The Beauty of Home Brewing

Trafton B.

October 15, 2010 - 6:46 PM

In my eco-conscious attempts to support local agriculture I try to make regular trips to the Lane County Farmer's Market for produce. Just last Saturday I purchased my very first plant since arriving in Eugene over four years ago. It's was a small serano pepper plant that I keep in my room next to my expanse of east-facing windows...and, yes, I've already made a fantastic plate of nachos with them.

About two weeks ago, though, my roommates and I stepped up our endeavors to eat local to the next level. Drinking local. We've joined an elite group of ale enthusiasts known as home brewers. Who needs to buy beer when you can just brew it yourself at home? Plus, it helps when you have a local homebrew shop a few blocks away.

The Valley Vintner & Brewer on the corner of 13th & Oak hooked us up with a basic starter kit and the ingredients for our first batch, a Honey Orange Hefewiezen. Why did we choose a wheat beer for our first brew, you ask. Autumn seems likes a good time for a hefe (pronounced ‘heff'), and more importantly Scott at the Vintner told us that hefeweizens are the simplest beers; perfect for first timers.

I've been vigorously reading "How to Brew," the aptly named brewing book that came with the kit; don't worry, I'm still reading my text books too. It's all very interesting learning the science behind the entire process. The first stage of fermentation occurs in a big glass jug, called the carboy, where all the carbon dioxide is sucked out by airlock. The picture above shows my roommate, Steven, holding our carboy full of reshly brewed hefeweizen. Then after two weeks in the carboy we add some priming sugar and bottle the brew. Two more weeks of fermentation to carbonate the liquid and presto! Fresh homebrew.

The actual brewing/cooking of the beer is also really interestin. First you have to steep the grains in an oversized tea bag for thirty minutes. Then you "sparge" the bag - brewing terms for "ring out" - and add the barley malt extract along with the first round of hops to the remaining liquid. After an hour of that you add another quick round of Mt. Hood hops and specialty grains. In our case we added an ounce of orange peels and two ounces of chamomile flowers for the last ten minutes of the boil. This step is what adds the hints of flavor that we'll taste in the beer.

At the end of the day our house wafted with sweet, malty and fruity aromas. We poured the brew into the carboy and added the yeast before capping it and placing it in the basement.

Over the past ten days we've been hearing steady sounds of our bubbles floating to the top of our five gallon carboy. A foamy layer called the krausen formed nicely on the surface of the brew and leftover proteins and yeast sediment have settled to the bottom of the barrel where they form a brownish sludge called the trub (pronounced "troob"), all good signs of healthy fermentation.

The primary phase of fermentation is over and it's time to bottle the hefeweizen. After spending so much time and effort on brew day, it's difficult for first time home brewers to keep their mind off that first batch for two whole weeks. Not to mention having to wait another two weeks before you can drink it and see if you actually did it right. Rather than risk melting under the pressure of anticipation, the guys and I decided to find something else we to preoccupy our minds. We simply started brewing another batch last Sunday. Now we have 5-gallons of Northwest Mocha Porter conditioning right next to our hefeweizen, keeping it company.

This Sunday the brew crew will be back in the kitchen bottling the hefeweizen and racking - siphoning from one carboy to another - the porter, which is a recommended step for darker ales like porters, stout and IPAs. I'll let you know how everything goes after Sunday. Barring any major catastrophes expect to hear more when we crack open the first bottles of the hefe in two weeks.