Beer!

Judgment day. 11 days after bottling, it was time to crack open my first 8-Bit Ale. I worried. Of course I worried. What might have gone wrong in the interim? None of the bottles had exploded, which was a positive sign that meant the beer hadn't over-carbonated -- but it could also have meant that the beer under-carbonated! Nope, I can't stop worrying for a second.

But I was encouraged by the first pour.

The ale built up a nice head: white, foamy, substantial. And it didn't dominate the glass. Within a few minutes, it had receded a bit, and held that form until I started drinking it.

In appearance, the beer was as promised, an amber ale. Slightly hazy and golden, it appeared free of sediment and rich in color.

I spent a few minutes peering into my mug, holding it up to the light, and smelling it. But there's no substitute for the real thing. Time for the first sip.

And it was... good! Not mind-blowing. But good. It's drier and more bitter than I had expected, and, if I'm using the term right, bready. Drinkable and refreshing, I'd compare it to Brooklyn Summer Ale. I wish the finish had a little more body. Overall, though, I'm happy with how it came out.

Now I really wish I hadn't had to throw half of it away.

Capsized

Look, I know I get frustrated about small things. Instead of stepping back and acting rational when something doesn't work right, I drop F-bombs. Patience is not one of my virtues. Still, it's gotten me this far.

Despite all that had happened in the course of homebrewing, when I probably overreacted to some things that may not have really gone wrong, here I was, bottling away, thinking that soon I'd have an enormous quantity of beer to drink that I had made myself.

Well, I'm not sure what happened, exactly, and if it's anybody's fault, it's the fault of the folks at Beer and Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA, whom I previously described as "fine."

Remember how my homebrewing kit was a gift? When I opened it, I remember my in-laws mentioning something about a mix-up with the bottles. As a result, Beer and Wine Hobby had replaced a box of 12-ounce bottles with a box of 22-ounce bottles for no charge. Fine with me, considering that I didn't have to pay for any of it in the first place, and I will always drink 22 ounces of beer over 12 ounces if given the choice.

First, I filled and capped my smaller bottles. This worked great. It took me a few seconds to realize that the bottle capper took a little more force than I'd expected, but within minutes my 12-ounce bottles were capped and looking superb.

When I placed a cap on my first 22-ounce bottle, I realized something was wrong. It didn't fit. It didn't come close to fitting.

So I got angry. My saint of a wife started looking things up on the internet. She discovered that you can actually cap a 22-ounce bottle with these caps and this capper, but it requires reversing some plates on the capper. We couldn't find any instructions for doing this, save for a cheery "It's an easy adjustment!"

It was not an easy adjustment. It took ten minutes of improvising a chisel out of a flathead screwdriver and hammering away at it. Maybe this doesn't sound like a big deal to you, but when I use any kind of tool it's about as dangerous as Nicolas Cage running around with that glass ball of nerve gas in The Rock. You don't want to be anywhere near me.

Only after making the easy adjustment did we realize that the real problem was that these were Belgian bottles, and required corks. Do you think the fine folks at Beer and Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA, supplied corks with their upgraded replacement bottles? No. No they did not. I had several useless caps, and a dozen 22-ounce bottles of beer with nothing to seal them.

I ended up dumping half my beer down the drain. Maybe there could have been some way to improvise a seal on these bottles, but it was getting late and I was getting disheartened. I wondered -- not for the first time, nor the last -- whether homebrewing was worth it.

There would only be one way to answer that question. I had 24 bottles of 8-Bit Ale left. After bottling, they needed to sit for 10-14 days. Nothing to do, once again, but wait.

Keep it bottled up

The next day, I took another hydrometer reading. This time, it read 1.014, which was almost what I wanted to see before bottling. There were two other factors to consider:

• Starting gravity had been high enough that my delta was already bigger than the recipe called for.
• If I didn't bottle that day, I wasn't sure when I'd have a chance to.

Time to bottle!

I sanitized my bottles in the dishwasher, because my dishwasher does have a sanitize setting, and I read on the internet that you can do that. Also, the thought of sanitizing them all by hand made me want to run to the liquor store.

