The Gruppster's Brew

A Guide on Creating an Enjoyable Beer that Defines Your Style

Some people might say that alcoholism and science can never coexist. Homebrewing not only disproves this idea, but it shows how they may enhance one another to create a treasure unlike any other. Like any practice, brewing becomes easier and produces a better beer with each trial. Now if you read this guide and your first brew doesn’t reach the standards that you were expecting, you just need to remember the words of Billy Carter, our 39^th President’s brother. “There is no such thing as a bad beer. It’s that some taste better than others.”

Engineering Your Beer

Step one in tasting your delicious creation is determining what type of beer you would like. Your first decision is whether to brew an ale or a lager. Now there are many different variations of these two categories such as bocks, IPAs, stouts, and barley wines. There are much too many to define and describe without writing a novel for you. The idea is to pick a style you want to try out and research the specifics of your choice. Ales are a great place to begin, as they have been the drink getting out ancestors hammered(intoxicated) for centuries into the past. Lagers on the other hand are a much younger species of beers and thus we have less experience with them.

Once you have made your initial decision, the real fun of the creation process begins. Now we can decide upon the many looks and tastes that will come to formulate your wort and, in turn, your beer. Wort is what we like to call our liquid before the fermentation process, when all of the human effort has been completed.  I will go into more detail about how this gets turned to beer a later on.

Choosing your malts and hops will come to define the taste of your beer throughout the creation process. Certain malts will develop into sweeter flavors than others. The right choice is essential in attempting to develop a balanced brew. Like many other types of pairings, opposites attract. For this reason, you can choose an especially strong set of hops to add.  A hoppy beer is how you might describe a beer with earthy, herbal, spicy, or even citrus-like flavors and aromas. The hops are also what give the beer its bitter taste. This bitterness will eventually be measured in what has come to be known as International Bittering Units (IBUs). “An American Light Lager may have 5 to 8 IBUs, while an Imperial India Pale Ale (IPA) may have 100 or more IBUs” (Nachel 1). Along with bitterness, the color and gravity of the beer can make a huge impact on its overall enjoyment by a seasoned beer snob.

Color begins with the grains you choose to make the beer. “All beers have color, whether it’s light, dark, or somewhere in between… Light-colored grain results in a pale-colored beer; conversely, darker-roaster grains produce darker beers” (Nachel 1). Gravity on the other hand comes from the level of maltose dissolved in your wort.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-basic-styles-of-beer.html

Alter the Process, Define the Taste

So how do we begin the process of brewing our well thought creation? The process is much more detailed than any one person can describe. For this reason, I will include a link to a YouTube video created by WNCBikeRider that can describe the steps better than I can. The man may seem a bit dry in his tutorial, but the dryness only added to the humor in my opinion.

How to Brew Beer at Home: Start to Finish. Tips & Tricks. For the Beginner of Expert

WNCBikeRider

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oobHoJYRezw

John Palmer describes the process in 5 summarizing steps.

“1. Malted barley is soaked in how water to release the malt sugars.

2. The malt sugar solution is boiled with Hops for seasoning.

3. The solution is cooled and yeast is added to begin fermentation.

4. The yeast ferments the sugars, releasing the CO₂ and ethyl alcohol.

5. When the main fermentation is complete, the beer is bottled with a little bit of added sugar to provide the carbonation (Palmer).” This is where we realize that yeast infections aren’t always a bad thing.

So you begin with a large (preferably 5 or more gallons) pot of boiling water in which you place the grains, inside of a bag, into the water to diffuse like a tea bag. When the water is at a boil and the grains have seeped into the water, you should add the packets of malt that you have selected. After some time of the malt adding to your mixture, you need to add a few additions of hops at particular intervals. The choices you have made at the start come in to play here and will show their colors in the final product. The timing that you add the yeast can make an enormous difference to your beer. I also told a small white lie when I was telling you when to decide whether the brew should be an ale or lager. Which type of yeast you decide to use is what determines the result. A top-fermenting yeast will float on top of your beer during fermentation and will produce an ale.  On the other hand you may decide to create a lager. This is dome by using a bottom-fermenting yeast, in which “the yeasts sink to the bottom of the beer during fermentation” (Nachel 2). This is when you really get to decide which type of beer you will have, but of course you must order and have ready the yeasts beforehand. 

Unleashing Your Inner Beer Snob

Learning how to properly taste a beer and appreciating one for what it is will come soon. Unfortunately for my wonderful readers, these ideals will come with Part 2 of my discussion on the proper creation and enjoyment of a beer.

(Works Cited will be added within the finalization)

Does the Man Shape the Farm, Or the Farm Shape the Man?

I have always felt a special connection with nature, one that is shared with very few of my peers. On an average day, I can find happiness simply by walking outside and lying in the grass with the air of any season filling my nose. Would I be able to start a farm and live like Kurt Timmermeister for the rest of my life? Perhaps. I never believed in the idea of performing work for money and in turn spending said money on my needs or wants. I’ve often considered attempting to find the ideal location in nature where I could live with the animals to hunt and gather. Nothing seems to be 100% free of some form of governmental control or from some incredibly dangerous animals, so I haven't found my location to live quite yet. Now, this may seem like a wild style of life and you would be absolutely correct to think so. The very idea of abandoning society and the ones you love in order to live as a hermit in the danger of the woods is insane.

Kurt’s life seems no more and no less wild in some respects. The actions he took could be considered equally risky than living as a hunter/gatherer. For the majority of his days he was alone as well. With a farm, he risked more than just his wellbeing though. If he failed in his venture, he would lose everything. After giving up his business in the city and placing all of his faith in the farm, he relied on the yield of his crops and the stock of his animals to survive. In the life of a nomad, the difference is that one gives up everything to be closer to nature and experience the ancestral ways from long before in our history. The more I discuss the contrasting ideas, the more I realize how confusing they must sound. Perhaps I have seen too much about the simplicity of nature. I love the order that exists within the chaos and I feel that I connect with Kurt in this way.  He would see the beauty in the smallest things about the actions of bees and recognize how orderly and structured they actually are. The bees would spent all of their days to make honey to support their hive and of course their beloved queen.  They of course would use the most efficient shapes for their body, the hexagon, to store their hard work. This drew me in heavily as it enhanced the idea of every species having a particular order to personalize itself.

We can see this most vividly in the pages where Kurt describes the regulations and the process of selling your produce at a Farmer’s Market. Like bees, we as humans have a particular order. Everyone pitches in and does their part, but the human species just has a much larger number of specialized jobs to perform. With all of the personalization factors I saw though, the most interesting choices were the ones that our Farmer made to his Farm. I was always wondering if he really made all of his decisions himself though. He became repulsed by his own restaurant's food when he learned how food was prepared for masses of people. After he discovers the fruit trees he owned under the blackberry bushes, he plants more trees to form an orchard as a worthwhile investment for his retirement. I myself love to reflect on the events that occur in my own life and follow the path that will cause me to act the way I will, both in the present and future. Considering your path, you may choose whether to remain on the path you are on or to alter your course. With all of the similarities in views, I am excited to see what the remainder of this book has to offer. See you all at the end of “The Table.”