Cocktail Confessions

My buddy gave me a sweet present a few weeks back: The Sam Adams Harvest Collection Variety pack.  It really surprised me as he’s not much of a drinker, at least not anymore, and he offered up this 12 pack gem unsolicited, so my hat’s off to him.

In addition to their Boston Lager, seasonal Harvest Pumpkin & Octoberfest, and Black Lager, they’ve included a new brew introduced this year (2011): Bonfire Rauchbier.

It really has a surprising ‘smokey’ taste to it that totally caught me offgaurd.  However, that being said, I guess I could have figured that out or at the very least got a hint by looking at the label emblazened with a roaring fire.  You know how certain tastes remind you of certain smells or vice-versa?  Memories are triggered by flavors or scents?  That’s exactly what happened to me.  Upon my first taste on my pallete, I was instantly transported to a night time beach party with an actual ‘bonfire’ in tow.  You can actually taste a mild smoke flavor that reminds me of a campfire.

According to the Sam Adam website, the history of brewing this type of beer that imparts these characteristics is as such: Prior to the practice of kiln drying, barley was dried either by sunlight or over a flame.  When fire dried, the grains were suspended high enough for the heat and smoke to pass through without burning the malt.  As a result, this imparted smoky characteristics to the malt.

Also from the website are a few more particulars:

Flavor: Rich malt flavors of toffee and caramel, balanced with a smokiness that is ever present but not over powering.

Color: Dark amber, 39 SRM

Original Gravity: 15.57

Alcohol by Vol/Wt: 5.7%ABV – 4.5% ABW

Calories/12 oz.: 213

IBUs: 19

Malt Varieties: Two-row Harrington, Special B, Caramel 60, and Weyermann Smoked Malt 

Hop Variety: Spalt Spalter Noble Hops

Yeast Strain: Samuel Adams lager yeast

Availability: Seasonal (Aug. – Oct.) in the Harvest Collection Variety Pack

First Brewed: 2011

213 Calories! Yikes!  A good thing this is seasonal.  There’s just enough to whet your interest and make it a treat, especially delicious on the cooling fall evenings.  This will be one I look forward to again in another year.  Too bad it only comes in the variety pack, ’cause I’d for sure pick a sixer up for a winter BBQ.  I’d pair this up with a good lake trout dish, or grilled pork.

Making Jeff Foxworthy proud.

Okay,  that title isn’t really fair, but it’s not that far off either.

Jeremiah Weed currently makes a small selection of spirits and malt berverages.  Here, I am refering only to the malt beverage, Roadhouse Tea.

My wife bought me a six pack of this stuff after I expressed some interest in it after Adam Corolla has been pimping it on his podcast for the last few months ad-nauseum.  I originally tried the vodka laced Sweet Tea of theirs thinking it may be a nice substitute for the Seagram’s brand of Sweet Tea Vodka.  Well, I’ll tell you right now, I think the Seagrams version is a bit better.  I found the Jeremiah Weed a bit too sweet for my liking.  I mean, I wouldn’t pour it out, but given the choice of Sweet Tea vodka’s in the future, it wouldn’t be my first choice.

Anyway, back to the canned malt beverage variety (pictured, can on far right).  It is 5.8% and comes in these 1 pint, 7.5 oz cans they label “premium”.  I think the only thing “premium’ about this is the artwork that goes into the cans…you have to admit, they are a bit interesting looking and I’d wager standout a bit more while staring back at you from their refrigerated cases at Wal-Mart.

Now I personally think it’s a gimmick, and I’ll admit they got me to try it based on some marketing level, but it’s not what I was expectinga nd am really surprised (or am I?) how popular these are becoming in certain markets.  Maybe the Spiked Cola or Lightning Lemonade does in fact taste better, but knowing it’s based on a ‘malt beverage’ , don’t expect it. 

Actually I found this to taste: 1) Thicker (if that’s even a taste) than I expected, 2) “syrup-ey”, 3) and has a tin can after-taste.  No joke on that last one.  I had a few of them, and with each swig, I thought I could taste metal in the end.  The first thing I’d like to suggest to them is to line the can, ala Keystone beer did as a gimmick in the early 90′s and maybe that would help eliminate that metallic bite.

Cokctail in a Can. 80's hoopla for piss.

