![]() ![]() In fact, before the advent of the German Purity Law some five hundred years ago, most brewers used a blend of botanicals known as gruit to impart character to their ales. Hops tend to garner more attention than malts when it comes to marketing craft beer, but malts turn out to be the more essential of the two. Most kits include a mesh bag of specialty malts to steep in the wort, adding more art to the process, as well as yeast, seasonings like citrus peels and coriander, and, of course, hops. (He ended up with a decent beer, as well as a tremendous mess-he recommends that beginners stick with extract for at least a few batches.) Now, the typical kit contains a recipe and ingredients for brewing a particular style-having somehow pegged my preferences, Lane is showing me the kit for a Belgian IPA-using the extract method. Lane explains how much these kits have improved over the years, telling me how his first homebrewing experience was so boring that he switched to the all-grain method on his second try. Anyone can do this.Ī few days later, when I stop by local homebrew supply shop Southwest Grape & Grain, owner Donovan Lane echoes this refrain as he cracks open one of the recipe kits he recommends to first-time brewers. He’s rigged the burner from a turkey roasting kit to use for the boil-the next step of brewing, where the wort is boiled and hops added-and his ingenuity reinforces his point. ![]() In a few minutes, he’ll use gravity to strain the sugary wort into a steel pot below. He’s soaking malts in a cooler fitted with a strainer and a spigot and perched on the broad shelf he built into a short ladder. “All you really need is a pot and a bucket.” Satterthwait likes to build, and the system he’s using is a touch more elaborate. “Anyone can do this,” insists brewer Troy Satterthwait. Beginning brewers usually skip this step-some homebrewers are content to use the simpler, cleaner extract method for years-but most will eventually decide that they want to start their beer from scratch. Like most of the brewers here today, they’re using the all-grain method, in which malted barley grains are soaked in hot water so that their starches will (with the help of enzymes like alpha- and beta-amylase) break down into fermentable sugars. They’re currently preparing to rinse the mash to extract all the sugars from the grains-a process known as sparging that follows the mash and results in wort, or unfermented beer, which I’ve just sampled. What I taste is earthy and slightly sweet, almost closer in profile to a condensed vegetable broth than to the amber ale the Crawfords will be enjoying over the holidays. Awash in technical terms and pictures of chemical bonds and chains, I’ve jotted down things like “vorlauf,” “alpha-amylase,” and “isoamyl acetate,” and I’m not sure if “whirlpooling” refers to a step in the brewing process or my current frame of mind. At 10am on an overcast Saturday, most of the tables are empty (the brewery is not yet serving), but none of that dampens the enthusiasm of the dozen homebrewers who’ve set up on Rio Bravo’s patio. It’s Learn to Homebrew Day (yes, that’s official), and I’m at the Rio Bravo Brewery, where local homebrew clubs the Worthogs and the Dukes of Ale are hosting a demo to introduce craft-beer drinkers to the hobby of brewing beer. “Would you like a taste?” asks homebrewer Shawn Crawford, holding out a plastic measuring cup filled with chocolate-colored liquid. Courtesy of the Warshaw Collection of Business, National Museum of American History Archives Center. ![]() Make Your Own Beer at Home, Advertisement for malt extract, circa 1900. ![]()
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