I feel like a new man, I must say. After 3 long years, I have finally brewed beer again. It is sort of ironic that just as I have not yet made it to the world-class ski resorts two hours from my house since moving to Colorado, up until last Saturday I had not made a batch of beer since moving to homebrew/craft brew Mecca. Sure, as mentioned in my "A Friend with Mead.." post (08/06/2005) I've made mead for the first time (and the second time - and for that matter, it is something I plan to do each August in celebration of Mead Day), which counts in the "fermented beverages" category but...it's not beer.
I started homebrewing during my sophomore year in college, more out of curiosity about the process than a true appreciation for good beer. Kegs of Natural Ice, and things even worse were so prevalent at the parties my friends and I attended that acquiring intoxicating liquids was not the challenge. But actually brewing that first batch of Brown Ale was a real epiphany for me. I recall very clearly (though it was a good 12 years ago) trying very hard to follow Charlie Papazian's mantra, but in all honesty there was a lot of anxiety during that first brew session. "Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew" showed up in full force during batch #2. I remember carefully filling and capping my bottles and marveling at how it felt to hold a bottle of a beer I had made myself.
Needless to say, with four male roommates, the 5 gallon batch (2 cases of 12 oz bottles) lasted only a weekend! But I do have that very first bottle I filled and capped..
Anyway, I continued to brew fairly regularly through the remainder of college and in the years following my graduation, though the beer lasted a lot longer when it was just a couple of my work friends and I drinking a batch.
After several moves and the inevitable boil over in each kitchen in each house we lived in, my wife finally kicked me out of the kitchen..with permission to buy a "real" brewing system. I had always wanted to try brewing all-grain, like the breweries do. You can make very good beer with malt extract but I think you have to try all-grain at least once to fully appreciate brewing start-to-finish.
I did a ton of research and narrowed my options to a Brewtree or a Brew Magic system. There was a significant price difference and being a sucker for a bargain (or a perceived one), I bought the Brewtree. I am not going to disparage the guy that built Brewtrees because I commend his ambition and believe he always meant well but quite frankly, I could not get the thing to work. I am not a plumber, have no desire to become one (though I do wholeheartedly admire their ability to get water flowing again when you have sewage flooding your basement at 3:17AM on a weeknight!), and frankly could not, for the life of me, get the damn thing to work. Put simply, there was too much intended functionality in too little a space. And with all due respects to the Queen, copper tubing is a royal pain in the ass to deal with, especially when bending is involved.
So long story short, a good friend of mine, also into brewing, with mad welding skills, built a new frame for the system, and in conjunction with scavenged parts from my Brewtree, we built a much simpler, elegant, purely gravity-fed system..We call him Mashimillian.
Mashimillian's inaugural session, held on the 10th annual American Homebrewers' Association Big Brew Day, was a smashing success. Though challenges were certainly encountered (and a few potentially ominous thunderstorms blew through relatively harmlessly), 10 gallons of American Brown Ale wort were generated from 20 pounds of grain. Thanks to a yeast starter and 40 minutes of aeration the fermentation took off rather quickly and vigorously and as I write this 6 days later activity has subsided and I am preparing to take a gravity reading (and a taste! :) ).
The (brew) monkey is off my back - all is well..
