Shitty Homebrew: The Quest for More Beer
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When
I was a child, pokemon was cool. And now what I am older, homebrewing
your own beer is cool. Maybe brewing
was also popular when I was younger, but I was too busy force feeding my
pikachu rare candy like a foie gras duck to pay attention. Now pokemon
consists of chandeliers and ice cream cones and all kinds of goofy shit
so it isn’t cool anymore.
Canard! I choose you!
After
having a couple of friends in college who brewed their own beer
(including one who also made his own
whiskey, cigarettes, and built a server in a very tasteful coffee table
which stored at least 100gb of hardcore pornography), I decided that I
was going to venture into homebrewing one day. I’m more partial to wine
and spirits than beer, but I like learning
new things, expanding the boundaries of my world, and like all the other
mindless sheep (see: humans), I do stuff when I see other people do
that stuff. In fact, homebrew is an increasingly popular activity in the
states. According to the American Homebrewers
Association, their membership increased four fold from 2005 to 2013 and
around a million americans brew their own beer at least once a year.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/15/home-brewing-beer_n_3278651.html.
After
I got a job (and thus money) after grad school I decided I was ready. I
was going to start making my
own beer. I was going to overthrow the mind shackles that the man makes
me wear every time I go buy a 6 pack from a large soulless corporation. I
was going to be like those beatniks in Portland. I was going to catch
all the pikachus. Then I forgot about brewing
for months until I was at Marshalls buying a bowtie to trick people into
thinking that I was smart and/or a timelord and saw a Mr. Beer homebrew
starter kit on sale for like $25.
Chandelier pokemon make no sense. Big ass yellow lightning rats are objectively more logical.
I
rushed home to start making my beer and I was so excited that I didn’t
bother to read the list of required
equipment (I don’t have time for that shit, I am a narcissist and a
genius) so I had to hold my mash in a pasta strainer over my sink at one
point. Something pertaining to homebrew that isn’t obvious is how
important sterilization is. You need to sterilize
EVERYTHING, all the bottles, pots, silverware, piping, ect; My beer
equipment had less lifeforms on it than medical equipment. I could cut
out a man’s appendix with my sterile spoon. Granted, I dropped my stuff
on the floor a few times but I wasn’t going to
let chemistry or science stop me from my dream.
My vessel to emancipation
What did stop me from my dream was some of the following things:
-
I didn’t have any beer bottles so during the bottling stage I put my beer in a rectangular prism of clear polymer (aka tupperware). This way the beer would be exposed to all nuances and flavors of the San Antonio sunlight ( I didn’t bother to close the closet door where I kept this beer) while the polymer diffused into the beer giving it a not so subtle taste of blood poisoning. See the video at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1604639731/shitty-craft-beer
-
On the same topic, I tend not to turn on my AC during the day when I am at work, I just open the window. This way my liquid zygote booze child soaks up all of the character and culture of San Antonio Texas.
A bench I saw in San Antonio. Spelling is not part of the culture here.
When
I finally finished brewing my first homebrew batch and it bottled for a
few weeks, I opened my tupperware
container and learnt that I had effectively brewed flat soda. My beer
has almost zero carbonation and it tasted like root beer and mediocrity.
My dreams were crushed but months later I decided to try again. I was going to rekindle my flame…. Next episode
next week.
Support my kickstarer, Help me make more terrible beer!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1604639731/shitty-craft-beer
Jordan Rejaud is a mediocre homebrewer and slightly less mediocre Robotics Engineer.
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