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The 10 Types of Craft Beer Drinkers

May 23, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

With an ever-increasing selection of high-quality beers available, well, pretty much everywhere, craft beer enthusiast are experiencing an age of taste enlightenment, a malt and hops renaissance clad in glass, bearing colorful, cleverly labeled heraldry. With so many options, it was inevitable that drinkers and drinking habits would naturally stratify, form groups based on behaviors and preferences and concentrations of alpha acids. I give you, distilled from the hot mash of beer culture, the ten archetypal craft beer drinkers. For the record, I’m some kind of mix between #4 and #9.

(Side note: I used the pronouns “he” and “his” for simplicity only, and am by no means suggesting this is a male-only thing. We’ll just assume that “guy” in this context is as gender malleable as “dude.” Everyone is a dude, male or female or equine or mythological.)

1. The Local

This guy drinks beer brewed in his home state, and maybe the bordering few states, exclusively. He’s a champion of the local craft scene, often espousing the local nanobrew that is climbing in popularity in a new brewpub two towns over or announcing what seasonals his favorite nearby brewery will be shipping out next. He doesn’t scoff at great beer from other places, but given the option, he’ll say “think locally, f*ck globally” every time. You can’t really be mad at him for it either; he’s a catalyst for brewing progress, keeping the smaller brew pubs alive, supporting the system at the roots, nourishing all those little guys with precious praise and dollars.

2. The Old Faithful

This guy has worked the same job for ten plus years, orders the same meal every time he goes to that same restaurant, and to absolutely no one’s surprise, always drinks the same beer every weekend from the comfort of a well-worn chair. It’s usually something pretty good: an IPA from an established brewery or a modern, well executed lager. But, like an old man stuck firmly in a rocking chair at a retirement home lamenting how the world “used to be,” he gets grumpy and dismissive if someone suggests he tries something new. He’ll likely drink that beer until he dies, or until the brewery goes under, at which point he’ll try to find a beer exactly like it which may be the only time in his life that he tries new beers.

3. The Critic

This guy is a roiling mess of negativity, who despite having downed some of the best beer in existence, cannot seem to say anything good about any beers. His rampant criticism of anything and everything beer related makes the people around him wonder if he actually likes beer at all, or if he just really likes to talk about how much he doesn’t like beer. He’s not uneducated, often correctly pointing out faults like over-hopping, high acidity, off flavors, and weak malt backbones. He’s probably tried more beers than most people who claim to “love/adore/admire” craft beer. But no one has ever seen him actually enjoying a beer. The day he does, the universe might implode.

4. The Appraiser

This guy is the antithesis of The Critic, who, despite tasting some stuff that a man stumbling through the desert dying of thirst would reject and wave off, loves pretty much everything that passes his lips. Even beers that could potentially be toxic or cause a severe allergic reaction; even bizarre beers, like that homebrewed rutabaga porter he tried last week; even beers that are stored and served in screw top two liter Mountain Dew bottles are OK in this guy’s world. If the beer really does taste awful, he’ll find something else to compliment, like the labeling or cool off-curlean blue of the bottle cap. When his drinking buddies say, “How can you drink this shit? Tastes like Scotch tape mixed with pureed owl pellets!” he’ll respond with, “Yea, a little bit I guess. But it’s definitely not the worst I’ve thing I’ve ever had!”

5. The Clueless One

This guy really wants to be part of the craft beer wave, really wants to fit in with all his friends at the bar on a Friday night as they take turns sipping from a sampler, but the combination of an unsophisticated palate and a possible learning disability keeps him from grasping the finer nuances of good beer. He’ll often ask, attempting to look beer-literate, if a lager is a pale ale, or if a stout is a hefeweizen. He means well, and seems to enjoy his beer, but can’t for the life of him keep styles or breweries straight. He once correctly identified an IPA and now that is all he will order, partly out of fear that people will realize he has no idea what he’s talking about, partly because he’s proud he finally got one right.

6. The Flavor Finder

This guy could be also be named “The Bullshitter.” His ability to identify flavors – many of which were not intentionally added to the brew – borders on paranormal. He’ll sniff at the settling head of an IPA and make verbal note of the subtle wafts of “raspberry, turmeric, and waffle batter.” He’ll take a sip and, swirling his tongue around his mouth, ask if you noticed the way the hops created “a dirty, rusty flavor” but “in a good way” then point out how the finish is like “molten cashews, cooked over a fire of pine needles and Brazilian rosewood.” The dude will claim to taste things humans can’t physically taste, like passion and eccentricity. If he is really tasting all of this stuff, there might be something really, really wrong with his tongue. Or maybe he’s about to have a stroke. No one knows.

