Can there be anything more manly than brewing your own beer? I think not.
A few christmases ago, OnlyWife bought me one of those cheap beer making kits you see at bloodbath and beyond; Mr. Beer. It sat around for awhile (a LONG while) and I finally got around to making it this past summer. It wasn’t BAD… but it wasn’t really good either. But I had the curiosity and motivation to search out better ways of making beer. There are tons of really informative sites on the inter-tubes, as well as tons of online shops.
While browsing these shops, I entered any and every kind of giveaway/contests I could find. Well… I actually won one. A whole starter home brewing kit, including a beer recipe, as well as another beer recipe of “holiday” beer. Just in time to brew it and be ready for the holidays.
The funny part is, the kit didn’t include exactly EVERYthing that you need to brew. You need a pretty large stock-pot, as each kit brews 5 gallons of beer (that’s roughly two cases), and you need the bottles to put it in. The bottles are not really a problem; I LIKE to drink beer, and collecting pry-off beer bottles from myself, friends and family members would be pretty easy. The stock-pot on the other hand… we only have a 2 gallon one, and I needed at least a 3 or better yet, a 5 gallon one to brew the beer. So I had to borrow one from the neighbors for the first batch.
Even then, it was just a little bit too small. At certain points in the brew process, you have to add more ingredients, and then watch closely for boil-overs. During one of those additions, OnlyWife was asking me questions about the whole process, and I was so excited that she was interested that I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing, and we had a boil-over. ALL over. Now beer is basically just sugar water, so the entire stovetop, counter top, stove sides, counter sides and floor were covered in sticky goo. I couldn’t stop the brew/boil so we had to let it go until it finished.
I finished the brew, got it into the fermenter and cleaned everything up.
Then I convinced OnlyWife to let me buy my own bigger brew kettle for the next batch. 🙂