Overall it really reminded me of those God awful Club Mixers in a can that used to be the rage in the 80′s.  We all watched too much Miami Vice and wanted to pretend we were all as swanky as Crocket. 

As a matter of fact, a good friend of mine (whose ironically in law enforcement these days) used to buy these for me occassionally when we were under age and in High School (sorry mom).  There was a small liquor store in the area, and I have no idea what those guys behind the counter were thinking (they probably didn”t or could care less), but they’d sell my friend wine collers, beer, and booze with his shitty fake I.D. when we were all but 17 and 18 years of age.  Back then I tried the Club “Long Island Ice Tea”….and it tasted like crap out of a can…but hell, we were 18 years old and I wasn’t about to toss that down the drain no matter how disgusting they were.

So when I drink the Jeremiah Weed canned Sweet Tea, it reminds me of sneaking crap back in 1988.  Those tasted like tin as well.

I live this drink to the lower demographics….yeah, you know what I’m talking about.

A buddy of mine just sent this to me.  It’s a link for a huge BBQ festival held at the Sports Park in Fountain Valley, CA come August 18th thru the 21st this year.  I haven’t checked it out myself, but I’m surely interested.

You can buy tickets early and there will be 6 award winning BBQ teams present.

From the webpage:

Welcome to the official website of The Orange County BBQ Bonanza to be held August 18-21, 2011, at the Fountain Valley Sports Park in Fountain Valley, California. You won’t want to miss this event!

The West’s Best BBQ All-in-One Outdoor Family Festival!

Thursday, August 18th — 5 PM – 10 PM
Friday, August 19th — 11 AM – 11 PM
Saturday, August 20th — 11 AM – 11 PM
Sunday, August 21st — 11 AM – 9 PM

FREE Souvenir E-Picture!

The Orange County BBQ Bonanza is the largest four day BBQ Extravaganza featuring the WORLD’S BEST BBQ Ribs, Pulled Pork, Tri-tip, Sausages, Chicken and more. The competition is fierce and the flavors rich as National Award Winning Rib Cookers of America and local grillers produce the best that their secret recipes have to offer.

Come Have a Toe-tappin, BBQ-eatin’ Good Time!

We combine local and nationally known bands, the BEST BBQ IN TOWN, giant food court (chinese, mexican, local eateries and american foods — something for everyone), children’s area (including carnival rides, bounces, magicians, and storytellers) and stage, dance floor, arts and crafts, cantinas (serving water, beer, wine, liquor drinks — “The Screaming Cowboy” and Margaritas), to create the largest BBQ Extravaganza, right here in Southern California.

I can’t take credit for this article, though I’d be more than happy to participate in the research if my fellow country men called for it.  I’m actually ‘borrowing’ this from FoxNews online, more specifically from author Richard Goldmsith, so if anyone has a problem with these choices, go write him.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s what Mr. Goldsmith has to say:

In addition to being an occasion to recognize the sacrifice made by so many to keep America enjoying the liberty its known for, Memorial Day also serves as the unofficial beginning of summer. That means one thing – there’s going to be a whole lot of grilling going on this weekend.

Backyard barbecues and beer are a match made in heaven, and it’s rare to find a bag of charcoal that doesn’t have a cooler full of frosty beer sitting alongside it just waiting for friends and family to arrive and crack open a few bottles and cans. The trick for a good host is to make sure you’ve got the right stuff in there, and the right stuff is completely dependent on what’s tossed on the grill.

Typically, traditional American grub – burgers, hot dogs, brats, steak, and even ribs coated in sticky sweet barbecue sauce – calls for lighter beers like lagers and wheat beers. But if you start breaking out some of the more intense international flavors that have hit the flames more often in recent summers, the bulgogis, carne asadas and other heavily spiced cuts of meat, then beers that can bite back make an appearance. IPAs, porters and even heartily-hopped ales are tailor made to cut the spice and clear the palate for the next tantalizing bite. But the best beers to drop in the cooler straddle a fine line between these categories, switch-hitting with the same skill as Mickey Mantle and making every bite better, no matter what it may consist of.

Here are a few that manage to hit it out of the park every time.

