So I thought I'd bring everyone up to speed on what I have done so far. I'm sure some of you are thinking that I must be crazy to think that I could successfully open a brew pub, but if you know me you know that I rarely do things without careful planning and calculation. For instance, I have been brewing for two years and only now have committed to blogging about it.
I first decided to start brewing when I moved into a house with five friends that played on the ultimate team with me. We were expecting to consume copious amounts of alcohol over the following year, so I was looking for a way to make that as cheap as possible. After all, I was a starving college kid. What better way to save money than making beer, right? I know, it's the first thought everyone has when they're trying to save money: 'make beer!'...or bathtub gin, but there isn't a lot of literature on bathtub gin so I thought beer would be a safer bet. I bought a homebrew kit from monsterbrew.com (prices aren't necessarily the best for everything, but they have good stuff and I've never waited more that 48 hours to receive my order). That was in October of 2009 and I haven't looked back.
The first beer I made was an ingredient kit that came free with the equipment. It was an amber ale. Nothing special, but it tasted good and was alcoholic. And since I invested $100 on the equipment, I knew I needed to brew a few more 5 gallon (~48 beer) batches before I had gotten my money's worth. So over the next few months I made three more beers: Oktoberfest, Irish Stout, and IPA. These were all TruBrew ingredient kits. Each batch was better than the last, and as I became more comfortable with the brewing process I really started to enjoy doing it. Not to mention giving someone a beer and telling them that you made it is friggin' sweet when you're in college. At that points, my final season of college ultimate was in full swing and the brewing was put on the back burner (no pun intended).
I moved to a new apartment, and when my brew partner, Clemente, returned from his one year stint abroad, he convinced me to go nuts with the brew. We ordered three more kits: German Dark, California Common, and Double IPA. For three weeks in a row we brewed. We probably would have done it every day if we could, but it takes a week to ferment and I didn't have enough bottles to hold all 15 gallons of beer. This also meant we needed to drink 50 bottles worth in 2 weeks time in order to make room for the third. That, of course, was less than a problem. Let's be honest, I brew because I love brewing, but I don't hate drinking it.
After those batches Clemente and I decided to go rogue. We abandoned the ingredient kits and started thinking outside of the box. This is about the time that we decided we wanted to brew for a living. (He has since moved to LA to pursue a movie related career, but there is a spot reserved in my theoretical brewery shall he ever return). We brainstormed some ideas, some great, some not so great, and came up with a Jalapeno Chocolate Stout. Not surprisingly, this received mixed reviews. Quite frankly, I'm still not sure if I liked it, but after three months of aging it showed a lot of potential. Next up was the Mango Double IPA. The original Double IPA was the best beer that we had made, so we decided to make that again, but add 6 lbs of mango. As with every beer that we've made, we chose to go overboard instead of coming up short. If I make that again I will probably decrease the mango and up the hops because it was a little sweet for my taste, but it was still delicious. (And 10% is a pretty number).
After the Mango Double IPA, I realized that the majority of the beers that I made are not great for the general public. They taste great and people that like that type of beer love it, but if I'm going to open a brew pub I need to start appealing to everybody. I decided at this point to actively start compiling a beer list for the pub. With that in mind my most recent beer was a spiced pumpkin ale. I made it around Halloween and put real pumpkin in it. This took the most work because I had to cook the pumpkin and make a spice tea on top of the usual brewing work. With a few adjustments this will make a great addition to the seasonal beer list.
For Christmas I received an 8 gallon brew pot. I got an iphone 4s and the pot, and I still can't decide which gift I like more! I plan on making the switch to all grain this week. Up next: Coffee Porter. In fact I am on my way to the homebrew store now.
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