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In many father-daughter relationships, it seems like there’s always trouble brewing.
The lucky few brew with no trouble at all.
For several years now, my father and I have spent Friday nights brewing beer together. What we’re going to brew – whether it’s a stout or chilled bock served with a fat Spanish olive – is much discussed before the appointed night.
Mom deserves much credit for doing something subtle – as mothers often do – to make sure Dad and his oldest girl spend quality time together. Buying him that home-brew kit for Christmas, she probably was thinking about the time he and me built a hurricane-in-a-box, taking second place in a middle school science fair. She sagely got him started with a simple, small beer-making kit. He produced a 21/2-gallon batch of India pale ale, and his interest was piqued.
Inevitably, Dad had to upgrade, buying a 5-gallon carboy and improved bottling equipment. But increased capacity meant more hands were needed. And wouldn’t you know that his daughter, who already had a strong appreciation of beer, was eager to help out. Suddenly – in what must have seemed like a pop and a fizz – buckets, tubes and the distinctive smell of malts and hops regularly filled Mom’s kitchen at week’s end. This winter pastime stretched into summer – the perfect time for wheat beer served with a fat wedge of lemon and fresh-picked raspberries.
Brewing beer can be surprisingly simple or the stuff of serious science projects. But unlike the science fair, the creators get to be the judges.
Our early ales were made by combining a can of malt syrup with some brewer’s sugar in a bucket or a carboy. Water was added and a packet of yeast was sprinkled on top. Dad measured the wort – the mixture before it’s fermented – and then laughed at those who might mistake the word for wart (it’s pronounced wert). Measuring the wort before and after fermentation enables the brewer to gauge the alcohol content.
After a week – or whenever the busy brewers remembered the batch’s existence – more sugar was added for carbonation. Bottles were washed and finally filled with beer without too many spills and sticky spots on the kitchen floor.
Another week later, usually a day or so before the prescribed time was up, the ale was uncapped and its makers listened breathlessly in hopes of hearing sounds of carbonation.
Occasionally the beer wasn’t too flat at that early stage.
As father and daughter delved deeper into their brewing bible, “The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing” kits gave way to recipes, new formulas and outright experimentation.
Various dried spray malts – amber, light, dark and-or hopped – replaced the bulk of the brewer’s sugar as careful study found that these malts would yield a richer beer. Boil times were extended. Yeasts were prepped.
Research even revealed that there was a name appropriate for those who sought the sharp, slight bitterness of an India pale ale: “hopheads.”
So into the brew, this pair of hopheads threw various pellets at various times.
As extolled in “Joy of Home Brewing,” the fun of brewing beer is being able to improvise. As author Charlie Papazian attests, it’s just about impossible to poison yourself making beer, providing you follow rudimentary sanitation practices. And if you’re still anxious about the process, he makes a timeless, brilliant suggestion: “Relax. Have a home-brew.”
As daughter and Dad had a few of their Toad Spit Stouts or Long Dark Ales, they concluded some of their experiments were great successes. Their so-called Independent Ale, produced by adding hopped spray malt, crushed crystal malt and two types of hops to a can of export ale malt extract, was celebrated and shared.
Too much relaxing and too many home-brews another night, however, may have spurred the bad idea of adding hop pellets directly into the fermenter bucket after we had forgotten to add them during the actual cooking process. The end product gave new meaning to the term “bitter beer face,” even for a hophead.
The forgetfulness – and bad beer -prompted Dad to suggest the purchase of a brewing notebook. I am charged with duly noting, in my plain, easy-to-read print, when the hops were added and what day the brewing actually took place.
The notebook also was a good place to record – strictly for posterity – which home-brews were consumed during the creation of the next.
Sometimes that record helps explain some of our more interesting brewing decisions.
Shopping for a notebook also helped solve another problem. In the stationery aisle, the younger brewer happened upon little stringed price tags. The type of ale and date bottled could be recorded on the tags, which loop easily around the necks of filled bottles and don’t have to be scraped off like sticker-type labels.
Like the hurricane-in-a-box, beer making brings out our respective talents. He focuses on the nuts and bolts while his daughter deals with the details. He may have only won second place at the science fair, but Dad is definitely a blue-ribbon brewer – and father, too.
Judy Long is a BDN copy editor.
What you need to brew
It costs about $100 to set up a basic beer-making operation. Efficient brewers will make up that initial outlay since it costs less to brew good beer than to buy it. The Store Ampersand in Orono, the Natural Living Center in Bangor and The Hop Shop in Gray are among the stores that carry brewing supplies, and Web sites such as homebrewersupply.com also offer supplies and helpful advice.
. True Brew Gold Kit, available online or for $74.99 at the Natural Living Center, includes a 6-gallon carboy, bottling bucket, siphoning and filling tubes, fermentation lock and rubber stopper, hydrometer and bottle capper. Items also can be purchased separately.
. Three- or 4-gallon cooking pot, preferably stainless steel, for cooking wort.
. A nonabsorbent spoon for cooking wort.
. Bottle washer and, depending on your faucet, a fitting that enables it to be screwed onto your faucet.
. Bottles with swing tops, such as Grolsch bottles, or regular bottles and bottle caps.
. Funnel, for pouring wort into fermenter.
. Thermometer.
. Cheesecloth, to hold grains during the boiling process.
Brewing ingredients
. Cans of malt extract range from about $10.49 to $12.99. A typical can makes 5 or 6 gallons of beer and includes a packet of yeast.
. Dextrose, which is 79 cents a pound at the Natural Living Center, often is added to malt extract recipes and used during bottling for carbonation.
. Dried spray malt, used as a primary beer ingredient in some recipes or added to canned extract to make stronger and richer beers, is about $2.99 a pound.
. Hop pellets, about 99 cents an ounce.
. Powdered yeasts range from about 79 cents to $2.99 a packet.
. Other malts, such a crystal malt and black patent malt, can be purchased for as little as $1 a pound.
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