It seems like a good idea to start the new blog with the story of how I got started brewing. Every story needs a beginning, right?
I first started home brewing in 1991 while spending a few weeks visiting a friend in Canada. There the VAT (i.e. sales tax) is really high and (the perception is at least) you can save money by brewing your own beer, fermenting your own wine or even rolling your own cigarettes.
My friend had had his eyes on a ‘Complete Home Brewing Kit’ at the local feed store for a while and was really enthusiastic at the prospect of brewing his own beer. With minimal effort he convinced me to go in halves for the price of the kit, which was $100 Canadian, or about $85 US. That was a lot of money at the time for a college student at the time. (Indeed Google tells me that $85 in 1991 was equivalent to $150 in 2016). Needless to say we quickly got over the sticker shock and bought the kit which consisted of everything we needed except a kettle and empty bottles. A kettle was acquired and emptying beer bottles was never going to be a problem for us.
The kit also came with an ingredient kit which consisted of a large heavy can of ‘Hopped Malt Extract’ (thick sticky goop to be sure) with a sachet of dry yeast of glued to the top and instructions on the back label.
We diligently followed said instructions which included adding a kilogram of sugar to the canned malt and boiling with a couple of gallons of water. (Theses ‘kits’ are called “Can and a Kilo” by home brewers). We added the mixture to enough water to total twenty liters, tossed in the yeast and waited patiently.
In our enthusiasm we started drinking the resultant beer the bare minimum of time suggested in the instructions after bottling. It was yellow. It was fizzy. It would get you drunk. That’s about all good I can say about it. Actually after a couple more weeks conditioning the last few remaining bottles were actually almost drinkable.
You might think the quality of the beer might have put me off home brewing, but really I couldn’t wait to brew more batches. Something about creating your own beer really appealed to me.
Well now you know how it all started, I hope you enjoy my continuing chronicles of favorite subject: Beer!