The Mis-Adventures of the Rookie Brewer

They say the first step is admitting it to your self. I am a Rookie brewer. I’ve been interested in brewing my own beer for nearly 6 years and yet, I’ve never brewed. Not one bottle. Not one batch. Nada. Zilch. Zippo. Maybe now would be a good time to give you some background about myself. Back in 2003 I lived in Santa Monica, Ca. not too far from a brew shop in Culver City (Culver City Brewing). I like beer and by beer I mean tasty, hoppy, malty, flavorful beer. Now, don’t get me wrong, the Big 3 (Miller, Bud & Coors) have their place in the world (the beach, the lake or out by the pool, mostly hot summer days).What better way to get great tasting beer than to brew my own. Well, one afternoon I stopped in to the brew shop, asked a few questions, looked over the equipment required and after about 30 minutes, I was the proud owner of a starting brew kit. The kit included: 2 glass car boys for fermenting (essentially a Sparkletts bottle, only made of glass), a long metal spoon, a thermometer, a hydrometer, an airlock, a plastic bucket for bottling, some flexible tubing and some ingredients to make my first batch. Nothing fancy, in fact it didn’t even include a brew kettle.

Now, it was late summer and the winds of change were in the air. We had been trying to sell our house and get out of Los Angeles and the direction the wind was blowing made us speed up our exit. So we packed up and moved to Las Vegas. After a few months of unpacking and setting up the new house and getting life back on track, I brought my attention back to my beer making. Since the brew shop in Culver City had a brew club I thought I would look for one in Vegas. Enter Snafu (Southern Nevada Ale Fermenters Union), a small but dedicated group of guys meeting out of a brew shop and talking beer and beer making. I learned a lot in the first few meetings, mostly that there are way more styles of beer than I had ever imagined, but I still hadn’t put fire to kettle to make my own beer. Well, time and life and the increasing demand of family and work took its toll and here I am, 2010, in my early 40s and wondering why I have all this equipment and have never taken the time to use any of it. (All caught up? Probably not, but we’ll push on in the interest of time)

I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t want to do something wrong or waste time and materials, so I have the tendency to be a bit of an over-preparer (is that even a word?). I haven’t been idle during all these years. I have 3 different books on home brewing and I now have 2 magazine subscriptions about home brewing. I listen to several beer-related podcasts and I’m even a member of the American Homebrewers Association, and yet, I don’t homebrew. I have been doing a few experiments to prepare myself for my first brew (like I said, I over-prepare). First of all, I needed to make sure that I could maintain a constant fermentation temperature. That seems like a simple thing but not so easy in the scorching heat of Las Vegas in the summer without running the air conditioning 24/7. My first experiment was to find the “coolest” room in the house during the hottest time of the year. My family was a bit confused to find thermometers all over the house but I finally narrowed it down to a downstairs bathroom (imagine my wife’s relief when the dining room turned out to be a few degrees warmer but a close second). Next I filled a car boy with 5 gallons of water and set about determining the ambient water temperature for the room. Well, let me tell you, Las Vegas in July and August are not the coolest time of year. If I needed to take a bath, I was working with the right water temperature (about 85 degrees), but for making beer, not so good. I would have to say this experiment was a FAIL. I’ve been working lately on a few cooling methods I’ve read about, including setting the car boy in a tub of water, covering it with a towel and keeping all of it wet. So far I’ve noticed a 5-10 degree temperature drop, but since the fermenting beer will generate about 10-15 degrees of internal heat, all I’m doing is returning to ambient room temperature. That’s a good thing to know for the future but still doesn’t get any beer made. So, for now the experiment continues and the anticipation mounts. I’m hoping that before Christmas it will have cooled down enough….ah, who am I kidding? It’s Vegas.