The downside was that this actually took a lot longer than I expected, something like an hour and a half. As soon as I starting running the dishwasher, I set about hand-sanitizing all the other components I would need. And then the Patriots-Jets game was on. I ended up leaving everything out for a couple of hours, worrying the whole time whether they were attracting wild yeasts.

At the time, I thought that this hours-long hiatus could potentially be the worst thing that could happen during bottling. I was wrong.

Boiling the bottle caps

The next few steps were easy to follow. I boiled my bottle caps for five minutes, then removed them with a skimmer. Next, I dissolved 3/4 cup priming sugar in 8 oz water. Finally, I poured the syrup into my bottling bucket and prepared to siphon.

I don't know how most people siphon, but I got an "Auto-Siphon" with my kit that impressed me as much as any basic technology I can remember since the first time I saw carbon paper. I stuck that thing into my fermentation bucket, gave it a pump, and out came a steady stream of beer. The book and the directions had advised against splashing. I didn't even have to try not to. The siphon was gentle as a summer breeze.

Siphoning from the fermenter (top) to the bottling bucket (bottom)

Once the majority of the wort had been transferred to the bottling bucket, leaving only about a half-inch or so of mostly sediment,* it was onto the next step. Here, again, I owed a big assist to my equipment. I had a bottle filler, which was an implement that attached to one end of the siphon. I inserted it into each bottle, pushed it against the bottom, and watched the bottle fill up with no splashing. When I removed the bottle filler, it barely dripped. Even with what little I still know about homebrewing, I would definitely recommend using one of these things.

My bottles were filled and I was ready to cap them. This should have been the easiest part of the whole process. Instead, this was the part that nearly ruined everything.

*The layer of sediment left behind in the fermentation bucket was something to behold. It was a good centimeter-deep layer of greenish-brown sludge. Lots of unsavory analogies came to mind. Sometimes it's better not to know how the sausage is made.

Rest stop

One of the hardest lessons to learn about homebrewing has been how much time you spend doing nothing at all. It's strange, because doing nothing is usually where I shine. After the initial boiling, cooling, and yeast-pitching, all I had to do was kick back for about a week and let those yeasts do their work.

And it was agonizing.

I'd put so much mental and physical preparation into the process, and now I found myself twiddling my thumbs. I felt like I should be doing more. So I padded into the basement several times a day, where I would cross my arms and frown at the fermenter like a concerned parent. "You doing okay in there, little guy? Everything all right?"

After about four days the vigorous bubbling in the fermentation lock had subsided. As that was my only visible sign that anything was happening inside the bucket, I found this distressing. Probably, it was a good thing: when the yeasts had run out of fermentable sugars to consume, they'd settle back at the bottom of the bucket, and my beer would be ready for bottling.

At seven days, I could wait no more. I sanitized my hydrometer and my beaker and prepared to take a sample. Although I struggled a bit with the lid, on account of being a weak-ass man, I was encouraged when the unmistakable smell of beer hit my nostrils. Not even skunked, half-empty-Bud-Lite-can-the-morning-after-a-party beer. Real, fresh beer!

It was hard to tell in the dim basement light, but when I brought my sample back upstairs I found that it looked like beer, too -- a dark, golden honey color. A healthy amount of sediment was still suspended in it, but overall I was encouraged.

The hydrometer reading was encouraging, too. The beer's specific gravity was registering at 1.016, without needing to correct for temperature. That was close to the target! The recipe called for a final gravity of 1.008-1.012. Considering that my initial sample had read much higher than what the the recipe called for, this seemed like a good sign. But it also seemed like I wouldn't lose anything by waiting a day and taking another measurement.

Back into the dark, dry basement it went. I would have to wait another day -- but not before tasting the little bit I'd measured.

Looked like beer, smelled like beer, and tasted like beer, too! It wasn't carbonated, which made for a strange mouthfeel, and it did seem a little tart on the finish, but overall I was optimistic. Or, let's say, "hoptimistic."

On second thought, let's not say that.

It's alive!

I couldn't have been more disheartened by the time I had sealed my fermentation bucket. It seemed like everything had gone wrong. Not only were my temperature and my specific gravity incorrect, but I had also freaked out and used a bunch of unsanitized equipment for reasons I can't even remember at this point. (I did at least run the new stuff under hot water for awhile, so, you know, I'm sure it's fine. I'm sorry, Charlie.)

