So I’m just starting the boil on my cheer beer and I’m for some reason in a deep thought mood. Since my wife is at best faking interest in the details of homebrewing I’m turning to my friends on the AHA forum who hopefully understand! So here they are in no order:
-More isn’t always better…my last cheer beer had just about every spice in the cabinet and every grain you could buy. A year later I’ve learned simple is often better and more flavorful.
-No one brewing session has, or ever will, go to plan. I will at some point burn myself, forget the sparge water, have a boil over, forget to put my manifold into the cooler until after I’ve added the scalding hot water, etc
-Drinking the perfect homebrew for that moment means I had better plan 3-6 months out, because a lager just can’t be made in an afternoon
-I love my friends but not their beer selections…we just had a backyard brew off and to my amazement the beers that won were something close to the macro lagers and not anything worth actually trying…this may make me a beer snob but at the end of the day there’s just too many good beers out there to try
-Homebrewing has made me something of a local celebrity, but it also means people expect me to provide ALL the beer at a party/wedding/BBQ. Reference the thought above about my friends taste, plus beer for everybody I know gets expensive and I’m to the point of not having many “friends” anymore (close circle of friends would be ideal)
-I love homebrewing and dream of the day when I own my own bar with microbrewery…but that may just be a dream. At that might just be ok because I have a lot of fun brewing…why ruin a good thing?
Anyway this is just a random thought process that needed to get out and be heard by somebody somewhere. Thanks all!
My wife will not fake her interest in homebrewing-she has none. But she loves what has become the homebrewing"lifestyle".
People who brew their own beer, make their own soap or even just cook from scratch are more interesting than people who don’t.
2. Places where the natives enjoy good beer are great places to vacation, even if beer is not a priority for her.
3.Do not try to please everybody. A very good friend who is a Coors Light drinker told me at a recent cookout that even though he doesn’t like the styles of beer I brew he does appreciate the quality of the product I serve my friends.
I don’t provide free beer on a “to go” basis. I’ll drink with anybody, however much they want under my shade trees, but I’m not a free take out service.
My wife started my homebrewing addiction with a kit in 1992 and is very happy with where that has taken us, even though my brewing stuff takes 2/3 of the garage and may account for 1/3 of our electric bill. She never has to worry that I’m in town drinking at a bar, chasing floozies and dodging the law-she knows I’m right here where the best beer in town is.
I like #4 . . A lot of folks around me have learned about growlers, and assume I’m more than ready to accommodate their desire to have it filled . . . ???
My wife loves the hobby and she’s doing her best to learn everything about beer and try different ones. She’s helped me brew some days. She’s stirred in extract and loves adding the hops to the beer. She’s very supportive of it and says she can’t wait till I can take it outside when we get a house (We’re in an apartment now with an electric stove). I told her this means some equipment upgrades and she just smiled.
Same with my wife, we’ve met good folks and enjoyed ourselves at many microbreweries and a few homebrew competitions.
Keep it simple and more is less, this is easily said but it takes real discipline to carry through. I have a real bad habit of throwing the kitchen sink in every brew.
My wife finally found her gateway beer. Actually it was pear cider. Our local beer hut stopped carrying the only wine they had that was decent so she was forced to try something on tap - the cider. From there she has discovered wits and hefeweizens. Now she suggests going to brewpubs. :) But she put a hurtin’ on my pumpkin weizen. :( Just have to make more
Even before her beer conversion, she was hip to the coolness of the beer crowd and liked hanging with them. There’s a YouTube video out there with Sam Calagione talking with Ken Grossman where Sam says that he likes the brewing community because it is 98% a$$hole free. Maybe the clip is from Beer Wars? Anyway, I can’t agree more.
I can see the formal competitions with truly accredited beer judges, but informal stuff tends to just go to the hoppiest IPA or the closer beers to BMC. So, I have decided not to enter anything until I feel I have enough to justify giving a bunch of it away to strangers. For now, my friends are all the approval and affirmation I need to keep brewing and learning.
