“In beer there is strength. In wine is wisdom. In water is bacteria.” ~Wayne Lutz
Hello Chroniclers!
Happy Sunday to y’all!
So the first post catching up on the back log is simply the first one on my mind…
As we are sitting here watching The Walking Dead (a recent addiction that has also played into our ability to put out posts in a timely manner), I am sipping on the fruits of my latest hobby, beer!
My cousin is the one I blame for this. He shared with some mead he had made. It was great! I loved it. Anyways, we got to talking about how he made it. And it got me to thinking… Maybe I could do it…
So I started small… an easy one, a cloudy hard apple cider. I bought some local apple juice and went to town.
It turned out to be a great success! I loved it! It was exactly what I wanted.
Then I started getting cocky… I wanted to make a beer. Instead of starting simple with a starter kit, I went straight to all-grain brewing. I started off with a clone of one of my favorite beers, Hog’s Back TEA – a traditional English ale.
The first one I made turned out ok. I mean, it tasted pretty much like the beer I was cloning, but it was cloudy. I made my mistakes, and I learned some lessons (like it so much easier to filter hops out of the beer if you put the screen in before you start boiling). It was a bit discouraging…
I mentioned that Libby was gone a long time, right? That meant a second attempt! As Les Claypool says, ‘Lack of persistence is surely a sin.’
This time, I made a clone of an American ale, Arrogant Bastard.
My cousin got me a brand new, shiny fermentation vessel and it worked great! This one turned out nice and clear, and tastes great. That’s the one that I’m enjoying now!
So all of this to say 2 things we learned in this experience:
1) Libby really shouldn’t leave me unsupervised. No telling what I would get up to…
2) If the zombie apocalypse started tomorrow, at least I could make my own beer!
Hope you’re well!
Derek, Libby, and Duke