The first answer that comes to mind is why not, but I don't think Elizabeth would let me get away with that for a blog post (who needs quality control?).
Going along with the theme of our previous two Friday posts, money. It's cheaper! I started out taking classes for $5, which included "all you can drink" homebrew, where I was taught to "Relax, have a homebrew!". When I started brewing beer on my own I was paying about $10/gal, which is a significant savings when you consider we sometimes buy a single beer at the bar for more than $10. For Christmas, I received the last pieces of equipment needed to do a more enhanced version of brewing, which means I can now brew for about $7-8/gal.
We were also gifted most of the equipment over time starting with a wedding gift to unused items laying around families' homes to Christmas gifts. How can you say no when you have all of the equipment and it's cheaper? Well honestly, I was starting to get frustrated because I had to do everything (Elizabeth only helped when absolutely necessary),we didn't have the space in our apartment and it can be extremely messy.
Enter our friend Sam, who offered up his largely unused basement because he wanted to start brewing with me. Since then my brewing has evolved because it's a fun, social event. On brewing days, Sam and I, along with our friend Sean, get together and start the brewing. We always invite other friends to stop by and join for all or part of the process. As people come and go and beer is brewed, we drink our previous batches and any other beers out of Sam's fridge and even play bocce and lawn darts.
Then there is of course the final answer, I love beer! E and I love drinking beer at the bar with our friends and comparing notes. We got to the point where even the great beers started blurring together (too much of a good thing). With homebrewing we can create whatever weird creation we decide to call beer because we have control. I've made an expresso stout, IPA, honey brown ale, scotch ale, porter, and black lager (aka Famous Paul) which are all pretty normal (in my world). Some of the more random ones we've branched out to as our brewing has improved and we've gotten more adventurous are a brown IPA (aka Brown Eyed Pennsylvanian (PA)) and the hazelnut coffee brown ale (aka Hazy Joe Brown). The Hazy Joe Brown and Famous Paul aren't done yet and we've just started a milk stout (aka Udderly Short), but the Brown-Eyed Pennsylvanian is delicious and is aging well.
If you ever want to know more, ask me. I love to talk about it. Until then, "Relax, have a homebrew!"
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| A really old iPhone photo of Eric bottling :) |
Other Homebrewing Posts:
Love it! You guys are so awesome! More blogs from Eric please! :-)
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome! I've had "homebrew" before and even helped in the making process of it. I'm not a big fan of beer, I was brought up on wine, and never got accustomed to really any type of alcoholic beverage. But, my boyfriend, likes a good beer (what man doesn't?) and so I heard about homebrewing and bought him those Mr. Beer kits. Now, making his beer with him was fun and adding different flavors was exciting. We couldn't wait to taste the finished product. When we did, it was smooth and tasty. Now, this was "Mr. Beer" so I can only imagine how much more delicious yours must be! So, I might be asking Elizabeth to get my boyfriend some tips from you!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, Amy, y'all need to come over one night :) We started with the Mr. Beer kit too!!!
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