Goldilocks Homebrewing

All brewers have different priorities with their upgrades. Some go for increased capacity immediately. Others go for temperature control. Some ignore temperature control and just brew specific styles like Belgians and sours that can benefit from higher temps.

The priorities with Goldilocks Homebrewing are particularly pronounced. I recommend a starting kit worth about $200 – $250 for all-grain brewing, and closer to $150 for extract brewing. Once you get a few batches under your belt and make sure that you actually like the hobby and understand the process, it’s natural to want to spend more on it. But as I’ve mentioned before it’s important to resist the temptation to just buy your way to better beer.

A lot of these upgrades aren’t totally necessary but they can be nice. And it’s fun to treat yoself once in a while.

For example, I recently picked up a digital thermometer on Amazon. I found that the Thermowand sells for about $25, which is a pretty nice discount compared to the Thermapen. I’ve only brewed a single batch with it, so I’m still adjusting my process a bit (turns out my manual thermometer reads a little warmer than the actual temperature), but I think it will save me a little time and allow me to be more accurate.

So I thought I’d put together two different lists. A list of my own upgrade priorities, and a list of what I think the upgrade priorities are for the homebrewing community at large (based on my admittedly limited knowledge). These are only major pieces of equipment, not things like tubing (which you’ll replace regularly) and bigass tubs of PBW and StarSan (which should definitely be on the top of the list before upgrading your equipment).

Goldilocks’ Priorities

1. Immersion Chiller (assuming you have no chiller) 2. Fermentor 3. Fermentation Chamber 4. Thermometer (manual to digital) 5. Refractometer 6. Boil Kettle 7. Gas Burner 8. Mash Tun 9. Pumps (assuming no pumps) 10. Plate Chiller (assuming you have an immersion chiller)

My list prioritizes a chiller, which can save a ton of time on brew day and ensure higher quality beer. Having a nice fermentor comes next. Buckets are great, but I have to say that I’ve loved my Spiedel. Temperature control is next, if you have the space and money, because it’s going to improve your brew and allow you to lager.

Anything that would increase capacity comes toward the bottom because I don’t think I’ll be getting off the stove anytime soon. And I just don’t think increased capacity is a priority. I guess it would be nice to brew slightly larger batches, maybe 8 gallons or so, since that’s the size of my fermentor, but I can’t imagine ever doing 15 or larger. I’m sure it’s not all that much extra work with the right setup, but it seems like a big investment, more stuff to clean, and more that could go wrong. I may eat these words in the future, but not until I’m out of apartment living.

Homebrew Community’s Priorities

1. Immersion Chiller (assuming you have no chiller) 2. Boil Kettle 3. Gas Burner 4. Mash Tun 5. Hot Liquor Tank 6. Pumps (assuming no pumps) 7. Plate Chiller (assuming you have an immersion chiller) 8. Fermentation Chamber 9. Fermentor 10. Refractometer

From what I’ve seen of the homebrewing community, batch size is the biggest immediate priority, which means building a set that can brew at least 10 gallons, more likely 15 to 20. This requires a gas burner (which itself requires a tank of propane) or an electric element, upgrading your kettle and mash tun to those sizes, and adding a hot liquor tank to your setup to save time on the whole process. And if you’re dealing with that much hot liquid, better pump it through a plate chiller into your fermentor.

The one area of similarity that we share is the immersion chiller. This is almost a basic necessity for homebrewing, and I include it in my list of equipment that gets up to $200.

Writing out a list like this might be a good idea for new brewers. It will help give you an idea of what your priorities are and how you might budget for the hobby in the future. Feel free to follow my lead, take the advice of others in the community, or to go your own route.

 I’ve given a lot of love to small beers so far, so I think it’s only appropriate that I turn my attention to bigger beers for a minute.

