[ja]cobdavis

I thought I’d take a second as to why I love brewing and to a greater extent – beer. Initial impressions would lead people to think I’m a drunk; that I make the cheapest swill garbage possible with as much booze as spirits, and then get blasted for fun. Reality being, for me, that drinking my work is only an added bonus. Then folks may say, oh sure – I brew huge bomb beers, sure I enjoy the process, but I’m basically out to get plastered. Still not true, I brewed a ~3.5-4% abv last go-round. Then ‘they’ will say oh, so you are just a super ned with a hobby of fun toys, making a slightly more complicated version of tea, and reading. To that I’d say – oh, so you are a homebrewer as well?

It’s really less about the drunk part so much as the process. The ability to make something that [nearly] everyone can enjoy. It’s about cultivating a living organism, watching it grow and chew away at sugars and hearing the ‘clink clink’ of the airlock. Sure, like most homebrewers the process can lead to frustrations, burning your extract, missing your target OG, having a stuck sparge, ect – but the clouds clear after the first deep sniff of a bubbling blow-off tub. Even if the beer sucks (I’m looking at you cranberry beer) there is a flood of happiness that fills you when you watch someone drink your beer. It’s a learning process, something to be picked up, cleaned up next time. You shuffle again and deal. Didn’t like the bitterness in this one? Want to tweak a famous beer you had? There is almost nothing the big boys do that you cannot. There are few hurdles, which I think make it appealing in the first place.

A year only I’ve been at it. I’ve plowed thorough a handful of beer making books, cram my day full of reading beer blogs, it envelops my day. Finally a passion, a goal orientated hobby, and a relatively cheap one, comparatively. I don’t see this ending soon. You could maybe expect bottles for Christmas gifts.