Better Than The Real Thing?

Anyone who brews their own beer is sure to be asked the question every once in a while – “Do you really drink that stuff? It can’t be anything like as good as the real stuff, can it?”. This is a hard one to answer, as it is a matter of personal taste. Early on in your home brewing experiments you may be forced to admit that your efforts fall somewhat short of what you would like them to be. But the truth of the matter is that there are a lot of people who brew, and drink, their own beer because they like the taste and enjoy the process.

Whether the beer is better than commercial branded beer is a subjective matter. Some people will definitely prefer home brewed beer while others will swear that if it isn’t a global name it isn’t worth drinking. But for people who like to have a modicum of control and a bit of a change once in a while, home brewing has an obvious advantage. If you buy a crate of any commercial beer then the first can or bottle of it will taste the same as the 24th. And the next crate you buy will taste the same again.

When you brew your own, you can make changes with every new batch you brew. You just need to buy the ingredients – which can be less than a dollar if you are just looking to add a fruity flavor to the beer – and make the necessary changes to the brewing process. The more you brew, the better you will get, and as long as you like the taste, nothing else really matters.

A Throwback To Prohibition?

During the 1920s and some of the 1930s, the making and sale of alcoholic beverages was banned in the United States. It seems astonishing to think it now, but the law was in place for close to 13 years, and although it reduced the amount of public drunkenness it had the side-effect of increasing the amount of organised crime as alcoholic beverages continued to be made and sold on the black market through “speakeasy” bars and similar watering holes. Although the law has long since been repealed, there are those who consider home brewers to be the product of that time.

It is unquestionable that brewing your own beer brings with it a certain amount of freedom, and with that freedom comes responsibility. When the era of prohibition was in full swing, much of the black market alcohol available was made using less rigorous safety standards, and on occasion was so contaminated that it caused serious health problems and even death. Although this is rarely the case now, it is sensible to make sure that you follow safety standards in making your beer.

The practice of good safety standards is something that becomes second nature before too long. Apart from anything, if you have got the beer wrong it will taste wrong. At least in this case you can go out and buy regular beer that has passed stringent testing, whereas in the days of prohibition anyone who wanted to carry on drinking took their life in their own hands.

Mixing Your Drinks

Brewing beer is difficult, but worthwhile. The last decade or so has seen a massive rise in the different ways that beer is created and flavored, and in recent times we have seen a new arrival in the market – beer that is flavored with another alcoholic drink. Among the most well-known of these beers are the ones flavored with tequila, but there are other beers on the market that have vodka and whisky added at a certain stage in the brewing process. To some, that is brave and to others it is insane – but these brews are flying off the shelves.

If you are interested in brewing this kind of beer yourself, the most important advice is to be careful, and it is widely agreed that if you are going to add another alcoholic drink into the mix then it should be done at a late stage in the brewing process – otherwise you risk ruining the taste of the drink and potentially making it dangerous to drink. However, if you can master it this is another string to your bow and makes for a very interesting flavor.

The other thing to be aware of is just how much of the other drink you add to the mix. In this case the watchword seems to be “less is more” – adding a lot risks making the beer undrinkable when what you are really looking for is a “hint” of the new flavor rather than an overpowering taste of it. If you want to drink something that tastes like neat whisky, then neat whisky is a far preferable option.

A Brand New Flavor

Home brewing beer is a science. To get it right you need to be scientific in your approach, and it is often noted that science isn’t all about knowing everything. In fact, science by its very definition is about the fact that we do not, and cannot, know everything so we have to settle for finding out everything that we can and applying that knowledge as best we can. And that can be applied to home brewing, because brewing is a process that ensures you learn something new every time. The moment you stop learning is the moment it becomes a chore.

The brewing of flavored beers is a popular way to make home brewing more interesting. If you have never tasted a flavored beer, maybe now is the time to give it a go and see how enjoyable it can be – some of the more popular ones on the market are Belgian fruit beers which contain elements of cherry and raspberry. Technically, however, there are few limits to the fruits that you can add in the brewing process, and the effects that they can have on the taste.

That’s not to say that it will all be good. You have to make sure that what you are adding goes in at the right time, is added in the right form, and does not conflict with the other ingredients you have added. Finding the right mix is something that may take more than a few attempts. It’s not just a matter of trying new fruit flavors, either. The addition of spices or of other ingredients can turn out a fantastic beer, so it is worth continuing to experiment with different additions and seeing where they take you.

The Grand Tasting

For any home brewing buff, the moment of truth is always the tasting. You will not get a real idea for how good or otherwise your beer is when the brewing is complete. Even at this late stage, there is more that needs to happen before it is what it will be. You will put your beer into bottles still not being sure that it is quite right – and this is enough to send a lot of home brewers crazy with impatience. And the thing is that there’s more to it than that. Even once you have left the beer long enough to carbonate completely it may still have time to go.

To clarify, the time that you are advised to leave your brew before drinking it is the “ready to drink” time. Now, there is a world of difference between “ready to drink” and “worth drinking”. Many beers benefit from being left a little (or a lot) longer in the bottle before you drink them, during which time they get to settle, to broaden in terms of taste, and to do any number of other things that will turn them into highly drinkable beer.

The reason for this is down to countless small influences that can affect a lot of things to do with the beer. You cannot expect a perfect beer after the minimum “ready to drink” time, just as people who make their own wine will not expect it to mature to its highest quality within weeks. Some of the best wines around have been in the bottle for years – and it is not just wines for which that is true.