North Coast Brewing Co. Red Seal Ale – An American Amber Ale brewed in California, Red Seal breaks out subtly sweet caramel flavors nicely balanced by earthy aromas and a hefty, though not too soda-like dose of carbonation. It pours a gorgeous deep amber red, and drinking it straight from the bottle is all sorts of satisfying, concentrating the citrus and bitter hops that come through on each swallow. The clean flavors pair up just fine with a hot dog or three, but there’s enough body to balance out some fairly significant heat. Just don’t break out the habaneros. That sort of fire will turn most beers, including this one, into a unique form of penance.

Oskar Blues Gubna – Conveniently packaged in a can for easy access, not to mention providing protection for the beer against the sun’s rays and premature skunking, Gubna is an Imperial IPA, a style known for some serious hop-borne bitterness, and Gubna is no exception. Brewed in the craft beer wonderland known as Colorado, Oskar Blues imparted some intense hops flavor into this can. But with surprisingly gentle carbonation and a finish that seems almost oak-aged, featuring a light vanilla note, Gubna is surprisingly easy drinking. It’s a heavy beer, but some spice and citrus do a nice job of breaking it up and balancing out what is an extremely complex brew. It stands up to the heaviest spice you can throw at it and hits back with a punch of its own: a 10 percent alcohol content. A few of these and even the most charred hunk of mystery meat will taste absolutely amazing.

Two Brothers Dog Days Dortmunder Style Lager – The closest beer in the lineup to a traditional summer thirst quencher, Dog Days is Two Brothers’ summer seasonal and combines a light golden body with satisfying yeast and wheat and just enough bitterness stemming from the addition of noble hops to make the mix interesting. It’s straight-up pure unadulterated beer in the grand German tradition. That doesn’t happen nearly often enough with American craft brews. It’s refreshing, with a touch of orange sweetness that sneaks up on you similar to the way a six pack of this stuff will disappear like a ninja without anyone noticing.

Victory Sunrise Weissbier – A well-executed Bavarian wheat beer, Victory replaces a heft dose of malted barley with malted wheat, resulting in a tasty summer concoction with heavy banana and clove flavors. It’s an unfiltered beer, so it pours cloudy and the texture can be a bit off-putting if it’s not a familiar style. But the tangy fruit and clean lemony citrus, offset with just a touch of spicy pepper, are a spectacular counterpoint for heavily spiced sausages and marinated skirt steak. Despite this, it still pairs up nicely with a simple burger or drinks nicely on its own. It has a unique fizzy texture to the carbonation as well, likely from the particulates still floating around in the bottle. It’s the most refreshing beer of the bunch by far but the banana notes can be a bit polarizing, as can the lack of filtering, so it’s wise to keep a few backup bottles handy for those who aren’t into it – leaving that much more for you as you man the flames at the grill.

Jon bottling beer

In my post published April 14, Brew Bakers (Part I) , I was able to share with you the experience of my friends and I actually brewing our respective beers.  It was a few weeks later that we made a reservation (April 2nd) to go back and now bottle our beer.

Unfortunately, due to unforseen personal reasons, Brian couldn’t make it that day but our mutual friend Jon would be able to step in for him and pick up the slack.

Brew Bakers happened to be much busier this particular day as they were hosting a children’s ‘root beer’ making birthday party along with pizza’s and a lot of anxious kids.  I can’t blame them for their excitement.  How many kids get to brag that they made their very own soda pop and then bottle it at a brewery and have artisan pizza to boot?  I know I would have enjoyed this as a kid myself.

There also seemed to be a large number of tasting patrons this day as well.  That is, not really making any beer, but just came in to sample various bottled creations up at the bar.  Something I’d also do more often if I lived a bit closer myself.

We had an intial start time of 2pm, but because of some paperwork snafus, the birthday party, and overall general bee hive of activity that day, we really didn’t get to start before 2:30 and some change.  So what did we do as we patiently waited?  Have some more samples of course!

Finally when a bottling station opened up, Sam was up first.  Seeing that he only had a 1/2 order to begin with and already a 1/2 hour behind schedule, we all chipped in to label his bottles. 

