The Homebrewing Adventure Begins

The day has finally arrived. After a decade of enjoying mass-market beer, it is time to start brewing my own. Of course, I'm not going it alone. Chris, seasoned brewer that he is, will be right there with me.

Our big box of supplies made its appearance yesterday, much to everyone's excitement. We're starting from scratch so had to buy all the equipment in addition to ingredients. Despite the laundry list of items, it all got to us within a week. Gold star for Northern Brewer.

Chris, a lover of spreadsheets and all things data, got together a mondo list of everything we'd need. But naturally, the most difficult part was choosing a beer to brew. We opted to steer away from the beer kits this time around.

After checking out a couple websites, we ultimately settled on the Beer Recipator. Mainly because of the name.

The aim was to make something that's hard to screw up (we're not a go big or go home kinda crowd). We'll take it easy at first, slowly building up our expertise and yeasty chops. So we fell back on my eternal favorite - the German wheat beer - and chose a pretty basic one at that. You can check out the recipe here.

We made a slight modification: Because we couldn't find Hallertauer hops in full-bud form (only pellets), we're not going to use them in the aroma stage, opting instead to just add a little extra Cascade. 

There's a small homebrew shop about 20 minutes away from our apartment, but we decided online was the way to go. Not only do I feel like I'm in a feed store looking for rabbit food every time I go, the prices are a bit high. And Northern Brewer has pretty much anything you could ask for. Of course, the store gets a point for having a very knowledgeable staff that you can poke and prod with specific questions or for general guidance. But probably not the way to go if you need to stock up like we did.

Opening up the box was like Christmas all over again. Chris found a unmarked, padded envelope in the mix and dove for it. "This must be the yeast!" he giddily exclaimed.

It was. And straight into the refrigerator it went, bringing the hops along for company.

Additional necessary ingredients: a five gallon pot for cooking up all the ingredients, like oatmeal or a really lumpy soup; giant tubs for bottling and yeast priming. We already have a 5 gallon glass carboy.

He's so proud.

The full spread is really something to behold. You can see how shocked Domo is. The Activator's still in the fridge. But here we've got the equipment, grains, flaked wheat, German malt, wheat malt extract, hops making a brief appearance, some more yeast for future batches (champagne, mmm!) and corn sugar, oh my! Anxiously counting down the hours before we can these guys to good use.