The Delicate Balance

Brewing your own beer is not an easy process. From start to finish it can take weeks, and it is obvious that the longer it takes to do something, the more chance there is that that something can go wrong. Therefore you need to be practically parental in the way you bring along your home brew. It is something that rewards careful planning and cautious management. How well you have done will only be confirmed when you first taste your newly-brewed beer.

The fact is that there are some aspects of the process that are beyond your control. You can buy the best equipment, recommended by experts and talented amateurs, you can follow the recipes right down to the last miligram and final punctuation mark. However, there is still the chance for something to be not quite right, and this is where you will find yourself calling on people who have been there and done that.

It has been seen on several different home brewing forums that a person goes from start to finish in brewing their beer, bottles it and leaves it for drinking and when they come to it, sometimes months later, it doesn’t taste right. Asking around to see what the problem is, they are asked by someone who has been brewing for more than a decade: “What kind of water did you use?”. And something as basic as the pH balance of the water used can interfere with the quality of a beer. Don’t be discouraged if something small knocks your brew off – put it down to experience and learn.

Happy Accidents

It is an interesting fact that Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by accident, and that Isaac Newton discovered gravity as a result of an apple falling from a tree and hitting him. In the same way – though admittedly on a smaller scale – some brewing mistakes and happy accidents can lead to a different and unique taste in a brew that makes for a worthwhile addition to your rotation. Admittedly, more accidents go wrong than right, but it is worth noting that the process can work in your favor even when mistakes are made.

This kind of happy accident can have the most unexpected results. If you add too much of something, too little of something else, add something at the wrong time or leave too much or too little time for something to happen, all of this can change the taste of the finished product quite markedly. As a result you can end up with something that you are happy to drink for the rest of your time as a home brewer. For this reason as well as many others, it is a good idea to keep a notebook detailing what you do during the brewing process.

Of course, people are slow to admit to mistakes, especially when the results are such that the mistake turns out to be a winning move. So we will never know how many of the beers out there on the market were the result of clever research and sound practice, and how many resulted from one person’s slip up. And maybe that would destroy the magic.

Home Brewing 101: FAQs

Four weeks ago I bottled a new batch of beer and set it out in the garden shed. I opened one today and it doesn’t taste right. What’s up?

The chances are that it’s nothing you’ve done in the brewing process. Remember, brewing is a temperamental process and the most likely reason for your beer not coming out right is that you moved it from somewhere warm to somewhere cold. It is probably that the yeast you used needs to be at brewing temperature – that is, in the same room where you are brewing – in order to carbonate your beer. Leave it in the brewing room for two weeks before moving it outside next time.

This is the first batch I’ve brewed and it actually tastes OK but … it’s a little watery. What does it sound like I did wrong?

Just one thing, and it’s easily remedied. What you need to do is use blended sugars – something more attuned to the brewing process. What you have described sounds to me a lot like you have used white sugars in the brewing process. What comes out of that normally tastes a bit like cider – as you say, it doesn’t taste horrible, it just doesn’t taste like beer.

My first brew is really cloudy, having been in the keg for three weeks. I would have expected it to be mostly, if not totally clear by now. What’s happened?

It sounds like you have done things pretty much right, but to avoid this happening you could try leaving it in the fermentation vessel for four or five more days next time.

An Exchange Of Information

The entire world has changed with the advent of the Internet. You can talk live to people living as far away from you as it is possible to get, you can buy items from a Mom’n'Pop store in a village in another country, and you can watch sporting events taking place in front of a few hundred people in a country you’ve never been to. Everything has been touched by the Internet, and home brewing is no exception.

The Internet has exploded in no small part due to its social aspect. We have social networking (which takes up so much of people’s time it has been dubbed “social not working”), blogs and online forums that allow people to share information, debate and request help. And for a first time brewer, there is a real advantage to having this capability. You will surely take a couple of attempts to get your home brew just right, and you may wonder what you are doing wrong – the Internet is your friend.

Many people on Internet forums devoted to brewing will have had the exact same problems you have when you first home brew a batch of beer. They will know how they got around the problem and will be able to share this information with you. As most home brewers are non-commercial, they will not see you as a competitor in a serious sense and will be glad to help out. In the early days, this can make all the difference to a new brewer.

Brewing Safely

There is an almost endless stream of jokes to be made about home brewing beer, and most of them center around the idea of cutting out the middleman and just getting drunk without anyone else’s help. However, there is a certain seriousness behind those jokes, and one that needs to be taken note of by anyone planning to home brew beer.

Beer contains alcohol, which is an intoxicant. We all know that. When you home brew beer, this gives you an important responsibility. First of all, you need to make sure that what you are brewing is safely drinkable. Too high an alcohol level and it could make you or anyone who drinks it ill. Bear in mind also that the critical capabilities drop after a few drinks, so if you break into the home brew after polishing off a supply of store-bought beer you may not be in a position to judge if it is “right”.

Aside from that, there is also the fact that to brew properly, you will at times need to heat the mix to boiling point, and stir it when it is hot. For this reason, you should always be sober when you are treating the home brew mixture. Just having easy access to beer is not a green light to drink it all the time. Although beer is fun, brewing it is serious and you don’t want to be the one who spoils the party. Be careful and observe best practice if you want to brew at home.

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