Suburban Brewing

Yes! Finally! I brewed my first beer on Sunday. I will have an indepth report later this week as I’m away on business today and tomorrow.

In a nutshell I have learned that it takes alot of work, skill and patience to brew. After my first brewing experience I have even more respect for all amateur brewers as well as the professionals! As Ali G would say; “Respek”

What is the best way of learning how to brew beer? What approach should a novice take? There are so many variables, options, choices and procedures it could be perceived as overwhelming. Those are some of the challenges facing someone who is just starting out. Last week I came across an interesting article on something called SMaSH Brewing posted on the Brewer’s Friend website.

SMaSH stands for “Single Malt and Single Hop” and just by reading this you can figure out it involves brewing beer with just one type of malt and one type of hop, simple enough, and that is exactly what it entails. Instead of creating complicated recipes with multiple grains and hop varieties why not start with the simplest combination. By doing a SMaSH brew you can learn how each type of malt, hop and yeast impacts the final product. Over time with a bit of experimentation I’m hoping I’ll be able to put together a unique recipe based on my taste preferences. There are thousands of home brewing recipes out there, including many clones of commercially available beers but what fun is to replicate someone else’s work if you can make something new all by yourself!

For my first brew I will be using Maris Otter with a single hop and domestic ale yeast from White Labs. I plan on varying the hops and yeasts for a long time before I start adding or changing my base malt. I have MO, 10 varieties of hops and 5 different ale yeasts, that will give me tens if not hundreds of combinations to explore. I don’t see a need to get all fancy and start mixing 6+ malts, one should be enough for now. Plus from what I’ve been reading people who switches to the SMaSH method have been producing outstanding brews. Lets see if I’m as lucky!

As mentioned in earlier post things have been coming together nicely over the last few weeks and I’m almost ready to brew my first beer (or two). I’ve put together my brewing tower last week (pictures and details coming in seperate post), all of my equipment arrived with the exception of one pot which could possibly delay my first brew day but I’ll deal with that later.

I purchased 55 pounds of Maris Otter from BYOB and bought 10 varieties of whole hops from Hops Direct. They were blowing out 2008 crop at unbelievable prices so I picked up 10 pounds of hops. Yesterday I went back to BYOB and crushed 25 pounds of MO and picked up While Labs 001 California Ale yeast.

Can you smell the hot wort yet?

As reported by the Brew Lounge there is a new homebrew shop set to open soon in the Downingtown area. Since I work near Exton this place will be just a short drive away. Nice to see a shop finally opening in this part of Chester County. I’ll post the address and web url once available, for now we know the place will be called: Artisan Homebrew.

While on the topic of homebrewing shops… I had the pleasure of visiting Brew Your Own Beer (no web site as of yet) located in Havertown which is about 5 minutes from my house in Drexel Hill. I planned on stopping over there few times but due to long work hours I could never make it before closing time. Recently I acquired two 1/2 barrel kegs (legally of course). Both of them still had some PBR in it so I needed to open each keg to get it cleaned. Both kegs have the Miller Brewing Company logos on them and are stamped with PBR July 2009 production dates. Anyhow, I had trouble opening one of the kegs as it had the “Miller Style” valve which has a release spring under the steel ball to prevent gas pressure from blowing up in your face. This valve is alot different than the standard spring type found in most kegs and it was a bitch to open. Needless to say I ended up wrecking the valve and the dipping tube while trying to take it out. Okay so what does this have to do with Brew Your Own Beer? While there I bumped into Dave, who is one of the brewers at Victory Brewing Company. Apparently he visits BYOB often to pickup hop bags and other brewing gear. I figured he’ll know how to open a keg so I asked him what is the best way of opening one that has the standard spring valve (at the time I had no idea my other keg had the Miller valve, otherwise I would asked him about it as well). Dave was nice enough to give me the scoop on how to get it open:

1. release the pressure
2. use a sharpened screwdriver and press down the indentation in the valve to release the spring
3. once the spring lifts a bit use pliers  to gently pry it away
4. remove the dipping tube
5. done!

sure enough it took me a minute to open it once I got home. I wish someone made a tool to get the Miller style valve removal easier, or I’m just going to avoid getting Miller kegs like the fire!