I’ve been working on an Abbey Dubbel since late November. I added Belgian candi syrup and (probably too much) table sugar on day three of primary fermentation. I bottled in mid-December after three weeks of primary fermentation. The beer had dried out to 1.004, far lower than the style. The original gravity was 1.066 and added another 0.04 points with the candi syrup and about 0.05 from the table sugar, which puts the true original gravity at 1.075.

If those are correct, then the beer is 9.3% ABV.

The good news is that it doesn’t overwhelm with alcohol, so the fermentation was clean.

I let the beer carbonate for two weeks, which may not have been enough (and/or I didn’t use enough priming sugar). I’ve been lagering them in the fridge for the past two weeks, so it’s coming up on two months since I first brewed these.

And it’s been nice. I brewed at a breakneck pace in the fall: altogether eight batches between August and December, so on average twice a month. I’m sure this is pretty standard fare for a lot of homebrewers who are putting out much bigger volume (and probably souring/aging a good portion of their product), but it was a lot for me. It’s been nice to ring in 2015 by chilling out a bit and waiting for this big beer to come through. It’s also nice to have a winter sipper.

A couple of notes:

1. Carbonating in the bottle takes at least two weeks, maybe more with big beers. I’m guilty of wanting to try out my beer as soon as possible, but it’s usually best to give the beer time to carbonate. Sometimes even three weeks or more may be necessary.

2. Let the beer age cold. Lagering can help a lot of different beer styles, and it’s as easy as putting bottles in the fridge. I haven’t noticed all that much difference with this Dubbel, but I had a Rye Saison that really improved in the fridge post-carbonation.

3. This is a tentative recommendation because I want to see if this beer gets bubblier when I take it out of the fridge, but skew your priming sugar additions on the high end as long as you are sure the beer has attenuated to the final gravity. If the beer hasn’t fermented out completely and you add more sugar, it could lead to bottle bombs. That said, if you’re certain it’s fully attenuated, add priming sugar to get 2.5-2.7 volumes or so to ensure you get a nice bubbly beer.

Are you looking to pick up brewing-related gifts for friends or family (or yourself?) this year? This can be an intimidating process, especially if you’re unfamiliar with homebrewing. I’ve put together a quick list of 10 things that should be on the top of any aspiring homebrewer’s Christmas list.

1. Goldilocks Homebrewing

Of course this is going to be on the top of the list. I think it’s a great, affordable guide to homebrewing that is easy to understand yet provides just enough depth for beginner all-grain homebrewers.

You don’t even need a Kindle to read this: You can access it on a laptop or desktop with the Kindle program, which is actually pretty handy because the book includes a lot of helpful web links. Only $5! This is a great digital stocking stuffer.

2. Starter Kit

A starter kit is the perfect place to start off any aspiring homebrewer. I highly recommend the MoreBeer starter kits. They include everything a brewer needs to get started, and all of them include free shipping.

3. Speidel Fermentor

If your homebrewer has already been brewing for a little while, then maybe they’re ready for an upgraded fermentor. These are high quality plastic fermentors that have wide-mouth access from the top and a spigot on the bottom: These make it super easy to transfer beer and to do things like harvest yeast and dry hop a beer. Highly recommended.

4. A giant container of PBW

PBW is a cleaning powder that’s used to remove crud from carboys and other containers. There’s almost never enough of it, and a big container of it will bring joy to any homebrewer. This is a great stocking stuffer…although the larger containers probably won’t fit in a stocking…and they probably cost a little more than ordinary stocking stuffers. But trust me, if you surprise the homebrewer in your family with an 8lbs container of PBW, they will love you forever and remember the gift.

These are available at local homebrew supply shops, online homebrew stores, and even Amazon.

5. A dedicated 3-quart pot

Are you tired of the homebrewer in your family stealing family cookware for brewing purposes? A dedicated 3-quart kettle is the perfect item to remedy this situation. Brewers can use it to boil up starter wort or priming sugar. This one is available on Overstock.com for a very decent price.

