes that truly elevated my brewing and got me brewing consistently great beer.
Since then, I branched out and did much more reading. I listened to many more podcast episodes – the ones that got me started and kept me sane in Afghanistan, and some new ones as well. Brew Your Own and Zymurgy magazines were also full of great info. James Spencer of Basic Brewing Radio really got my head in the game, so to speak. But it was the Brewing Network content featuring Jamil Zainasheff that really helped me make better beer.
In my second year of brewing, I got a bigger brew pot and a propane burner so that I could do full-wort boils and I began pitching yeast starters. These two simple and relatively inexpensive steps improved my brewing tenfold. I had much greater control over my beer's flavor profiles, and my fermentations kicked off quickly and reliably, and progressed predictably. What a huge difference this made!
Thanks to a great article in BYO by Chris Colby, and info in Basic Brewing Radio and Video, I got set up better for mini-mashing (partial mash technique). Before I was trying to mash grains in my brewpot suing the oven for temperature control; I switched over to countertop partial mashing using a 2 gallon beverage cooler, and I gained a much better understanding of mashing grains, starch conversion, and individual grain contributions to my finished beers. My beers began winning medals and ribbons in competitions at this point. I also made the move to some all-grain brewing in a 5 gallon beverage cooler I had in my garage. Robert, the buddy who had gotten me started, began coming over at least once a month to brew... I also began kegging and built a kegerator from a converted chest freezer. My son's Kindergarten teacher informed me that he had shared that the most fun thing he did over a long weekend was helping his dad and friend Robert bottle their beer (my boys have a thorough understanding of the process and biology of beer, despite being 5 & 7 years old!). Things were really rolling!
Year three saw me continue striving to become a better brewer... In my National Guard unit, my soldiers were relying on me for a regular supply of good beer, including kegs to mark special occasions. My holiday beer baskets sell more tickets than any other raffle item at our annual holiday drill! Robert got roped into another deployment, though, and my feverish pace slowed quite a bit. While he was gone, I began getting other friends involved in homebrewing – in my National Guard unit, there are 5 or 6 guys that are brewing regularly now after an instructional brew day with me.
I still have averaged just under 100 gallons (not including root beer that I make with my kids or hard cider) in my first three years brewing. While I have come a long way, and enjoy teaching other people what I know, I realize that there is still a lot more that I don't know about brewing than what I actually know. I am hoping to get a few more people into the hobby this year, and I am hoping to break the 100-gallon mark for the the first time. Now that Rob is back, I am hoping to brew with him more regularly again.
So far, I've only brewed 12 gallons in 2010 (one Rye-PA and one American IPA as part of an experiment). I have those two batches, plus a dark lager that I started in December, to keg or bottle this weekend. And I have at least two batches that I should brew (one dry stout as a moving/housewarming gift, and one hybrid classic/American pilsner using SF lager yeast for a picnic in March)... And St. Patrick's Day is coming up! I guess I had better stop thinking about brewing, and get to work!
