More homebrewing

Yes, it's been quite a while since beer has been brewed in the Bailey household. Oh, but won't things change soon... won't they...

Jay lended me a hand last Sunday in brewing a batch of IPA. We got the recipe out of the one and only recipe book I own, and we wanted an IPA, because we both enjoy the IPAs, and the book only had three IPA recipes, and two of them were for all-grain brewing (which I don't know how to do - I like the cans of malt extract syrup or the bags of dried malt extract), so that left us with the Taken Liberties Ale. We went to the homebrew store in the afternoon and we started to brew later on in the evening. I hadn't read the instructions, but there was a lot of waiting involved, which isn't always the case with brewing a batch of beer. So it took a little longer than expected, but it all turned out fine.

The most exciting part was dry-hopping the beer. I'd never done that before. Usually you put hops in while the beer is boiling, and the longer you let them boil, the more bitter the beer will be. The hops you add later on in the boil (like during the last 5 minutes) are "finishing hops," which means that the beer will smell and taste like hops, but those finishing hops won't actually contribute much to actual bitterness. (Kind of confusing; I'm still trying to figure out the difference between hop flavor and bitterness.) But when you dry-hop your beer, you just put in more hops once the beer's been fermenting for 4 or so days, and I guess that contributes more to the hop flavor and aroma of the beer. And it being an IPA, you might as well have some of that, you know?

And today I am going to brew yet another batch. We went to the homebrew store yesterday after much deliberation. They were holding a 'teach your friend to homebrew day' event, which probably isn't much different than any other event that might be named anything else, because mostly it consists of 7 people in the back parking lot drinking and brewing all-grain beer. Jay was concerned that we'd be outcasts because we don't really know anybody, and all those people probably already know each other, but I was saying that we'll just go, look around the store, and if there's a friendly soul that starts chit-chatting, we'll go out to the parking lot and shoot the you-know-what.

So we ended up chatting with some different people, we met some nice folks, specifically an older gentleman who just retired from teaching math for 35 years. We went around and checked out all the different set-ups for all-grain brewing, which I think are specifically designed to intimidate amatuer homebrewers like me. Jay and I decided one day we'll try doing the all-grain thing... one day... But I ended up purchasing a beer kit that they put together, which is around $30 and comes with all the ingredients for a batch. I decided on a dark wheat beer that they call "Deep Winter Wheat," which should be pretty tasty, I hope.

So off I go to do some brewing. Hopefully we'll do a few more batches in the coming weeks so we can have a nice stockpile of tasty homebrew to keep us going, because as we all know, that's what keeps the Baileys going: beer. Specifically, homebrewed beer. Mmm. So tasty.

And brewing beer makes the house smell so nice. At least Jay and I think so.