Anything you read about homebrewing will casually tell you to store your fermenting beer in a dark place at 65-70 degrees. As though there aren't any cheap bastards out there who would shiver all day and night under three layers of blankets rather than turn up the heat and pay a slightly higher oil bill. Not that I know anybody like that.

At any rate, room temperature in my home during the winter months is lower than the recommended temperature for fermenting ale. It's about 60 degrees during the day. So I am probably the only homebrewer in history who has fermented his ale in the basement, because it is warmer than the rest of his house. I'm keeping it in the unfinished side of the basement, near the furnace, which is the warmest and driest part of the house right now -- not to mention the darkest.

After the calamity that had befallen the yeast-pitching portion of the brewing process, I was expecting the worst. I checked on my fermentation bucket a few hours after leaving it in the basement and thought I saw some condensation on the inside of the fermentation lock, but didn't know what to make of it. Probably, I thought, the whole thing is a failure.

The next day, first thing I went downstairs to see if anything was happening. I turned on the light and thought I saw something moving in the lock. I crouched and stared at it. Come on. Show me something.

The bucket burped.

Maybe that's not a correct description of what was happening, but it's what it looked like. The fermentation lock is a small plastic container half-filled with water. As I watched it, it continually belched out bubbles, sometimes violently. Those little yeasts were doing their job -- which, as I understand it, is to eat sugar and crap alcohol. This goop might yet turn into beer!

Of course, I still have to bottle it. And nothing so far has scared me as much as that.

Pitching a fit

I don't have any pictures of the next phase of the brewing process, when I took the wort off the heat and pitched my yeast. Why? Well, because it, uh, didn't go so well.

Once again, the instructions I had received with my kit didn't sync up with the advice that Charlie Papazian gives in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. Earlier, I had disregarded the kit's directions in favor of Papazian's, with success. Maybe it was in the spirit of fair play that, this time, I followed the kit instead of Papazian. Big mistake.

The directions with the kit recommended submerging the stock pot in a bathtub full of cold water when it came off the heat, for 10-15 minutes. I didn't have a bathtub handy, so I filled up my sink about halfway with cold water and stuck the pot in there once the wort was finished boiling. In the meantime, I added three gallons of cold water to my fermentation bucket. Papazian recommended pouring the boiling wort directly into the fermenter, but that sounded crazy!

Note to self: Never doubt Charlie Papazian again.

I was impatient. By 9 minutes, I took the stock pot out of the water and poured the wort into the fermenter. Then I added the remaining gallon and a half or so of water. I had previously added my 15g of yeast to 1/2 cup of lukewarm water to activate it, so all I needed was for the wort to reach the target temperature before I could add it. I was excited, not least because I knew that brewers called this part of the process "pitching the yeast" and I was excited to use the lingo.

"Honey!" I called to my wife. "I'm pitching my yeast!"

As soon as I stick my spoon and hand (I have a small spoon) into the wort to stir vigorously, as the directions advised, I knew something was wrong. You are supposed to pitch your yeast when it's at 70-80 degrees Fahrenheit, but this felt much colder than that.

Previously, I had used the thermometer that came with my brewing kit to measure the hot wort right off the stove. It wasn't sanitized afterward. I sighed and figured I at least ought to wipe it off before using it again. I grabbed a piece of paper towel. The second I touched it to the tip of the thermometer, the thing exploded. The little black spheres inside it -- who knows what they were made of -- spilled all over the counter. I had used this thermometer once, for about five seconds, and now it was broken. At least it didn't blow up in my beer, I guess.

First, I thought a candy thermometer might make a suitable replacement, but it turns out that those don't measure below 100 degrees F. Next I tried a meat thermometer, which read about 57 F, far lower than the 70-80 it was supposed to be. Was the thermometer accurate? I have no idea. But I had no other way to tell.

On the plus side, 60 degrees F is the appropriate temperature to measure your brew's specific gravity, which was the next step in the process, so even if my yeast was fucked, at least this ought to work. The kit also comes with a hydrometer, which I'm pretty sure I last used in eight-grade science class, and I think I hated it then, too. I filled up a beaker with some of my prenatal beer, dropped in the hydrometer, and spun it to dislodge air bubbles, just as the book said.

