The Beer Borg

People brew their own beer for a variety of reasons.  Homebrewing is a fun, creative activity, and the end result is you get beer.  For serious beer aficionados, you have more control over the beer you drink, because you’re making it.  You can choose the style, adjust the flavor, experiment with the amount of bitterness in the beer, and choose the level of alcohol.  You’re making custom beer.  You can find recipes for craft beer clones that may not be distributed in your area.  I was very pleased to find a good Fat Tire clone recipe online, and it was pretty close to the real thing, which isn’t yet available in New York.  There’s also the satisfaction of seeing other peoples’ reactions when they find out you brew your own beer, and the extra added satisfaction of their reaction when they taste it.  (“You brewed this?!  WOW!  This is good!”)  Also, the community of homebrewers is just a great bunch of people.  They’re fun, they’re caring, they’re generous, and they’re educational.  And they like beer as much as you do!  But one of the reasons I brew my own beer is for my sanity and peace of mind.  I’ve discovered that homebrewing is my therapy.

There are lots of hobbies out there, with their own communities, and all of them serve the same purpose.  The dictionary defines a hobby as an activity “engaged in for relaxation.”  So building clocks, painting landscapes, gardening, etc., are things people like to do to relax.  Personally, I don’t have the patience or dexterity for building clocks, anything I paint would disappoint me, because I can’t make it look like I visualize it in my head, and I have a bad habit of killing any plant I come near, so I don’t know how relaxing these hobbies would be for me.  That’s not a knock on these activities, it just means they’re not for me.  But for any hobbyist, the point is the same; it’s something you can get lost in, and spend enjoyable hours doing, even if it’s sometimes frustrating or puzzling along the way.  Let’s face it, with jobs and families, we’re all as busy as we gotta be.  When we engage in our pastimes, we’re as busy as we wanna be.  And there’s a world of difference there.

But why homebrewing, then?  Well, it’s a little different from some other hobbies.  It creates a practical result — you can drink your beer.  This sets it apart from something like stamp collecting or astronomy.  Aside from the acquisition of a rare or beautiful stamp, or an increased knowledge and sense of wonder at the cosmos, those activities are what they are.  Maybe brewing is closer to gardening or cooking as a hobby.  They take time, preparation and planning, and they produce a result that can be enjoyed by many.  Still, much as I love a good meal, appreciate a well-landscaped flower garden, and really dig home-grown tomatoes in my salad, I like beer more.  I enjoy the whole process, from planning and researching a recipe, to the final tasting of a well-conditioned ale or lager.  Let me break that process down, and maybe you’ll understand why I consider homebrewing my therapy.

First, there’s the mental aspect of it.  One of my favorite cartoons depicts a man lying in a hammock, and his wife standing nearby with her arms folded in displeasure.   The man has an exasperated look on his face as he explains to her, “A writer isn’t always writing when he’s writing!”  And I find I’m not always brewing when I’m brewing.  I find my mind turning to it many times during the day.  What will I brew next?  What ingredients do I need?  What steps will I take as I prepare it?  When will it peak in flavor, and will I be able to serve it at Christmas/someone’s birthday/my next cookout?  I like getting my ducks in a row in my mind before I’ve even set aside the time, bought what I need, and started the actual brewing.  I can brew while I’m at work, while I’m making the bed, or mowing the lawn.  Picturing what I’m going to do makes the actual process clearer to me, even though I’ve done it dozens of times.  It’s familiar, yet each batch is still a new experience.  This ability to turn my mind to the pleasant anticipation of brewing puts me in a happy place.  Remember these lines from an old song?  “When this old world starts getting me down, and people are just too much for me to face”.  Instead of going up on the roof, I just take a mental trip to my basement and imagine my airlock bubbling serenely.  It never fails to make me feel better.