7. The Beer Snob

Everyone knows one of these guys, the person not just happy to crack and pour and drink his beer, that guy who cannot control the urge to explain why the beers he drinks are vastly superior to the beers you drink. He’d never be caught dead with something less than 9.5% ABV, somehow equating alcohol content to quality. If it’s not a double or triple or Imperial version, he won’t even consider drinking it, as it is clearly below his refined tastes and standards. He spends his free time on BeerAdvocate and RateBeer writing short, overly-harsh and condescending reviews, always adding the note, “it’s no Old Rasputin” to the end of each. No one really likes this guy, but he thinks he’s doing the beer-drinking community a favor by ranting about the “impurity of large scale brewing” whenever he can.

8. The Beer Snob Snob

This guy has gotten all meta and is snobby about how snobby the beer snobs snob. He is the counter-culture backlash against the condescension that permeates the beer world, falling back on non-craft beers with lots of folk lore, like Pabst Blue Ribbon and National Bohemian. He wears square rimmed glasses, porkpie hats, and too-tight pants. This guy isn’t actually into beer for the sake of the beer, he just really, really likes to annoy people and say the word “irony” a lot. As soon as good beer isn’t cool anymore, it won’t be cool to like bad beer, which means it won’t be ironic to like any beer at all, and this guy will fade into mismatched, dub-step thumping obscurity.

9. The Comparer

This guy can’t help but compare the beer he’s currently drinking to every other beer he’s ever drunk. The first words out of his mouth after a virgin sip of a new (to him) brew, are always, “Hmm, this reminds me of…” It’s his mission to compile a mental database of every beer ever, to create connections between breweries, to be a walking, talking reference encyclopedia of craft beer. He’s actually great to have around if you’re trying to find new beers of a certain style to try, but otherwise his incessant obsession with categorization and beer hierarchy make him tough to hang out with. Never, ever, under any circumstance, unless you need to kill two or three hours, ask this guy what his favorite beer is. Trust me on that one.

10. The Brewbie

The new guy! The excited guy! The guy who just tried his first Stone Ruination IPA and just can’t stop talking about it! A new craft beer fan is born in the maternity wards of brewpubs every Friday night. This guy is usually overly enthusiastic, recommending every person try every beer ever, even if they’re underage, not a beer fan, or not even a human. He’ll go on about how IPAs are his favorite, no ambers, no pilsners, no stouts, no IPAs again; drunk on the new breadth of styles and flavors he’s just discovered, and also the beer itself. This guy tends to drink too much out of excitement, not realizing that his new beau is a good 2 or 3 or 5% ABV higher than the stuff he was drinking in college. No one gets mad when he gets a little out of hand though. His zeal and excitement remind us of ourselves when we first took a sip of that beer that turned casual drinker into enthusiast, and turned beer into art.

“Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.” -Arnold Schwarzenegger

How to Brew All Grain Noble Hopped Pilsner

February 20, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

I stepped into Maryland Homebrew a few weeks ago with a focused mind. I had a recipe. I had a goal. A singular idea dominated my mind, and my will was committed to pursing it even if it meant my ruin.

I wanted to move from extract brewing to all grain brewing.

To anyone not familiar with homebrewing, this doesn’t sound like such a big deal. It sounds sort of like going from Shake N’ Bake to homemade seasoned breadcrumbs. A little extra preparation work, but similar end product: breaded chicken.

But to a beersmith it’s so much more than that. It’s a right of passage that we must face armed only with a couple of buckets and our wort stirring spoon. It marks the transition from brewboy to brewman. It’s a bubbling, boiling, fermenting, Bar Mitzvah.

When I told the staff at MD:HB I wanted to do my first batch of all grain beer, they all jumped to attention, quick to help me load up heavy bags of grain and answer any questions I had knocking around in my beer-addled brain. One staff member showed me how to best use the mill to crack my grain. Another talked to me about temperatures for strike water and mashing. Yet another guy called to another, across the warehouse area in the back, “hey, this guy is doing his first all grain!”