The directions said that my beer's specific gravity should have measured 1.035-1.040. It measured 1.050.

That's not a little bit off. That's way off. And I didn't need to correct for temperature, either, because the hydrometer was just about zeroed out.

What happened? What went wrong? I have no idea. Nothing bothers me more than when I think I've followed directions, and things don't work out. Granted, I obviously brought the temperature down too fast, but I wouldn't imagined that would have such an outsized effect.

Now, I worried. Would my yeast activate? Should I wait to bottle my brew until it reaches the final specific gravity that the recipe recommends, or until it drops by the amount that the recipe recommends? Again: they don't tell you this stuff.

I had no other choice. I closed the lid on the bucket, attached the fermentation lock, and put the bucket away. I expected the worst.

Wort, me worry?

All things being equal, I thought the first part of brewing my 8-Bit Ale went very well. First, I added 1.5 gallons of water to my 20-quart stock pot. (Tap water, as mentioned in the last post.)

Next, I poured the 1 pound of crystal malt into a muslin bag and knotted it. I dropped it into the stock pot and turned on the heat.

I brought the water to a boil, then removed it from the heat and let the malt steep for five minutes. Apparently you can check the temperature during this part of the process to make sure that you're getting everything right, but, again, I decided not to sweat it.

I was a little worried because the bag was only about halfway submerged in the water, and because lots of fine powder had escaped the bag in the transition from the counter to the pot. But before long, a dark toffee color was seeping from the bag into the water, and a rich sweet smell was permeating the air. The most interesting thing that happened during this step was that the grains started to pop under the heat, almost like popcorn.

While this was going on, I filled the sink with warm water and stuck my cans of malt extract in for a few minutes. Papazian had recommended this as a way to make the syrup easier to work with.

He was right! The stuff was incredibly thick. And sweet, too, as I noticed when I sucked a bit of it off my fingertips.

Next, I removed the grains from the pot, and added the syrup, the hop pellets, and the water salts.

The next stage was time-consuming, but easy. I simply boiled the concoction for 45 minutes. (The instructions I got with the kit said to boil for 30 minutes, but Papazian said 45, and in this case I chose to follow his advice. Later, I would learn that I should always follow his advice.)

During this time, I was blown away by the aroma. The dominant scent was a malty sweetness, girded by an earthy grain odor.

I was surprised by how many visible changes the wort went through while I was boiling it. At first, the hop pellets disintegrated and floated on the surface. After a little while, the wort formed a thick greenish coating that looked like pond scum. Then it disappeared, and for the last half or so of the boiling process the wort took on a deep caramel color.

The questions persisted: What does it mean to boil for 45 minutes? Do I want a violent boil, or more of a simmer? They don't tell you this stuff. For the most part I went with a rolling boil, but it was dangerous. At times, the liquid level surged nearly to the top of the pot, and only judicious stirring and alert heat control prevented it from boiling over.

During this time, I asked my wife to watch over the wort while I attended to some sanitization. I needed to clean my fermentation bucket, the lid, and everything else that would come into contact with the wort once it came off the heat. This wasn't too hard, although, again, I worried about the details. My kit came with something called "C-Brite." I had to mix one packet of it with a gallon of water. Seemed easy enough to do this in my fermentation bucket, and then sanitize the smaller equipment right in there. But what was I supposed to do?

I ended up dunking the equipment in the cleaning solution for several seconds, swishing it around to make sure every bit of the surface was sanitized. Then I rinsed it all under cold tap water and laid it out on paper towel. For the bucket itself, I grabbed some more paper towels that I sloshed into the solution, then up and around the walls of the bucket. I only did the top part of the outside, figuring the beer wouldn't and shouldn't come into contact with much of the bucket's exterior. Maybe this will end up poisoning me.

All told, I was happy with the way this part of the process unfolded. Everything seemed to go right. I added the ingredients at the right time; I sanitized everything, maybe even more than I needed to. So far, my first batch of homebrew was shaping up nicely. I could almost taste the 8-Bit Ale.

And that's when everything started to go wrong.

