PART 2
This is the evolution of my brewing journey. From the first beers I have made to where I am today as well as a guide for beginners who are not sure where to start. And to the expert brewers who can relate, or get a laugh from the madness that occurs.
I made my first beer in 2012 with limited knowledge limited resources and on my own. After I had made my second beer I had some friends over to sample the 2 styles I had bottled and to have a bit of a piss up. Through this I had discovered one of my friends used to brew beer and had gone through much of the same problems I had run into. Becoming a great resource and brewing buddy he has one of those photographic memories and knows what yeast and hops are used for what styles without looking at notes or reference tables. Finding out I was just getting into brewing sparked him into getting back into the craft.
I stayed the course with all grain beer trying more complex beers or flavoured beers. I had smoked a pumpkin on the barbecue and made a pumpkin spiced pale ale and a peppermint cocoa milk stout along with many others. My friend went the other way and stuck with extract beers calling them craft dinner of beer quick to make easy to drink and everyone will like them. He went right to kegging and when needed to take beer with him he had 2 litre pop bottles with a tire valve in the lid. he would fill the bottle from the keg then hit it with some co2 and away we went. The brewing process he used was not too different, but much quicker. Boil the malt extract on the stove top for few minutes add some hops add cold water and ferment. One week in the fermentor then right into the keg with the out tube cut a bit shorter so not to pick up the sediment at the bottom. He would secondary in the keg. It was great in the winter as we would put the keg outside in the snow. Everyone enjoyed the beer we were making but mine were to complex and not every liked the style or would only want one. I would end up with a lot of bottled beer left over and much of it would go to wast or i just wouldn't brew again until i had gone through the batch. where as with the other way of Kraft dinner beers we would go through the kegs fast but it was lacking quality and some times very green but were brewing more consistently.
We decided to combine our brewing styles in the form of and annual advent Calendar. We made 25 different styles of beer staring in October and getting a bunch of friends together for a Christmas party and go through that advent calendar in one night. The task was divided up between the 2 of us and we would do 3 runs together. We would start with a base either grain or malt extract or both then put it in a mash. During this time we would steep some specialty grains or mash in a smaller pot, when it came time for the boil we would separate the base into 3 pots then create the different styles, adding in the steeped grains or smaller mashed grain bill. We were getting 1.5gallons of three different style beers out of one base being able to change the profile and hop schedule for each boil. Making this happen was a gong show as there would be a few of us on the brew night and we would also be drinking making it harder to follow all the steps needed. The 3 separate boils needed to be staggered as we needed to time the cool down so it would be one after another and we could get it into the fermenters right away. this was all happening outside half in the garage and half out on the driveway in the cold north west at 130 2am by the time we were ready to chill the boil. with a solid buzz and an absolute mess we managed to continue this tradition for 4 years with amazing beers made and some wild flavourers and quite a few hang overs. By brewing this way and the time Frame to do it in we had discovered where we wanted to go with how we brewed, a determination to make great beer in as little as time possible with the least amount of equipment the evolution to brewing efficiently and regularly and not having too much product.