The bottling process itself is a bit mechancial and repetitive.  You place two (2) 22oz bottles in an upright stainless steel case with a plexi-glass front.  Once the front slides down, using a pnuematic control you begin to fill your bottles first with CO2 for a count of 5-Mississippi.  Then you flip the switch in the other direction to begin pumping your brew from your plastic fermenation keg into the actual bottle, about half way up the neck.  Once filled, we remove the bottles and then using a hand cranked capping device, we place the virgin zinc bottle caps on top and crimp in place.  Voila!  Rinse and repeat until all your bottles are done.

When the second bottling station opened, I began to ‘birth’ my 72 bottles, two at a time.  I didn’t have my labels with me this day as I opted to make mine at home with the artistic help of my friend Joe.  Once Sam was done with his 1/2 order, Jon was able to start on Brian’s beer.  I’m sure Sam volunteered to go first because this allowed him to get another ‘mac & cheese’ sandwich like we had before, (although it wasn’t as big as last months offering to his chagrin).

Towards the end of Jon’s and my bottling endeavors, we started to come up just a tad bit short in a full 72 bottles each.  I barely managed to squeak by….my last two bottles only filled about 2/3rds of the way up.  However, Brian’s lot came up short a whole 6 bottles.  The nice thing about Brew Bakers is that they guarantee a complete experience, and seeing that we paid for a full batch, they made good on their promise and allowed Jon to hit the fridge and pick any 6 bottles he wanted to complete the order.  So in a way Brian may be the luckiest of the bunch…he ended up with 66 of his own bottled brew and 6 various other home made beers that he could sample on his own.

We also learned that they have discounted brewing services on Thursday’s, so next time around I’ll be sure to book an appointment for a Thursday afternoon….allowing me to leave work early for a day and make some brew at a fration of the price.

Now as far as labeling goes, I had my friend Joe Tingle use his Photshop skills and come up with a label under my direction and our joint creativity.  He came up with the words “He-brew” one evening as we joked around and an image of Charelton Heston as Moses from the classic movie ‘The Ten Commandments’ came to my mind…hands outstretched before the Red Sea.  In each hand a 40oz beer.  I sketched out the design and left it up to Joe to come up with a prototype mock up.  His first pass at the label showed a lot of promise and I knew we were on the right track.  With a few additional suggestions from me, some changes to color, font size, and effects, the label was born.  When Joe emailed me the final .JPG file, I was ecstatic to go to our local office supply store and buy the appropriate Avery labels for my color ink-jet printer.  After an initial few test prints of diffrent qualities and sizing, we finally had our finished labels:

In the coming weeks, we plan on hosting a joint BBQ at my house where we’ll sample each others beers along with various sausages, hot wings, and other goodies.

Seems like this entry has been at least a month, if not more in the making.

At the beginning of this year, I outlined a ‘bucket-list’ of things I wanted to accomplish this year, and I started out with a bang the first two months.  I have lost close to 25lbs already, made at least 10lbs of two sausage varietals from scratch, built the basic framework for a 3.5′ x 6.5′ N-scale benchwork in my spare bedroom, and even attempted to get my friends together to rent a 31ft RV to go camping (that failed miserably, but not because I didn’t try).

Another item on my list this year was to brew a fresh batch of beer.  Well, I finally made the appointment back for March 12th of this year up at Brewbakersof Huntington Beach.  If you’ll recall, I mentioned that back in the spring of 2005 I made a large batch of ‘Frankie Beer’ (sure, it’s not the most creative of a names….it was named after my Mini-Schnauzer) and it was a hit with my neighbors, friends, and family for the 4th of July weekend back then.

Well here I am, almost six years later and I managed to get my good friends Brian and Sam to join me this time around for the experience.  We had a great time together; we tasted some phenomenal beers whilst brewing our own, had some delicious beer bread to take home from the used mash of our efforts, had a gut-busting grilled-macaroni & cheese sandwich, and of course just had a great time hanging out for the afternoon.

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It’s a tad bit more expensive than I remembered, but isn’t everything 6 years later?  Then again, Brewbakers has everything self-contained, meaning no large mess or epic scale clean up at my house at the end of the day, and all the tasting of fabulous brewed beer our fabulous hosts could pour down our gullets.  I swear, I think we were starting on a decent buzz even before we picked up our first bowl of grain!

