Daily Nebraskan

Issue date: 2/6/08 Section: Features

Media Credit: Tim McKenny [Click to enlarge]

I have a problem. With beer.

I think about it all the time. I brainstorm recipes at work. I lust over brewing equipment on the Interwebs. I evangelize the qualities of good beer. I pity those whose only variety is switching between Bud and Bud Light.

And I am personally offended when someone tries to drink an ale at near-freezing temperature.

No, I am not a pretentious snob (at least humor me for the purposes of this column). I am a home brewer.

As I write this column, I am sipping a pint of Premium Bitter, a British-style ale I brewed myself.

Actually, this is a lie. But now that I mention it, I believe this column will be much easier with a beer in hand. I'll just run downstairs and pull a pint off my kegerator. Ah, much better.

In the pages of the Daily Nebraskan a bit more than two years ago, I chronicled my virgin expedition into the uncharted (for me) continent that is brewing your own beer.

Being a fan of the do-it-yourself ethos, or at least the smug sense of superiority that comes with it, I thought I'd try my hand at brewing. Two years and three dozen batches later, I am happy to report that I am pleased with the results. Home brewing is the most rewarding hobby ever - yes, even more rewarding than collecting stamps.

And over these two years, I have leveled up. Dozens of brewing sessions have earned me experience points. I've achieved +20 through reading books about brewing and beer styles. I've upgraded my equipment, with a digital scale for accurate hops measurement, a propane burner for full five gallon boils, and hot mitts to protect my delicate, delicate hands from boiling wort.

I now brew all-grain instead of extract. Extract brewers use malt extract (the condensed sugars of malted barley), dilute that extract in water, boil it with hops, then add yeast and get beer.

All-grain brewers extract the sugar from the barley itself instead of using malt extract - this process is called mashing. This can be done a couple different ways, but I do it the simplest way: single-infusion mashing with a batch sparge.

Basically, you're steeping crushed barley in hot water, then rinsing it with even hotter water. Then you bring the wort to a boil, add hops, boil some more, cool it down, add yeast, and wait.

The single best decision I have ever made regarding home brewing was to switch from bottling to kegging. There are two common methods home brewers use for carbonating their beer: bottle conditioning or force-carbonating in a keg. Bottle conditioning is nice because you don't need kegging equipment.

After your beer is done fermenting, you add some corn sugar and bottle it immediately. The yeast in your beer eats the sugar, converting it into alcohol, and more importantly, carbon dioxide. The downside is it takes an extra two weeks of waiting, plus scrubbing and sanitizing 50 bottles is every bit as fun as it sounds.

But with kegging, I just clean and sanitize one keg. After my beer is fermented, I transfer it to the keg, attach it to a CO2 tank, wait three days, and the beer is ready to drink - though most beers will get better after a couple of extra weeks in the fridge. And an Imperial Bourbon Stout I brewed went from mediocre to good to amazing after one year of aging.

After only a week, the taste of my Premium Bitter has mellowed. What was originally a sharp but intriguing toastiness now comes more subtly before giving way to a caramel sweetness. I want only to brew and drink more.

So what started out as a "Why not?" is now dangerously close to taking over my life. I've made my own equipment. I make beer for birthday, wedding and holiday gifts. Each time a friend comes over, I hand them my latest batch and wait to hear what they think. When I travel I seek out local brewpubs, and when I go to the bars I order a beer, hopefully something I haven't tried before.

Nevertheless, I still keep a 12-pack of Schlitz at home for emergencies.

Billy DeFrain is a former Daily Nebraskan staffer who wrote a column about getting started in the world of home brewing in December 2005.

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