6. The Brew Bag®

I gave The Brew Bag® a hands-on review here. It’s great for brew-in-a-bag sessions or for use as a filtering device in a mash tun.

7. A giant container of Star-San

Star-San is for sanitizing containers after they’ve been cleaned so that no micro-beasties contaminant fresh wort. This isn’t quite as awesome as a giant container of PBW, but it’s bound to make you or your homebrewer happy. Nothing sucks more than running out of sanitizer right before you are about to brew.

Also available at homebrew stores and on Amazon.

8. Brewing Classic Styles

I recently read this book and was impressed at how it was detailed yet easy to understand. This is a must-read for anyone who is interested in serious homebrewing. It provides a detailed lesson on the history of beer styles and an award-winning recipe for every style in the BJCP guidelines.

8. An immersion wort chiller

If your homebrewer doesn’t yet have an immersion wort chiller and you have some cash to burn, then this would be a great gift. It’s going to cut down time on the stovetop (if that’s where your homebrewer is brewing), which could open up kitchen time for the rest of the household.

10. Designing Great Beers

If you or your homebrewer is toward the advance end of the brewing spectrum, then this is the book to get them. Ray Daniels text is the Bible for people who want to learn about historic beer styles and how to create their own recipes. Highly, highly recommended.

TL;DR

The Brew Bag® works great for full-volume, no-sparge mashes.

The Brew Bag® can function as a filter inside an ordinary mash tun for regular-volume mashes.

Efficiency doesn’t suffer greatly when usingThe Brew Bag®.

Clean-up is incredibly easy.

I’d been curious about the The Brew Bag® and Brew in a Bag (BIAB) brewing techniques (pdf) ever since I first heard about them because it seemed like such an easy way to brew. No trouble with a mash tun, no trouble with sparging. What’s not to like?

For those of you unfamiliar, BIAB is a technique where brewers use a finely meshed bag—often just a bag used to strain paint—to mash their grains in a full volume of water. Once conversion of the starches during the mash is complete, they simply lift the bag from the kettle, give it a few squeezes to extract as much wort as possible, and then continue on with the boil.

BIAB does have its difficulties. The grains can get very heavy, so many brewers using this technique install a pulley system in the ceiling of their garage and use ropes to pull the grains out. This sounded expensive and difficult (and I’m renting, so I can’t just drill into my ceiling), but I still wanted to see if a bag might work in the Goldilocks Homebrewing system.

The folks at brewinabag.com, purveyors of The Brew Bag®, make mesh bags that are designed for specific kettles and mash tuns. You’ll get a great fit no matter what kind of container you use—they’ll make one especially for you. The bags cost $30, so it’s about the same cost as buying plumbing to fit your mash tun. I’ve used one on two batches in my 5-gallon Igloo cooler mash tun over the past month.

One Gallon Batch

First I wanted to try a typical, no-sparge BIAB situation, so I put together a simple one-gallon batch of beer—a 100% Pilsner, Amarillo hop SMaSH (Single Malt Single Hop) beer. I was aiming for 1.25 gallons of 1.050 wort, so a total of 62.5GU (1.25 x 50 = 62.5), and I would leave the quarter gallon in the kettle. I assumed that I would get a slightly lower efficiency than normal and calculated everything with 65% in mind.

I mashed in my Igloo cooler in 2.5 gallons of water just to maintain the temperatures better, but I easily could have done this in my kettle.

brewinabag.com provides instructions about how much water you can expect to be absorbed by the grains and recommends mashing at full volume. I had signs of lack of conversion in an iodine test after an hour, so I let it mash longer. Part of this could be that my mash temps dropped into the 146F range by the end—less thermal mass with small batches mean you won’t hold the temperature as well. This probably wouldn’t have been a problem with larger batches and was no fault of The Brew Bag®.

When I was done, I simply lifted the grain from the cooler.

And plopped it down into a big pot.