Sam made a Chocolate Stout, Brian – a whisky inspired ale, and yours truly attempted a Honey Amber Ale.  By far, Sam’s recipe and efforts were the most complex….he had at least 6 pounds of various grains, chocolate, hops and more for his creation whereas mine was probably the simplest (although I added a tad bit more honey and cut back slightly on the hops to alter the flavor towards the sweeter side of things).  Brian and I each made an equivalent of close to a keg’s worth (72 x 22oz bottles), whereas Sam made 1/2 a batch (36 x 22oz).

It’s a really fun and educational process to boot, (so kids, tell your mom you wanna make beer..it’ll advance your knowledge in the history and science!).  Once you pick out a recipe that sounds good to you…many mimic the taste of many popular craft beers, or you can bring your own in as well, you’re given a kettle station, stainless steel bowls, measuring devices and scales and off you go.

Once you pick your toasted grains and measure them all out, you’ll need to mill them to help break them apart and remove some of the chaff.  Then into the kettle of boiling water where you’ll steep it every so often for the next 1/2 hour or so.  Towards the end of the rolling boil time limit, that’s where you’ll add you liquid ingredients such as honey, adjunct, molasses, etc. and give it a thorough stirring with large paddles.  Next, we hit the fridge unit and dig out our fresh hops to add and let sit a bit longer.

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Soon enough our respective brews are pumped out of their brass kettles into a plastic lined barrel where we then add our last, yet most vital ingredient: live active yeast cultures.  Once our yeast is added in to start the fermentation process, our plastic barrels are sealed up and stored away in a temperature controlled room where they’ll sit for 3-4 weeks before we come back to bottle.

From start to finish the process takes just around two hours.  Brewbakers has this down to an efficient science as they need to clean up the kettles, counters, etc., and get ready for the next round of scheduled appointments.  That being said, we were there closer to 3.5 hours, spending the first 30 minutes or so sampling various beers already on draft.  And while we were brewing and steeping our grains, we had one of the best grilled sandwiches ever.  The gooey mac-n-cheese on grilled beer bread was just divine.  All three of us had it and walked away more than satisfied.  If you’re still hungry, Brewbakers also makes their very own soft pretzels and rolled out pizza.

One of the best things about Brewbakers is its atmosphere.  Everyone is there for a good time, usually creating beers for birthday parties, anniversaries, special events, etc.  They also let kids come in and make root beer, and next door, if you like wine, there is a separate establishment that will guide you through making your own wine.  The staff at Brewbakers are fun, energetic, and friendly.  But still the best part to me is perusing the homemade labels.  See, since this is your beer, you also get to flex your creative muscles and design your own labels.  For a slightly extra charge Brewbakers will print out a few sheet for you, provided you send them a digital .jpg file, but I’m no stranger to this.  I have a color ink-jet at home, and just need to buy the appropriate Avery labels and make my own. 

Anyway, the walls are littered with examples and past pride and a real treat to look at.  Some are tame, some a bit more risque, most are funny or a clever play on words.  Some look like they were done in 10 minutes while others look like real pieces of art, but they all have a certain amount of charm in their own right and you cannot get bored discovering all these little slices of peoples lives captured in these micro-events of a 3″ x 4″ label.

Next…returning in 3 weeks for bottling!!

Two Australian companies claim to have developed the very first space beer, news.com.au reported Tuesday. Perhaps we are one step closer to Romulan Ale after all.

Saber Astronautics Australia has teamed up with the Four Pines Brewing Company to develop the very first beer that can be consumed safely in space in preparation for the supposed space tourism industry that is expected to start very soon. While perhaps a novel idea, I can’t help think this is slightly premature and more of a marketing gimmick than anything else.

Jaron Mitchell, founder of Four Pines, said the creation of space beer was an event for the history books.

“Wherever humans have journeyed to throughout history in the last few thousand years, we first worry about water, food, shelter and clothing,” he told Aussie news website news.com.au. “In many cases beer is the next consideration soon after the above four.”

“This is a modern day voyage, similar to the voyage and creation of the ‘pale ale as prepared for India’ in the 1800s, or what is now referred to as the India Pale Ale.

The brew gets its name “Vostok” after the first manned spaceflight back in 1961.

Apparently, according to the article, human biology changes in zero gravity conditions. The tongue swells, the senses dull — altering the way food and drink tastes.

“We also wanted to make the beer good to drink on earth as well. So the idea is you can drink this beer anywhere in the universe,” said Dr Jason Held, director of Saber Astronautics Australia.

