The Tao of Homebrewing

I turn beer into beer

I like to make rules for things. I like to make beer.

I think the process of making rules allows you to define why you do that thing. What are the boundaries of the process?, Should I consider doing X, Y or Z? How can I proceed?

There are 4 types of homebrewers in my mind: 1) Alkies - the ones that want to make the cheapest beer, 2) The wannabe brewers - the ones that have their eye on a career, 3) The equipment junkies - the ones who obsess over efficiency and pumps, and 4) The beer nerds. Now these aren’t hard and fast categories, some people are a combination but I put myself happily in the nerd slot. As such these are my rules for making beer at home:

1. 3 Gallon Max. Far better to brew less more often. Principally for Emma’s reason five. I think that I need to have a mixture of commitment and experimentation. So I have 3 fermenters in California: One 3 Gallon Better Bottle for commitment batches and two 1 Gallon Jugs for experimentation and long term brews. 5 Gallons of beer equates to about 40 bottles, even with give aways that’s a lot of beer.
2. Always Split The Batch. So when I make a 3 gallon batch, I might make 4 gallons of wort, 3 gallons into the big fermenter and 1 into the small. Different yeasts in each. Or if I’ve fermented 3 gallons of wort, I’ll pull off 1 gallon and dry hop or put fruit or spices.
3. Never use garlic.
4. Never brew to style. Styles are essentially a distillation of commercial beers - you can buy those. Why brew a California Common when Anchor Steam is readily available? Shaun thinks you should be able to brew a good Porter before you can brew a Chilli Chipotle Chocolate Porter but who says that a good Porter is a good Base for the Chilli Chipotle Chocolate Porter?. Buy Brewing Classic Styles and you have a good Porter base anyway.
5. Clone beers you can’t try. I couldn’t get Nugget Nectar in the UK, so I brewed a clone version. I made a smaller one with Vanilla and Oak chips in secondary, though that was not a good idea.
6. Brew with funky yeasts. Take a beer you’ve fermented, pull off 1 gallon and do a secondary with lambic or brett yeast. Leave it as long as you dare.
7. Use extract. Making a barleywine is a pain if you try and do it all grain - using extract means that you can do a partial mash and still have great tasting beer.
8. Give it away. If you think the batch is tasty, give most of it away. In my mind you can’t have a bad recipe but you can have bad process. The batch of bad beer sitting in your cellar is a reminder to get the process right.
9. Set a lifespan. Cellar homebrew for sure but put a lifespan on it. When I moved to California I had a garage full of mediocre homebrew - I tipped most of the bad stuff, and gave away the good. Here I have a cellaring rule which is that after a year any beer comes out of the cellar.
10. Write about it. You may get good feedback, you may get ridiculed but space to reflect is always good.

So these are just rules I made up whilst making a beer which is 100% Special B. Will it taste bad? I think it’s about 80% likely but to paraphrase Bender - at least no-one can say that I’ve not tried a beer which is 100% Special B.