Ducks @ Oregon - University of Oregon

Brewin'

Peter E.

January 30, 2010 - 8:03 PM

With my twenty-first birthday right around the corner, I've grown impatient and decided to take matters into my own hands: I'm brewing my own beer. My interest in home brewing has been growing over the last year, and I finally decided to pull the trigger and buy a beer making kit.

I preface this post to explain that my desire to brew goes beyond my bestial appetite for beer. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I enjoy cooking, so brewing is a great way to broaden my culinary expertise while gaining an appreciation for the art of brewing. In addition, the sustainability classes I'm taking instill in me a desire to understand my transportation, consumption, consumer habits, etc. Thus, brewing my own beer requires less transportation for materials, reuses bottles, and utilizes locally grown hops. For this reason, it has ecological benefits as well because I reduce my carbon footprint while learning about local agriculture and culture (microbrews are huge in Oregon). Finally, brewing my own beer is cost effective; now that I have the equipment, it only costs about $25-30 for the ingredients per brew. In other words, my beers will be about the half the price compared to buying six packs of microbrews from the store. For these reasons, brewing has many personal benefits, not to mention it's a fun, stress relieving activity.

Hence, I made my way down to Valley Vintner & Brewer  today to pick up my supplies. Valley Vintner is located on 13th and specializes in home brewing and winemaking equipment and ingredients. My roommate Jeff and I browsed their recipes and settled on "Quaker's Revenge Oatmeal Stout." An employee helped us assemble the ingredients, and I was set to brew.

Once we returned home, I read some of the "Joy of Home Brewing" book that came with my kit, and figured out the steps needed to make my beer. I discovered that it's a fairly simple process that requires some careful attention. Essentially, the steps are as follows:

1. Steep the oatmeal and grains to bring out the sugars.

2. Add the "tea" of sorts (known as a wort) to water and the malt extracts and stir until dissolved.

3. Bring that all to a boil and add hops throughout the boil.

4. Let the wort cool and then put it into a sanitized fermenter.

5. Add yeast to the fermenter. The yeast goes to work eating the sugars and producing the alcohol.

6. Cap the fermenter with a sanitized blow-off tube to allow excess carbonation and fermentation to release.

I'll now let the beer ferment for a week or two, add sugar, and then bottle. The remaining yeast eats the sugar to give carbonation to each bottle, and then the beer is ready to drink after about two weeks. In other words, I will have beer in about three to four weeks; conveniently, just after my 21st birthday. I'll keep you posted as to how it turns out. Cheers!