Saber picked a high-flavored beer as a baseline recipe to ensure that space travelers could enjoy the full flavor of the smoky Irish-style stout, no matter how long the flight duration.   Too bad they didn’t spend as much time or effort on the logo (looks pretty lame if you ask me…but chances are, you aren’t).

Four Pines Brewing Company is a microbrewery, bar and restaurant based in Manly, Sydney.

Yeah, it’s a little late in the making, but today’s a great opportunity for an update and catch up on recent activities due to the rainy weather.

I’ll be working on a new entry dedicated to my sausage making shortly (maybe even later today).  I just off-loaded some pictures from my Droid phone that I took while in the kitchen while making them, and they turned out pretty good for not having touched a meat grinder in over 5 years.

Work has been slow….mind numbingly slow…so slow in fact, I’m fantasizing about other careers.  The good news is (and don’t tell my boss), it’s allowed me to start reading in earnest again and I’ve been able to finish a true crime book in about two weeks, and I started a new science fiction novel two days ago and I’ve already been able to get through the first 100 pages…just at work (albeit most of it has been during lunch breaks).  I’m getting more and more interested in buying an Android tablet (when the price is reasonable…they are just too expensive right now for a 10″ tablet) and start carrying digital books around, much like a Kindle.

My diet is still plugging along, although this past weekend I cheated a bit more than I would have liked to have and it affected my Sunday weigh-in for sure.  Saturday I spent the afternoon with a few friends ‘beering’ at a local brewery, Cismontane, and had a few pints of some heavy handed beer.  This included a rare chili-cheese dog for lunch.  Dinner that evening consisted of having a ‘sausage’ party (Yeah, I can hear all the jokes right now).  I grilled 4 different types of sausages for my friends and neighbors and this was followed by a little Jack Daniels drinking and some Oreo cookies.  But when it was all said and done, I came in the next day at 224.8 lbs, still slightly down from the previous week.  However, earlier in the week I did have two days where I was 223.8 which had me excited, but it didn’t last. 

Speaking of beer, I’m still on track to go to Brew Bakers with my friend Brian on March 12th, about 2pm and we’ll be brewing and tasting some beer.  My friend Joe had an excellent play on words for a beer, and after massaging the idea a bit and brainstorming some visuals, he came up with an excellent mock-up picture for the label.  I liked it so much that I’m going to give him a few suggestions to tweak, and I’ll end up using it for my own.  I don’t want to reveal it hear just yet, but I am excited to debut it later…it’s pretty damn funny and a collaborative effort, but Joe for sure came up with the spark.

Finally, I also started my train benchwork layout after many months of sitting idle. 

Two weekends ago I bought most of the wood, except the actual table top as Home Depot’s arm-saw was broken (I’ll go back at a later date), and other hardware.  This past Saturday I got up and started measuring, re-measuring, and then triple-measuring before I made cuts with my miter saw and began the first stages of assembly.  I ended up with a 3.5′ x 6.5′ butt-joint assembled frame (pictured) .  That’s a pretty decent beginner size for a N-scale (1:160) train layout.  I’ve already cut the legs too, at 3.5′ tall when fully assembled.  I’ll attach those this weekend and maybe get the side bracing done, then finally back to Home Depot to get the actual top.  From there, it’s trying to find sheets of pink extruded insulation foam, and then the real fun/project begins.

We also got a new TV about a week back as the old plasma died.  Well, it’s finally mounted on the wall and had Cox Cable come out and got a new DVR (more storage and HDMI compatible).  This has allowed me to ditch some cables and finally get rid of my VCR as well, so we’ve freed up some space and got rid of about a third of the cables.  I have an idea to hide the rest of them, but that’s a project for another day.

Overall, not too shabby of a start only a month and half into the new year.  Big items left to tackle is getting involved (volunteering) at an animal shelter in the area, actually take a few days for a mini vacation, cleaning out a bit more of the house and purging stuff we don’t use anylonger (there’s been a discussion of a neighborhood garage sale in the coming weeks), and a few other smaller things (like a new podcast entry).  But so far, so good, but I still feel like I need another day in the week to catch up for everything I either want to do, or just rest because the other days seems so busy.