I ended up with 2 gallons of wort at 1.032, which works out to 64GU total—right on the nose. This suggests that I was slightly more efficient than 65%, which is good: it looks like The Brew Bag® does not affect efficiency. I also managed to squeeze out about two cups of extra wort from the bag itself, which I froze and used to propagate yeast for my next batch.

I just bottled this beer and it’s carbonating at the moment, so I don’t know exactly how it turned out. It seems fine. I used dry yeast for the first time in a while, but after a super slow start I panicked and ended up pitching a small sample of British ale yeast I’d saved from previous batches. So I might have some sort of Franken-beer on my hands. This just goes to show you that equipment isn’t everything, especially mash equipment. Mashing is really just the first step, and yeast treatment is very important. I don’t think I’ll be using dry yeast again in the future.

Four Gallon Batch

As you may be aware, I don’t ever brew 5-gallon batches. I boil on my stovetop, so I’m not sure I could get that much liquid to boil. I’ve been able to get 5-gallons rolling for a 4-gallon batch, so maybe I should man up and try a 5-gallon batch sometime, but in general 3-4 gallons is enough beer for me.

I wanted to test The Brew Bag® as a replacement filtration device during a normal sparge, so I cooked up a recipe for a Belgian Dubbel from Brewing Classic Styles. This time I calculated everything at 70% efficiency. I was aiming for 4 gallons of 1.056 wort, which I planned to bump up to 1.064 using adjuncts during fermentation.

In the end, I decided to add more base malt to get me up to 1.062, so 248GU total. I wanted to make the beer stronger, and I felt like bumping up the base malt would also compensate for any inefficiency from The Brew Bag® (even though my first test showed no effect on efficiency using the bag).

I fly sparged as usual, and this is the data I got as I sparged:

1 gallon: 125F 1.074 = 1.084 = 84GU 2 gallons: 124F 1.070 = 1.080 = 160GU 3 gallons: 122F 1.060 = 1.069 = 207GU 4 gallons: 121F 1.046 = 1.055 = 220GU (An additional test at 4 gallons with the hydrometer just floating in my bucket of wort: 131F 1.043 = 1.054 x 4 = 216) (At this point the wort was running out at 144F 1.010 = 1.024) 4.5 gallons: 130F 1.040 = 1.051 x 4.5 = 229.5GU 5 gallons: 130F 1.035 = 1.046 x 5 = 230GU

The numbers started to get a little funny toward the end, and I think my final readings at 4 and 5 gallons may have been off, especially if the wort really was running out at 1.024. After boiling and cooling the wort, I had an original gravity of 1.066 and just over 4 gallons, which means about 264GU total…much more than I was going for, and about 75% efficiency. Additional testing will be necessary to see how efficiency fares.

BUT BACK TO THE REAL STORY, The Brew Bag® worked perfectly. The sparge slowed down toward the end. I was getting about 12 mins/gallon in the beginning which slowed to about 15-16 mins/gallon by the end. I got just about all the GU I needed, well within the style limits for Dubbels. I pitched a nice set of healthy yeast and had a vigorous fermentation. It’s been in the primary for about ten days now, and I plan to let it take all the time it needs.

Clean-up

Clean-up was a total breeze with The Brew Bag®. I drained the rest of what I could into a jar to save as starter wort (I managed to get about 6 cups of 1.035 wort), and then I pulled the bag out of the mash tun and set it in the tub.

When I pulled it out, I heard a soft burping sound, and a bunch of wort rushed out. This makes me think that toward the end I was starting to get a slightly stuck mash. Perhaps I could have tried to jostle The Brew Bag® a bit, recirculate for a quart or so, and then continued to collect wort. At that point, I’d already collected my volume, so it wasn’t a huge deal, but I might’ve been able to save more starter wort.

I ran some cold water through the spent grains to cool them down a little, and then I simply upended The Brew Bag® into a trash bag and threw it all away.

After dumping the grain, I washed down The Brew Bag® using the soft side of a sponge and dish soap before hanging it to dry.

