Hello. This is my first blog. I figured what the hell I would give it a go. My wife Sara is all about the blogging so...we'll see. If nothing else I'll be able to publish this after I become a word renowned brewmaster.
Note: I am a poor writer. That's not a big deal since no one will read this but I just wanted to throw that out there. I will ramble on, loose track of what my point is, use very poor grammar and even worse spelling, use commas, semi colons, and parenthesis in all the wrong spots, and make very long unintelligible run on sentences. My apologies.
Anyway my name is Dan, and I like beer. I've always wanted to make my own beer. This desire started when I was in high school and I figured it would be easier to make beer then try to find someone to buy it for me. The problem with that is I was (and still am) lazy and there is always someone around willing to buy kids beer. So now here I am, an "adult", and able to buy my own beer. The thing is as I've "matured" my taste in beer has also matured. While I really enjoy your standard American style lagers (Budweiser, Coors, etc) that everyone drinks as kids I prefer much more of the vast world of other beers out there. I'm by no way a beer snob. I drink Keystone light as much as I do Fat Tire. I enjoy a Natty Ice but also a Sam Adams. I'm as likely to drink a Budweiser as I am to order an IPA from a brew pub.
Where was I going with this? ... Oh yeah brewing my own beer. I've always wanted to make my own beer but I've never gotten into it. I've done some research and it looks complicated. There's all kinds of equipment to buy, ingredients to pick out and mix correctly, and cook correctly. A lot of hassle and cost to risk making some disgusting gunk I'll pour down the sink.
Then today I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Now every Christmas I've noticed that they stock the Mr. Beer home brewing kit. I've always thought "huh, that would be cool" and then hinted that fact to my loved ones who always seem to either ignore it or figure that the last thing I need is access to more alcohol. Well anyway today I noticed that they were in the after Christmas clearance section. Thats right, Mr. Beer...15 bucks. So I snatched one. Ran home as quick as I could giggling to my self, unpacked everything, and thought "man I'm hungry." So after cooking and eating a couple corn dogs I got started.
Mr. Beer seems pretty straight forward. You sanitize everything that's gonna touch your beer. Mix the bag of Booster (turns out it's solidified corn syrup) with some water (I got a couple gallons of spring water from the store), get it boiling, add the can of beer mix (the kit came with a can of Pale Ale mix), add to the sexy looking barrel shaped fermenter, add the included brewers yeast and stir. I've done all that and now I need to let it ferment for a minimum of 7 days.
What am I gonna do for a whole week while I wait? Well other than write a stupid blog I'm going to have to do some research. After I move the beer from the fermenter to the bottles next week I'm going to have an empty Mr. Beer to fill back up. Now I could go to mrbeer.com and buy a refill kit and make another batch of beer following one of their recipes, which seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. However, that would be like opening a can of Campbell's and being all excited about my home made soup. I want to make my own beer. Not just do a whole lot of work to get a batch of beer that's not much more mine as buying a six pack from the store.
I dunno, I know that eventually I will start making my own recipes but maybe I should figure out what I'm doing first. I'll have to ponder that for a bit. Either way I will have something to put back in that fermenter next week. And then I guess I will have something new to write about. Until then...