I’ve got a bit of time to kill here while this video renders at work here (about a 30 minute process for five minutes of video) so I thought I’d take a second or two to talk beer.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my wife got me a home brewing starter kit with a winter ale to get me started. I’m quite excited to start this first batch and document the process along the way with photos and video. I may even put something together like what my buddy did for French pressed coffee, complete with music and voiceover instructions. I’ve got some decent editing gear/software at my disposal, so maybe that’ll be a project for February when my first batch is done.

I’ve been curious as to what really makes a good beer after reading through the complex, careful instructions — so much goes into the process between preparing and boiling, sanitizing, the two fermentation cycles, and the bottling process. But I was still left wondering, what’s beyond the kits that you can buy and what really makes the flavor unique to each beer?

I headed out to the WYeast site for more information about the particular yeast used in my kit and came to discover the MANY different types of yeast used in ales, lagers and such. I guess I didn’t realize just how much of a role yeast plays in creating the flavor that goes into a beer. You hear so much about the hopps and grains in the commercials but you never hear anything about yeast. From what I’ve read alone on that page, yeast plays just as much of a role in flavor as do the hopps and grains and mixtures.

Perhaps after having done a few pre-packaged kits I’ll try mixing it up a bit with different types of yeast with different hopps and grain mixtures. I really want to figure out how to make a nice chocolate-espresso stout. I think that’d be so cool — maybe even with subtle notes of mint in there.

Anyway, the brew process starts tonight with the boiling of the ingredients. I’ll try to blog about it a bit tonight.

December 28, 2005, 4:19 pm

Filed under: Mmm...Beer

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