There are two past hobbies of mine I’d like to bring back this year: making my own sausage (upcoming post), and making my own beer.

I used to do both at regular intervals from 2001 thru about 2004, but ever since we moved to our new house around the beginning of 2005, I haven’t done either.  That’s just over five years.

I got my Mr. Beer kit as a gift from a close friend of mine, Sam, and was quite intrigued with the prospect of making my own flavorful creations.  I was imagining they’d be somehwat cheaper to produce in home than buying a twelve pack at the store,  that they’d be a bit more robust in both flavor and alcohol, and also garner myself some bragging rights along with those nice summer BBQ’s I used to have.  I mean who isn’t impressed and wants to try a home craft beer made by a friend?  Even if it isn’t the best beer in the world, you walk away thinking you just drank something very unique, something that took time and great care in handling of  ingredients instead of that commerical cheap marketed corporate swill.  It also helps that I bottle them in 16oz  grolsch bottles that are generally reserved for nice European brews.

Little did I know that it takes anywhere from 4-6 weeks for a batch of Mr. Beer to be ready to be consumed, and there is some pretty heavy duty up front effort in cleaning and sanitizing all the equipment.  It’s not hard to make per-se, but you do need to be careful not to contaminate the bottles during fermenation, or introduce anything that may disturb the yeast or purity of your concotion.  I think the hardest thing about these small kits is having patience.  It takes a few hours to mix sanitize, boil water, mix, measure, dilute, add flavoring and yeast, etc.  It’s a totally different thing after that to stare at this plastic amber keg, mocking you day in and day out for 2-3 weeks as nature takes it’s course and makes naughty..naughty with the yeast.  After the initial fermentation, you then bottle everything (and add sugar for to start the carbination process) and need to wait yet another 2-3 weeks, rotating the bottles every few days, checking its progress, all the while smacking your lips wondering how much longer this whole thing is going to take.

My personal fav - Stout

Finally that magic day comes and you can now put them in the fridge and wait a few hours for them to cool enough to enjoy.  Then you invite a few of your friends over for a BBQ and you’re beaming like a brand new father, passing out cigars in eager anticipation.  The finely rubbed steaks are coming off the grill with the right markings, the fresh potato salad is out, and your beers are being passed around for the first time.

Ahhh….that first taste is so worth it.  It’s like tasting chocolate for the first time, or looking forward to that one time a year your wife actually makes Thanskgiving Day stuffing.  But soon before you know it, like any relationship, your bliss on riding high with your whole 12 pack soon disapates in just a few short hours and you realize how much work, effort, and waiting you did, just for it all to dissapear so quickly.

Since the lots are small with this starter kit, I wanted to see if I could brew a much larger lot, but when I began to look at advancing to the next level of brewing I became concerned with the space required and investment in ‘professional’ equipment.  Even on the lower end of top grade home brewing you can expect to drop hundreds of dollars.  Then there was a question of space.  I don’t really have a spare room that can be left undisturbed and regulate temperature (a must in order to be successful).  So the next best thing I found was Brubaker’s in Huntington Beach, CA. 

Brubaker’s is a place where you can rent out a kettle and brew upwards of a pony or full keg at a time.  The nice thing is they have all the equipment, tons of beer recipes taht mimic many popular brands (or you can create your own), and when you are all done brewing for the day, they actually store it for you and call up when it’s ready to be bottled.  You can pay them to bottle it for you, or you can save a few bucks and go back and bottle yourself.  I made a keg’s worth a few years back and titled it “Frankie’s Beer” after my baby mini-schnauzer and had it ready to go for our block’s annual 4th of July party.  Needless to say it was a hit and there was some definite bragging rights and ego massaging going on.  But getting over all that, it was damn fine beer bottled in 22 oz brown glass bottles and clocked in at around 7%.  I even went as far as making my own labels picturing my dog’s face.

Is it worth it?  It depends on my mood.  Enough time has passed where the allure of making a new batch of beer makes it seem likes it’s going to be a new experience all over again.  I have a few old unused kits in my pantry, but I’m afraid the shelf life of 5 years isn’t going to help me.  I may have to start from scratch and buy a new pack (I’ll soon have a spare room to put it in as my step-daughter is moving out next week), but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.  I’m even trying to muster up some of my friends to go back to BruBaker’s for our own brewing appointment.