Friday, January 21, 2005
I'm Jealous!
I've brewed a lot of beer since my first batch in 1997. Fifty-two batches by my count, 256 gallons of beer, wine, cider and meade. That doesn't include beer I brewed with my friend Brent in the Texa-tonka neighborhood of St. Louis Park, MN or the 3 batches we made in one night with the little brew club we tried to start at a place of employment. It doesn't include any of the homemade wine I've helped my dad with or the 6 gallons of meade I helped an old roommate make for a wedding that didn't happen. That's a lot of alcohol that's been made wherever I happened to be living at the time, in 3 different states, in 7 different residences.
At different times, particularly while living in Minnesota, I'd have more than one batch going at a time. For a pretty standard beer, you're talking about one week in the primary fermenter, one week in the secondary fermenter and two weeks in the bottle - four weeks from brewday to drinking day. So, if you brewed every two or three weeks, you constantly had new beers coming to maturity, ready to drink while you're bottling the most recent batch. Sometimes you'll do something that requires more time, meades take six to nine months, russian imperial stouts and barleywines six months to a year. No homebrewer could be asked to drink nothing but commercial beer for six months while waiting for that barleywine to come on line, so you might brew a batch or two while that beer is still in the secondary fermenter. Having two fermenters bubbling happily away in your house at the same time is a really fantastic feeling, a real feeling of accomplishment, and perhaps, just perhaps a little bit of dread knowing you're going to have to put that 10 gallons of brew into about 100 twelve ounce bottles before too long........
I wrote a blog recently about TSA's leap into the brewing world. I wrote about how brewing can consume a person, converting them into a pseudo-religious beer-vanglist. I helped Andy with his first batch of brew just after he moved into his new place a couple of weeks ago. It's a barleywine that he plans to drink on new year's eve this coming year. Enjoying Belgian brewing traditions more than I, he started a Chamay style about a week later. This week he asked if he could borrow some of my brewing equipment. You see, he wanted to start the nut brown ale. After a night of brewing, drinking and music, I'm proud to report that Andy, less than a month into homebrewing as a hobby, has accomplished something I never have. He has three batches of beer brewing in his house at the same time. I've only seen this done once before, and that was with 5 people all pitching in.
If I were truely spitefully jealous, I wouldn't allow him to use any of my bottles at the appropriate time, but he's a brewer and we all have to stick together. Plus I'm going to want his help when I build that wort chiller that he so ingeniously put together after a trip to Lowe's.
Give a man a beer and he'll waste an hour
Teach a man to brew and he'll waste a lifetime
BOJ
At different times, particularly while living in Minnesota, I'd have more than one batch going at a time. For a pretty standard beer, you're talking about one week in the primary fermenter, one week in the secondary fermenter and two weeks in the bottle - four weeks from brewday to drinking day. So, if you brewed every two or three weeks, you constantly had new beers coming to maturity, ready to drink while you're bottling the most recent batch. Sometimes you'll do something that requires more time, meades take six to nine months, russian imperial stouts and barleywines six months to a year. No homebrewer could be asked to drink nothing but commercial beer for six months while waiting for that barleywine to come on line, so you might brew a batch or two while that beer is still in the secondary fermenter. Having two fermenters bubbling happily away in your house at the same time is a really fantastic feeling, a real feeling of accomplishment, and perhaps, just perhaps a little bit of dread knowing you're going to have to put that 10 gallons of brew into about 100 twelve ounce bottles before too long........
I wrote a blog recently about TSA's leap into the brewing world. I wrote about how brewing can consume a person, converting them into a pseudo-religious beer-vanglist. I helped Andy with his first batch of brew just after he moved into his new place a couple of weeks ago. It's a barleywine that he plans to drink on new year's eve this coming year. Enjoying Belgian brewing traditions more than I, he started a Chamay style about a week later. This week he asked if he could borrow some of my brewing equipment. You see, he wanted to start the nut brown ale. After a night of brewing, drinking and music, I'm proud to report that Andy, less than a month into homebrewing as a hobby, has accomplished something I never have. He has three batches of beer brewing in his house at the same time. I've only seen this done once before, and that was with 5 people all pitching in.
If I were truely spitefully jealous, I wouldn't allow him to use any of my bottles at the appropriate time, but he's a brewer and we all have to stick together. Plus I'm going to want his help when I build that wort chiller that he so ingeniously put together after a trip to Lowe's.
Give a man a beer and he'll waste an hour
Teach a man to brew and he'll waste a lifetime
BOJ
# posted by Blind Orange Julius @ 10:23 PM 