As I was checking out, I felt like I had joined an exclusive club. Like Skulls and Bones. Or the Masons. Or the Mouseketeers.

I was part of a club of people who did things by scratch, with purpose, with art and flourish and drunken enthusiasm. I was now on the all-grain inside. And it felt good.

I went home all blissfully happy, grinning like a little kid who had just eaten the slice of his birthday cake that had his name written on it in icing. I set to mashing and brewing, a new man in a new world.

Of course, I couldn’t be simple (or practical). I decided not only to do my first all-grain brew, but my first lager as well.

Sometimes a man has to buy 9.5 lbs of pilsner malt. We all have our vices. Don’t judge me.

Things You’ll Need

9.50 lbs of pilsner malt (this is the good stuff, it smells like sweet bread)
.5 lb Cara-Pils (as a supplement to your main malt to add some color)
1 oz Tettnang hops (Noble hop 1 of 5)
.75 oz of Spalt hops (Noble hop 2 of 5)
1 oz Hersbrucker hops (Noble hop 3 of 5)
1 oz Hallertau hops (Noble hop 4 of 5)
2 oz Saaz hops (Noble hop 5 of 5)
Czech Budejovice Lager Yeast (I used Whitelabs liquid WLP802, for anyone wanting the specifics)

You’ll also need the full brewer’s regalia and accoutrement (I like to say, “ackoo-tray-mon” all fancy and French-like):

A mash tun (good job I already showed you guys how to make one, right? guys?)
A brew kettle (that will hold all of your final volume – 5 gallons for me)
A big spoon (Yup.)
Some oven mitts (if you use the nice matching ones your wife has in the kitchen, try not to spill sticky wort all over them)
Ice bath or wort chiller (I still don’t have a wort chiller, because I’m cheap and cooper is expensive)
Thermometer (if you don’t have a laser gun thermometer by now, I can’t help you)
A hydrometer (for measuring the beeryness of your beer)
Bucket or carboy (unless you want to ferment it in something weird, like 8 two-liter soda bottles)

Step 1: Monster Mash

Malt extract is basically just pre-made (and condensed) grain extract. You’re going backwards one step in the process by doing all grain. It’s up to you and your cleverness to extract all that delicious sugar from that massive pile of grain.

Heat up five gallons of water plus a little bit extra to make up for the volume lost during boiling. Since it takes approximately one epoch to heat up five gallons in one container on an electric stove, I recommend splitting it out into several different containers. If you have a gas oven or a patio stove, feel free to use that, but don’t bring the water to boil.

You want to get your water hot, but not so hot that it scorches the grain. The temperature of the strike water (or the first water you add to the mash tun before the grain takes a nice bath) will vary based on your recipe. For this one, I kept the temperature around 160 degrees. Despite being an efficient holder-o-heat, your mash tun will likely lose a few degrees over the hour you let the grain settle, so heat it up just past your target heat to compensate.

I made some tea afterwards, so this isn’t weird.

Once you’ve added your water to the mash tun, you want to quickly add your grain. This is sort of like adding hot chocolate mix to a mug of hot water: a bunch of grain will sit on top and not get wet. Like a viking manning a long ship, use your big spoon to stir the grain until it has all been thoroughly wetified.

I underestimated my water here. I ended up adding more, but only drained 5 gallons off of the final. I'm not good at math.

I underestimated my water here. I’m probably the worst estimator in the Great DC Metro area.

Step 2: Wait an hour

You’ll need to wait while the hot water sucks all of the sugar out of the grain like a diabetic vampire. To prevent excessive heat loss, wrap your mash tun in some blankets. No, not that one. Or that one. Go get the ones on the guest room that no one ever uses. Deny knowledge if your wife asks why they smell like a brewery.

This is a good time to chill out and drink a beer that is like the beer you’re making. Notice the flavors, appreciate the craft. Sam Adams Noble Pils or Victory Prima Pils were my models. Now is also a good time to stir the grain, but don’t leave the top of the mash tun open for too long while you’re stirring.

One episode of Law and Order SVU later (dun-dun) your wort should be ready for the primary boil.

Step 3: Drain the mash tun into your mash pot

Hopefully you put your mash tun on a kitchen counter or something at hip-height, otherwise, have fun lifting 40 lbs of really hot water plus ten pounds of soaking mash up onto something high. Remind me to go back in time to remind you to put it on the counter, not the floor. You’ll need gravity’s help to drain all of the wort out o the tun.

