How to Completely, Absolutely, and Totally Fail to Brew Beer at Home

Like any other self-respecting adult, I often find myself seized by the ill-advised urge to Do It Myself (DIM). This urge comes and goes inversely with the length of time since my last attempt at DIMing, which means it’s at a fever pitch three years after the injurious Attempted Re-Tiling of the Shower and at its low ebb moments after I realize the roof is leaking as a direct consequence of the Attempt to Construct a Roof Deck.

My father, I like to joke, was the Second Worst Carpenter in New Jersey, and he trained me to be the Worst Carpenter in New Jersey, imbuing me with a clearheaded “measure kind of, using something other than a ruler, like, say, your own feet or possibly a sleeping cat, then cut sixteen times until you run out of wood and either have to go to the store to get more or attempt to substitute old shoes in lieu of wood” spirit. The physical universe also likes to come at me; invariably cordless drill batteries will never hold a charge for longer than six minutes, I never have any of those asterisky drill bits and that’s always the only kind of screw I possess, and the studs in my house are all placed at random intervals because I can never find them without knocking a fist-sized (sometimes head-sized) hole in the walls.

Victories in this arena are few and far between. Drywall repairs look like a deranged person turned the wall into a braille-inspired sculpture. Cuts with a circular saw have the wavy look of a drunk driving home at three miles per hour, stopping at every intersection for fifteen minutes to owlishly peer around in order to avoid appearing inebriated. The word “straight” loses all meaning, as do the words “plumb,” “level,” and “finished.”

So, you might imagine I would know better than to attempt to DIM something as important and crucial to my happiness as alcohol. But the lure of making your own alcohol is powerful strong. First, and most obviously, who doesn’t want to eliminate one more reason to have contact with the outside world? If I can make my own beer, for example, I can wear pants a little less frequently.

Second, also fairly obvious, if the Zombie Apocalypse descends upon us and I am able to make it into my Zombie Shelter just steps before doom, I’ll be able to use the knowledge of beer making to keep myself in IPA and Milk Stout. Or, more probably, keep myself in watery pilsner-like liquids — still, when in a Zombie Apocalypse, beggars can’t be choosers.

And I do love beer. Sure, I spent my 20s drinking Coors Lite by the caseful, wondering why I was always bloated, nauseous, and only slightly buzzed. We all make mistakes. I have grown and learned from mine. So, I decided to brew my own beer a few years ago. I brought to the project all my intellectual discipline, my patience, my razor-sharp sciency skills, and my deep affection for good beer.

And it was an unmitigated disaster.

Here’s how you can replicate that disaster in your own home, and get the same permanent smell of a funk that can never be defeated permanently embedded in your walls.

STEP ONE: Confine Your Research to The Four-Page Manual That Comes with Your Brew Kit, If That

The first step towards failure is a near-total ignorance of the chemical and biological forces that go into making beer. Treat your beer project like you would building a bookshelf from Ikea and refuse to read anything more than the box copy. Or possibly read none of the words on the box at all and simply gaze at the photos on the box with the sort of calm confidence that is either a superpower or evidence of a massive brain injury. This will ensure your beer isn’t like everyone else’s beer (read: drinkable), but rather an individual expression of your intense personal creativity.

STEP TWO: Assume If the First Batch Doesn’t Kill You, There’s No Reason to Make Any Adjustments

The next step is crucial: Since you started off with a brand-new kit and everything was provided for you in mint condition, your first batch of beer will probably be triumphantly mediocre. Since the beer tasted like something at least beer-adjacent and you did not die as a result, just assume that your natural genius for imbibables led you unerringly to a decent brew, and things will only get better from here without any sort of changes in your approach.

STEP THREE: Approach the Cleaning and Sterilization Process the Way You Approach Everything Else in Life and Brew a Sentient Gelatinous Cube in Your Kitchen

As anyone who has ever brewed beer discovers, you are working with the same primordial forces that created life in the universe millions of years ago. It’s very, very easy to lose your grip on the stick and, godlike, create life. So the best way to ensure your second batch of beer crosses over into complete disaster territory is to be really half-assed about cleaning all the equipment and materials. In fact, if you can endeavor to perform the cleaning while drunk from your final three or four beers from your first batch, all the better.

The result will be a green-brown mass of fuzzy, pulsing life energy that will whisper to you in your dreams, ordering you to repeat the experiment with thirteen new kits you purchased while sleep walking under the influence of your new gelatinous master. A week later, your entire kitchen will be encased in the blubbery alien life form, and you will have to burn the house down in order to escape, change your name, and begin a new life somewhere else.

Then you go to the local liquor store and buy one of those make-your-own six packs of beautiful, crisp, perfect beer, and watch the flames from across the street.

Jeff Somers began writing by court order as an attempt to steer his creative impulses away from engineering genetic grotesqueries. He has published nine novels, including the Avery Cates Series, the darkly hilarious crime novel Chum, and most recently tales of blood magic and short cons in the Ustari Cycle, including the upcoming novellas The Stringer, Last Best Day, and The Boom Bands from Pocket Gallery. He has also published more than 30 short stories and writes about books for Barnes and Noble and About.com and about the craft writing for Writer’s Digest. He lives in Hoboken with his wife, The Duchess, and their cats. He considers pants to always be optional.