Then there’s the actual work when Brew Day rolls around.  I’ll admit my least favorite part of brewing is all the washing up, both beforehand and afterwards.  But once I break the inertia and get the water running, I find comfort in the ritual of washing, sanitizing, and staging my work area.  As the saying goes, well begun is half done, and I take pride and pleasure in getting things ready for brewing.  After this, I get my strike water on the stove and go downstairs to grind my grains.  I know some brewers who use a drill attachment or an electric motor to run their mill, but I actually like doing it by hand.  Turning the crank on the mill isn’t a chore for me; it helps set my mood.  I can smell that wonderful aroma of the crushed grains, and I see with pleasure the resulting grist as it comes out, not too large, not too floury, with the husks split to provide the proper bed during mashing.  I always take a couple of grains of each different malt I’m using, and chew them as I grind, getting a real sense of the flavor I’ll be working with.  I’ve also found that by the time I’m done, my strike water is almost at the perfect temperature, so I’m multi-tasking, which pleases me.

Then I mash-in, stirring the grains into the water, making sure there are no air pockets or dough balls.  And again, I savor the aroma.  Grain meeting hot water is a primal pleasure.  It smells like bread.  It smells like nourishment.  It smells like home.  It smells insanely good.

I get great pleasure from the appearance of the first runnings.  Whatever I’m brewing, the color always delights me, whether a golden yellow Pale Ale,  a garnet Irish Red, or a robust Stout, black as night.  This is also a primal pleasure.  I have converted starch to fermentable sugar!  That which I was envisioning last week is becoming reality.  I feel the same about the sparges.  They’re paler and seem thinner, but I know I’m extracting as much of that wonderful fermentable sugar as possible.  There’s gold in them thar sparges, and I want it all.

The biggest challenge comes at hot break, of course.  I know disaster is only a slight distraction away, and I watch, like a jungle cat, anticipating that foam, so I can pounce with my spray bottle of cold water.  Once again, I’m the victor, and the break dissipates and falls to a rolling boil.  I start my hops schedule and wave my hands above the steaming pot, channeling the aromas into my face.  More magic is taking place, and I’m savoring all of it.

Another challenge comes at flame-out.  Part of this is because I have to carry the pot of just-boiled wort down the basement stairs so I can cool it.  A mis-step at this point would not only be a loss of all the work I’ve just done, it would be downright dangerous!   But having negotiated the stairs (and sometimes the cat) successfully, I begin the cooling.  It’s taken me a couple of batches to get my procedures down, but it’s working well for me now.  First the immersion chiller alone, while I stir the wort in the opposite direction to the flow of water through the copper tubing.  When the temperature gets down to just under 120 F, I put the pot in an ice bath I prepared earlier, while still using the immersion chiller and stirring.  This gets the wort down into the 60s pretty quickly.  Even so, I always feel like a father coaxing those first steps out of his baby, or teaching a youngster to ride a bicycle.  I know you can do it.  I know you’ll get there.  Don’t worry, I’m right here.  I won’t let anything happen.  You’re doing great….just a little more…..  Then it’s racking to the carboy and pitching the yeast.  And the necessary clean-up, which, as I said, I dislike, but there’s still the satisfaction of finishing up a job well done.

But is the job done?  Not at all.  For at least the first week of fermentation, I make it a point to “check on the baby” every day, just to make sure everything is going well.  Krausen?  Check.  Trub?  Check.  Airlock or blow-off tube not clogged?  Check.  I’m establishing a relationship with my beer this way.  I’m letting it take care of itself, of course.  But just as I like to give my grown daughter a call or a shout-out on Facebook now and then, I have to let my beer know I’m there, and that I care.

Eventually Bottling Day rolls around, and I’ve had the fun of anticipating that, too.  Did I say “fun” and “anticipating?”  As if I actually looked forward to what many homebrewers consider the most odious task of all?  Yep.  I did.  Again, I don’t like the washing up and sanitizing, but it’s a necessary evil, and I’ve got it honed to a pretty quick prep.  And once I’m rolling, it’s a relaxing and satisfying activity.  The bottles fill up, and I cap them and put them in holders.  The holders fill up, and I set them on the floor.  The bottling bucket empties, and the pipeline fills.  The radio plays Oldies, and I sing along.  There’s almost always a shot glass or two of beer left over; not enough to bottle, and I drink that in celebration of another batch taken from my imagination to reality.

This is my process.  This is my hobby.  This is me taking comfort in the rituals and repetitive motions mixed with the excitement of creating something new, even if it’s re-creating a previously done recipe.  This is me and my beer, keeping me sane.