Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Brew U: Celebrate Learn to Homebrew Day

Nov. 2, 2012

The only thing better than enjoying a delicious, frosty brew is enjoying a delicious, frosty brew that you made yourself. Saturday, Nov. 3, is the American Homebrewers Association’s official Learn to Homebrew Day. This epic holiday is celebrated by breweries and homebrew shops across the country and is a great excuse to get off your butt and start dabbling in the wonderful world of brewing.

To give you that first shove, Wine or Wort Home Brew Supply is hosting a free brew day on Nov. 2 at the store near Costco in Gypsum.

“We’re opening up our cookers to anyone who wants to come down and start a batch and walk them through the cooking process,” said Beth Reed, co-owner of Wine or Wort. “The first step in the process is to boil the wort for about an hour and add the ingredients through the process and then chill the wort down and put it into a fermenter. We’re going to be doing that with anyone who is interested.”

Brewing can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be, Reed said. At its most elementary level, there are only a few steps in the process: boil the ingredients to make wort, the liquid base of your beer; chill the wort slightly and allow it to ferment; add priming sugar to the fermented wort and bottle it; stuff the bottles in a cool, dark place to allow the yeast to turn the sugar into alcohol and carbonation; and then pop the bottles into the fridge to savor the satisfying culmination of your work.

“If you want it to be that simple, you follow the directions in the ingredient kits and do the step by step,” Reed said. “If you want to get very involved in the science of it all, people go to school for four years to learn how to brew.”

Most homebrewers fall somewhere in between, Reed said, but almost all of them got started with the same basic equipment setup. Ryan Stelzer is a purchasing agent and brand manager for L.D. Carlson Co., a wholesale brewing equipment company that supplies some of the gear found at Wine or Wort. Stelzer said anyone can start brewing, even those with very little space to devote to the hobby.

“For brewing, you don’t need a lot of room,” he said. “Condo brewers delegate only a few square feet to the brewing process. It doesn’t take any more room than a 5-gallon bucket.”

Equipment and ingredient kits can range in price, but both Reed and Stelzer said a new brewer can buy everything needed to brew his or her first batch of beer for around $200. Stelzer said starter kits contain two 6 1/2-gallon buckets, siphon hoses for transferring the beer, a racking cane to help with siphoning, an air lock that allows carbon dioxide to escape during fermentation but keeps oxygen away from the beer and a hydrometer to monitor gravity readings throughout the brewing process.

The hydrometer is used to test the amount of sugar in the water, Reed said. It also tells you when the beer is done, how much alcohol it contains and whether you’re making the beer you think you’re making, based on the starting and ending sugar levels in the wort. If your sugar levels start in the right place and end in the right place, you can make good beer, Reed said.

“The hydrometer is very important as far as knowing what is going on with your beer,” Stelzer said. “It provides gravity readings throughout the brewing process, starting with the starting gravity. You’re trying to hit a certain number once you add your yeast.”

The kit also includes a bottling spigot that attaches to one of the buckets when you’re ready to bottle your beer and a capper to cap the beers after you fill them. Each ingredient kit sold at Wine or Wort contains enough bottle caps for a standard 5-gallon batch of beer, or about 52 bottles per batch. The store sells new bottles, or homebrewers can save and clean used bottles from their favorite commercial beers and re-cap them.

Other useful tools you might want to pick up are an oxygenated cleanser to help clean your system between batches of beer, a thermometer to keep an eye on fermentation temperatures, a cook pot for boiling the wort and a book to learn more about the process. Advanced homebrewers can customize their systems by adding a second fermentation tank or gear to keg their beer instead of putting it in bottles.

Homebrewing takes some time and is quite a bit more work than going to the store and picking up a six-pack, but it’s worth it the first time you take your beer to a party and can proudly declare it as your own.

“It’s the art of crafting something yourself,” Stelzer. “When I started here six years ago, I told myself, ‘I don’t know who would brew beer, who would take the time when you could buy it.’ A year after that, I started brewing. It’s an addiction to be able to change something, tweak something — you start recording that stuff and tuning into how to make that beer better and better.”

So if you’ve ever felt the itch to try your hand at wheats or brown ales, porters or stouts, join the ranks of the beer-brewing masses in a celebration of suds on Learn to Homebrew Day.

“Don’t hesitate,” Stelzer said. “People are hesitant in getting into the hobby because they feel they won’t do a good job. It’s like no other hobby that’s out there. Everybody is really accepting and willing to help.”

To reserve your spot  for the brew day on Nov. 2, or for more information on equipment, ingredients or other upcoming brewing events, call Wine or Wort at 970-524-BEER.

Krista Driscoll
Hophead

No comments:

Post a Comment