Hipster Beer: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love to Brew

I've been into quality beer since I started college.  Unlike most college freshmen who have their friend with a fake ID get them 30 packs of Keystone Light or Natural Ice, I asked for a 12-pack of Samuel Adams (brewer, patriot) Boston Lager, with no experience of that beer whatsoever.  What drew me to a quality craft beer and not a mass produced Budweiser, Miller, or Coors?  I have no idea.  But that was the first of many purchases of quality beer during my college years; I even spent the extra money for a keg of Sam Adams for my 21st birthday!

And toward the end of my undergraduate career I met guys who brewed their own beer.

Their own beer!

Brewed at home!

Pumpkin Beers Are Coming!

Fall is fast approaching, only one month of summer left, and with that come pumpkin beer.  In my experience pumpkin beers fall on a continuum where one end is watery nutmeg "ale" and pumpkin pie (my favorite pie) in alcoholic liquid form is the other, with more at the weaker end.  With this being my first autumn brewing I'd like to brew something with pumpkin, and a fellow homebrewer gave me a recipe he found in the WSJ.  I've been looking forward to it but upon reading it closely this weekend (I start thinking about my next brew the moment after I pitch the yeast and put on the blow-off tube) I found it lacking.  One, it uses dry malt extract (DME).  Now, I'm not against the use of DME in homebrewing.  I'm a 1-gallon brewer, or nanobrewer as the aforementioned friend calls me and my labmate who also homebrews in 1-gallon batches, and have been brewing all grain since my first batch.  I can see in the more traditional 5-gallon homebrewing DME is easier with the larger volumes of grain and water, but I'm going to stick to all grain in my single gallon brewing.

Back to the WSJ pumpkin recipe.  In addition to the use of DME, the recipe overall seems very ad hoc, which is fine, and I think my experience will allow me to create an all grain version of this recipe, but for my first pumpkin beer I'd like it to be from an all grain recipe with a little more structure.  Also, I've been interested in brewing a porter.  

My doorway into nanobrewing is the Brooklyn Brew Shop's Beer Making Book:

 (available here)

Written by two Brooklyn hipsters who have all of what NYC has to offer, I've found their recipes easy to follow but a little fancy, and that's OK!  This book has a peanut butter porter I was thinking of brewing when I found the WSJ recipe lacking, but of course Google came to the rescue with this recipe.

A Pumpkin Porter!  The two things I wanted to brew next in one recipe!  Stoked, I can't stop reading and reading the recipe, mulling over and think of minor changes I'll make to the grain bill, spice additions, mashing and sparging, etc...

So if you're in Cleveland around Halloween I should have this bottled, gassed, and ready to drink by then.

Happy Brewing!

Introduction

I've been posting news and photos on FB about my home beer brewing since I started in February, but would like to have something more general and not restricted to FB's photo albums.  Also, that search isn't easily searchable and archivable, so I've decided to become a blogger, over a decade after my first blog read.

I'll be posting photos, talking about my homebrewing experience, musing about the whole thing, and sharing my ups and downs over it all.

So if you read this, welcome.  Feel free to comment and please be respectful.