All in all, I highly recommend using The Brew Bag®. Clean-up alone is worth the cost in my opinion. It saved me about 30 minutes of trouble draining and then tossing the spent grain, not to mention clearing all the plumbing of grain particles.

I’m curious to try it out again and gather more data about the efficiency so I can start to dial it in. If you were considering picking up The Brew Bag®, I’d say go ahead and give it a shot.

I worked all last weekend on a freelance translation job that had me digging deep into Japanese feudal history for names, places, and obscure religious vocabulary. When I came to from the project on Sunday afternoon, the Saints had already lost to the Bengals, the Packers were about to dominate Mark Sanchez, and I was a bit of a zombie. I needed a beer. But I didn’t want some 9% whale that would set me on my ass. I needed a small beer, something that would let me unwind over the course of several bottles.

So I cracked open the Mild I’d just brewed. 1.039 OG, 1.011 FG, which works out to 3.68% ABV. I used an early recipe from Jamil Zainasheff that is a bit heavy with the caramel and dark grains compared with his example in Brewing Classic Styles. But it works.

And I even split a pair of games of Carcassonne:

I did miss the perfect opportunity to immediately score a monastery, but I probably would have missed more than that if I was drinking a big beer.

Small beers aren’t just cheap, they’re great for unwinding and for Eurogaming.

I scored some birthday cash back in October and spent part of it on Brewing Classic Styles: 80 Winning Recipes Anyone Can Brew, a book I’ve been meaning to pick up for a while. It’s worth the price of admission. John Palmer provides some excellent insight about grain varieties in the introductory section, and throughout the recipes Jamil Zainasheff includes awesome nuggets of wisdom such as this:

Many new brewers mistakenly think it is necessary to increase the level of specialty malts when making a higher-alcohol beer. That is incorrect, and doing so will make an over-the-top version of the beer. The increased base malt will add the additional body, alcohol, and some malty flavors and aromas, so there is no need to change the specialty grain amounts, unless you are making a larger or smaller volume of beer. (125)

This is great to know…not something that I realized. I see this working really well with styles like Dubbel, Porter, Stout, Belgian Strong Ale and of course Scottish Ale, the section where this quote comes from. Basically any style that has a natural range of strengths built into it and that has a defining set of specialty grains that darken the wort.

Pick up this book ASAP. I think reading this alongside Ray Daniels’ Designing Great Beers might be the ideal way to learn how to make your own recipes.

Brewing, like many hobbies, invites obsession. There is pleasure in every aspect of the activity—not only in making and drinking the beer, but also in purchasing new equipment, new ingredients, new brewing literature, and new drinking paraphernalia.

If/when you aren’t getting as much satisfaction out of the making of the beer itself—perhaps you’ve produced a bad batch? or you feel like brewing bigger batches? or maybe you’ve run out of new styles to brew?—it can be tempting to try and buy your way either to happiness or to better beer.

Surely that digital thermometer will improve your beer. Or maybe a bigger fermentor. Or maybe you should start barrel-aging your beer. There’s no way your starters are good enough—you need that stir plate.

The problem with brewing is that the price ceiling is distinctly higher than most other hobbies/collections. If you rely on purchasing to get your kicks, it could end up costing a lot. Really the only other hobby that gets more expensive is cars.

Here is a good rule for brewing: Resist the temptation to make purchases in order to improve your beer.

Yes, you need to shell out some cash to get into the game. Goldilocks Homebrewing suggests that you probably need about $200 to get set up for all-grain homebrewing. And you might consider spending up to $300 or so to make certain upgrades if you’re sure that your in the game for the long haul.

But before you go beyond that, get some reps in first. Learn the process. Develop a palate for different grains and hops and their effects on beer. Practice treating your yeast with care.

And then go out and buy that shiny new piece of equipment. You brew the beer, not the equipment. Resist thinking otherwise.

Do you know what this is?

