Healing Elixir

I'd previously written a short blog about, what is essentially the same story, just not in as much depth. I only revisit the story to explain my absence from what used to be one of my favorite hobbies. 

Much like a writers block, I feel like I've had a 'brewer's block'.  Unlike my writers block, however, it's not too hard to pin down the cause. The last time I brewed a batch of beer was, obviously, with my dad, and it was one of the best memories I have with him. We spent time out in his garage constructing what would be an untested and unproven brewing apparatus. Neither of us knowing if it would really work or not (it did), but (myself, anyways) not really caring either way. We were just having fun building something out in the garage. When it was finished, we tested everything out live - no dry runs for us. The style of beer to be brewed was initially to be an 'American Brown'. I wanted to tweak the recipe a bit, however, and make it a tad bit darker than the last time I brewed a brown - which was for wedding favors.

This wouldn't be a problem. I knew my styles, I knew my ingredients, and I knew my limits. We weren't going to over-hop it, and we weren't going to go with too much chocolate or black patent malt. I was shooting for the 'Brown', but a tad darker was fine. The whole brewing process was a complete blast. I'd never been able to explain the step by step process to anyone, and dad was eating it up. Watching him was like watching a kid at Christmas.  He was soaking in every bit of information as if I were going to be turning him loose on the next batch. He helped any time he could get his hands on a piece of equipment, and was there to offer the occasional words of encouragement. All in all, the process was over in the blink of an eye because I was having just as much fun as he was.  We ran into one little snag, however. The piece of equipment we built worked great, I just designed it with a minor oversight. It was a design flaw on my behalf, but it didn't ruin the batch.

 

While we were in the garage after having poured the wort into the lauter tun, a leak sprung in the new spigot apparatus we just made. The wort was a piping 170°, so trying to plug the hole with 170° liquid shooting all over my hands was a bit uncomfortable. We were able to get everything fixed though without losing too much of the liquid. It was because of that one little mishap that I will forever look back and laugh about how fun that day really was. It didn't go perfect, but it you couldn't tell by drinking what eventually be our 'Porter' (it was just too dark to call an American Brown anymore).

We brewed it, waited out the fermentation period, bottled it, and waited out the carbonation period. 4 weeks later, it was finally time to taste the finished product. I can, to this day, remember my dad's reaction to tasting the beer he had a hand in creating for the first time out of that frosty mug. If the entire process of making the beer wasn't perfect enough, watching him enjoy our hard work certainly was. Those that knew him, undoubtedly know the one word he said after taking that first drink. And outstanding it was. Smooth, but packed full of coffee, and smokey chocolaty flavor. It had decent foam retention, and the carbonation wasn't too much. This was by far the best batch I'd tasted since I stared brewing, so I was pleased.

To this day, there are still quite a few bottles of those beers at my mom's house. I'm not sure if they're any good or not anymore, but the one I had last year was still drinkable.  I just could never bring myself to drink them all. I don't know why, and I understand it's pretty silly...it just didn't feel right.

Since then, I've all but forgotten about brewing. It was what dad and I would talk about when we would smoke cigars. It wasn't something that I did on my own for the sake of doing it; it was something I did so that we could share it.

So here we are, a little over 3 years after he passed, and I have finally decided to blow the dust off of the equipment. I think this time around, I'm going to chronicle the process a bit better. I'll be certain to post my results when it's finished.