8-Bit Ale brewing begins

In the days leading up to my first attempt at a homebrew, my time was divided thusly:

• 40% worrying about technique
• 20% fantasizing about hops and malt
• 40% thinking of a name for my beer

On the name, at least, I'm pretty confident. I wanted something related to video games, and something that rolled off the tongue. "8-Bit Ale" fit the bill nicely. Seriously, say it out loud. "8-Bit Ale." Good, right? You want to drink it already.

Of course, the recipe I'd be following is one that thousands of other homebrewers had used. It's the one that comes with the homebrewing kit I got for Christmas, which was furnished by the fine folks at Beer and Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA. The kit included most of the equipment I needed. In reading the recipes, and Charlie Papazian's book, it seemed the major component I was missing was a stock pot big enough to boil my wort. The night before I was set to begin, I picked up a 20-quart stainless steel pot from Target, and got ready to brew.

8-Bit Ale was to be an "amber ale," one of three options included in the deluxe homebrewing kit from Beer and Wine Hobby. The ingredients were as follows:

• 2 cans malt extract (3.3 lbs each)
• 1 lb crystal malt
• 1.5 oz Hallertau hop pellets
• .5 oz water salts
• 15g yeast

To this, I would need to add 5 gallons of water. Thus began a recurring theme in my homebrewing experience: excessive worrying about possibly trivial things. Apparently master brewers take their water seriously, and make sure that the mineral content of the water is just so in each and every brew they make.

I thought about picking up some filtered water from the store, and I considered trying to filter 5 gallons through my Brita pitcher (which would only have taken about six hours or so), before deciding that I had enough to worry about, so I should use tap water. I mean, come on -- I drink my tap water all the time and I haven't turned into the Toxic Avenger yet. Let's just get started.

But, as I said, questions kept coming up. Remember when you were a kid and you were starting at a new school, there were a million things to think about, but the most important thing you were concerned about was where the bathroom was? That's how I felt when I started my batch of 8-Bit Ale. I was fascinated by the interplay of ingredients, by the chemical reactions that I would be orchestrating, and by the control I could finally exert over the beer that I would drink. When it came to the most basic logistical questions. I was terrified.

I wondered things like:

• Should I cover the stock pot when it's boiling, or leave it uncovered?
• How often should I stir it?
• Where will I sanitize my bucket?
• If I use the bucket for fermentation, what will I use to bottle?
• What the hell is "sparging?"

Just as in school, when you finally had to raise your hand and ask for the damn hall pass, eventually I needed to get started. You learn by doing, not by reading the first chapter of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing over and over.

It was time to get started.

Stress out. Worry. Have a homebrew?

I drink too much beer. I suppose it was inevitable that, one day, I would find myself trying to brew beer, as well. For economics alone, homebrewing is hard to beat. Spending just a few dollars, the homebrewer can concoct about 55 beers in a single batch. All it takes is a few hours of effort. There's nothing to it. Or is there?

That's what I intended to find out. This past Christmas, I received a homebrewing kit. Along with all the equipment -- siphon, fermenting bucket, bottle capper -- was a copy of Charlie Papazian's The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. Papazian is a homebrewing guru, basically the Dalai Lama of hopheads. His mantra, which he repeats over and over throughout the book, is:

Relax. Don't worry. Have a homebrew.

Sensible advice, which I completely failed to heed. In the days leading up to my first attempt at homebrewing, I was stressing out. No joke -- I had a nightmare in which my wort boiled over, my bottles exploded, and, worst of all, my beer was awful.

Even before I started, I had to wonder. Is homebrewing worth it? Why bother spending hours brewing beer, and then waiting weeks for it to be ready, when I can head to any corner store, drop a ten-spot, and come home with a six-pack and a decent night ahead of myself?

Hell, if you could explain what drives human beings to achieve anything, then you'd be the first person in history to do it. I had never thought about brewing my own beer until somebody gave me a push in that direction. Suddenly, I could think of nothing else. I imagined what new and unique recipes I'd want to try. I spent too much time thinking of a name for my "brewery." And I envisioned having a cellar full of spectacular brews, which I could hand to friends with a grin and say, "Yeah, I made this."

Off I went into the great unknown. Only one thing remained: to chronicle my first batch of homebrew for all the world to see. I may be stressing, and worrying, but one way or another, I will have a homebrew. Welcome to Second Draft Brewing.