A hydrometer and a funnel, you might say. And 6oz of beer in a hydrometer sample tube.

And you would be correct.

But this isn’t just any sample. This is 6oz of beer being fermented at near-peak krausen, 48 hours after pitch. I had to swing my ladle like a scimitar to clear away the foam. The sample was rife with suspended yeast…and delicious. I pitched on Sunday night and drew off this sample on Tuesday night. All I needed was the ladle, the funnel, and a sample tube thanks to my Speidel fermentor, which has a wide mouth opening.

This is not something I would’ve done when I first started brewing. I would’ve been hesitant for several reasons:

1. I don’t want to infect the beer!

This you shouldn’t worry about if your techniques are sound. Just make sure to sanitize the ladle, funnel, sample tube, and hydrometer, and you’ll be okay to return the sample to the batch afterward. Or you can drink it, which is what I usually do. Use a spray bottle full of StarSan or your sanitizing solution of choice and you’ll be unlikely to grow anything off your equipment. You should make sure everything is clean and free of organic matter before you sanitize or else it won’t be as effective.

2. I don’t want to waste the beer!

What are you crying about? It’s just 6oz. You’ve lost half a bottle. If you’re that precious about your beer, then you might have some dependency issues. And don’t forget Issue 1 above—you can always return the sample to the batch as long as you’ve sanitized well. Or you could brew a slightly larger batch to account for a few bottles worth of samples during the fermentation process. That way you can enjoy tasting the beer as it develops during the fermentation process.

3. I can’t get to my beer, it’s in a carboy!

Just siphon it out! Or pick up a cheap wine thief (also sanitized) that will reach into your carboy. There’s really no excuse for access, especially when wine thieves cost $10 or less.

And never forget the reason why you draw samples: Measuring gravity is the only reliable way to judge whether fermentation is complete.

My Robust Porter started at 1.059 beer, and after two days at 67F it had already dropped to 1.027, which is 4.2%ABV. Not bad. I’m hoping it will drop another 0.010 or so at least. I’ll be measuring it every few days to see where it ends up, and I’ll know when it’s done and ready for the bottle.

If the glove fits, you must use it.

I picked up these plastic gloves from Walgreens a few months ago and have been using them regularly during brew day and pre-/post-brew day cleaning. They are a lifesaver. Previously I’d just been dipping my hands straight into buckets of PBW and StarSan solutions and then rinsing them clean. As you can imagine, this did a number on my skin–I guess I felt like I should just “man up” and deal with it.

Think again. These solved the problem and cost less than $3. I recommend these over the single use gloves (which comes in packs of 10 or so). I even use these for washing ordinary dishes sometimes.

Whatever you do, just don’t smell the glove.

The American Homebrewers Association is great not only because they put out the magazine Zymurgy (free for members), which is filled with great recipes and interviews with/articles by brewing luminaries. Not only because they lobby on behalf of homebrewers everywhere to make state laws more open to our hobby. Not only because you get generous discounts at many pubs and local homebrew shops.

They are also great because they put on free rallies hosted by local breweries. These events include raffles, brewery tours, and, yes, free beer.

I missed one at Revolution earlier this year, but this past Sunday was my birthday and, as luck had it, the AHA held another rally, this time at the new Lagunitas brewery in Chicago.

They had an open bar with a full lineup of taster-size beers (although they broke out the big cups later on in the afternoon). They took us on a floor tour of the facility (which is just enormous). They fed us BBQ. They gave away three stainless-steel conical fermentors in a raffle (in addition to a huge stack of brewing books and some other goodies).

And they sent us home with vials of Lagunitas yeast.

Quite a party favor. So if you’re not already a member, I recommend joining.

I’m in the middle of brewing a set of English beers, so I’m going to try and freeze this yeast. Currently reading up on that practice and will post more about it here later.

