Home brewer

Apart from bread and milk products, brewing is another subject that has always intrigued me. To me, a bubbling carboy with fermenting wart is infinitely more fascinating than a fish tank, and getting something out of it that I really like makes the whole deal even sweater. And as with dairy products and bread it is not the execution of a recipe that gives me the satisfaction. Rather, it is to understand the principles behind the process. In the end I want to make and adapt my own recipes, for a brew that's best for me.

So here is the challenge I have given myself: Each batch of beer should yield 60 12 ounce bottles of beer, so we are talking almost six gallons per batch. The ingredients per batch should not exceed $30, at least not once I got the system down. Finally, the beer I make taste at least as good as beer sold for $6 per six pack at the store.

I started my first batch on April 25, which was eight days ago. For the wart I used the following ingredients:

• Five pounds of amber dry malt extract, at $5,00 per pound,
• One pound of sugar, for $0.50,
• Half an ounce of bittering hops (Cascade), for $1.00,
• Another half ounce of hops for aroma (also Cascade), for another $1.00,
• And finally, a sachet of yeast (Safale US-05) for fermentation, for $4.00.

So counting all the ingredients but none of the utilities the cost for this batch was $31.50. So I was slightly over but I ought to get under the $30 mark in the future, by buying in bulk and possibly culturing my own yeast.

Well, today was bottling day and I got 63 bottles out of it, Well, of course I would because I added carbonation sugar and additional water to my bottling bucket up to exactly the six gallon mark. I even had about a quart of beer left for immediate taste testing.

Obviously, the beer was still green, with the malt and hops flavors strangely out of whack. There is little hop aroma yet, and of course, the beer was totally flat. I preferred it to a Budweiser already but then I am probably biased. The real test will come in about 10 days after the beer had a chance to age in the bottle for a while. And then I will have a friend do the testing so there won't be a question of bias.

And only then will we know how much this first attempt at budget brewing is really worth.