I just finished brewing a Mild yesterday. It’s in the fermentor bubbling away at about 167F, but the gravity is a bit higher than I was planning. I ended up at 1.039-1.040 when I was aiming for 1.038. Initially I had 1.043 until I added a quarter gallon of water before pitching the yeast.

I thought back through my process and can attribute the higher gravity to two things: 1) I boiled off more water than I expected and 2) my efficiency was higher than the 70% I planned.

After the sparge, I ended up with 4.5 gallons of 1.036 wort, which is a total of 162GU. My expected GU was 152, and the max potential GU was 217.27, so I was closer to 162/217.27 = 75% efficient.

I might have been a few percentage points over 70 during most of my brews, but I close enough, and often I hit my targeted original gravity right on the dot. So I’m pretty sure that two things caused this: I mashed out with hotter water than normal and kept the grain bed at a slightly hotter temperature during the sparge. Rather than dump in water at around 175-180F, I boiled two quarts separately in a small pot and dumped it in at around 210F or so, close to boiling.

I sparged with water at 170-180F or so, which kept the grain bed above 160F. I’m not sure if I ever got close to 170F (the recommended mash out temperature), but I was definitely closer than in previous batches.

I also boiled off .75 gallons, slightly more than the .5 gallons I usually boiled off, which will be important to note in the future.

The key takeaway, though, is this: Raising the temperature of the grain bed with a significant mash out and maintaining that temperature during the sparge will increase your efficiency.

I think it might be time for me to start calculating recipes with 75% efficiency.

You can grow your starter at room temperature.

Whether or not you decant the spent wort on top of your yeast is up to you.

At pitch your yeast should be within five degrees (F) of your wort.

It’s best to pitch a few degrees cooler than your target fermentation temperature and let the yeast warm up than to pitch a few degrees warmer and cool the yeast down.

$12.38 for four gallons of beer. That’s what it’s going to cost me to brew a Mild this weekend. Target OG of 1.038, but I’d be fine with 1.035. I’m going to try and pitch yeast from my last batch (Wyeast 1469 – West Yorkshire). I just rinsed it and put it into a 2qt batch of wort. We’ll see how it does.

It should produce 40 bottles or so, which works out to 30 cents a bottle. Not bad at all.

The closest I’ve ever come to having a “Murakami Moment” was during the celebratory dinner after my high school graduation. We went to the Crescent City Brewhouse in the French Quarter. I’m not sure whose genius idea it was to take a bunch of 18-year-olds to a brewpub, but we had dinner (no booze, of course) and then went to Tipitina’s for an all night party: The real goal of the dinner and celebration was to keep us all out together somewhere safe with a moderate level of supervision.

But the damage had been done: As we were leaving the brewpub I caught sight of a giant mural on the wall that depicted the entire brewing process from grain to glass. (I can’t remember what it looked like, but in my mind it’s rendered by Diego Rivera.) I decided then and there that I would brew beer that summer.

Although the Internet was still in its infancy, John Palmer had already uploaded his book How to Brew, which had all the information I needed. Fortunately I also had two friends up for the challenge and a local homebrew shop that was willing to outfit us. (Alas, that homebrew shop did not survive Katrina. RIP Brew Ha Ha.)

We bought kits, boiled them up, threw them in a carboy, and sure enough they fermented for us. We never measured anything and only barely kept the fermentations at reasonable temperatures. That’s how I brewed for a long time until—13 years later—I finally managed to get through Ray Daniels’ Designing Great Beers and upgrade to an all-grain brewing setup.

But going all-grain wasn’t easy. You can still buy all-grain kit beer, but I was determined to brew less blindly than I had been before. It was also frustrating to dig through the resources for building equipment, many of which assume endless supplies of money.

Once I got everything going, I started putting together my own explanations. The result is “Goldilocks Homebrewing.” I’m not a great homebrewer (yet), but I am a good teacher and a decent writer, and if you’re just getting started, I can help you.

Pre-order now, and the book will be out on November 1st, which is conveniently Learn How to Brew Day!