Position your mash pot on a chair below the spigot coming out of your mash tun. Before you start filling the pot with the precious brown liquid, you’ll want to collect about a liter of wort in another container. This prevents any loose grain husks from getting into the wort.

I used the same pitcher I use to fill the cat’s water bowls. I hope they don’t notice.

When the pitcher is full, start filling the pot. Pour the contents of the pitcher back into the mash tun as to not lose all of that sugary goodness. If you used exactly 5 gallons, you’ll need to tilt your mash tun slightly to get all of the liquid out.

Ok, so I lied. I didn't use a chair. I balanced the brew pot on a brew bucket. Terrible idea. Don't try this at home.

Ok, so I lied. I didn’t use a chair. I balanced the brew pot on a brew bucket. Terrible idea. Ignore this picture.

(Note: Up until this point, sanitizing your equipment isn’t super important. Everything should be clean and free of anything loose or gross, but since you’re about to boil the stuff for ~60-90 minutes, not everything has to be perfectly sterilized before coming in contact with your wort. After the boil though, make sure everything is clean as bleach. But don’t actually use bleach.)

Step 4: Boil ’em cabbage down

Now you’re back to where you would be with an extract beer. Get the wort to a rolling boil and add your hops as called for by your recipe (for this pilsner, I did Spalter and Tettnang at 60 mins, Hersbrucker and Hallertau at 15 mins, then Saaz at knockout). You don’t have to worry about steeping any grain or anything like you normally would with an extract, as you’ve already done that hard work in the mash tun!

Wasn’t quite boiling yet. Oops. Impatient.

Now you just need to cool and pitch your yeast. If you need help with that part, see my Homebrew 101 post.

Step 5: Make a pizza

There is one slight drawback to moving to all grain brewing. When you’re finished, you still have ~10 lbs of wet, sugarless grain sitting in your mash tun. There are a few options of what you can do with all this perfectly edible grain. Some people like to donate it to local farms (apparently horses and cows quite literally eat this shit up). Others like to make dog treats with it (apparently dogs have similar palettes to horses and cows).

I decided to make a pizza.

These grains are very similar to bread grains, so the crust I formed tasted sort of like multi-grain bread (chunks of grain and hard bits and all). I didn’t really know what I was doing, so I just combined flour, water, baking yeast, some olive oil, and the left over beer grain until I had something that was pretty dough-like.

I thought it tasted pretty good. Not sure my wife was a huge fan.

Beer and pizza go so well together that literally mixing the two was a no brainer.

How to build your own Mash Tun

January 28, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

I know you’ve been looking at your prosaic smattering of material goods, wondering why you don’t have a custom made mash tun to brew all grain beer. It’s OK. I was too. It’s a normal and healthy question to ask yourself.

Until very recently, I had done all of my homebrew with malt extract: big cans of thick gloopy brown stuff that is packed with sugar for the young voracious yeast in your beer. This is great for learning the basics of brewing (it is simpler, takes less time, and is less messy), but it’s an established fact that real home brewers make their tinctures from 100% whole ingredients. Making the move to all grain is like a homebrewing right of passage; the malty vision quest that all young brewmasters must go on to realize their beer-soaked destinies.

All grain brewing basically means that you make your own mash from pounds and pounds of grain, instead of using extract. Aside from making you into a total beer brewing badass, using cracked malt leads to better tasting beer and gives you a lot more flexibility in flavor, color, and final ABV.

But how do you get the sugar out of all that delicious grain?

With a mash tun.

(Kudos/credits to the guys at Maryland Homebrew and Don Osborn for giving me the ideas and confidence to build this contraption)

Things you’ll need:

A large drink cooler (I used an family sized 52 quart Igloo cooler. The key is to find one with the drain spigot on the side, not the bottom.)
A large stainless steel toilet or sink supply hose (I used a 24″ tube, but you can use whatever best fits your cooler)
Two to three feet of 3/8″ plastic hosing (you don’t have to spring for the heat resistant kind if you want to save a few cents)
Two 3/8″ hose clamps (to clamp off the ends of the supply hose)
Various parts to make an on-off valve (I’ll explain this in detail below; you’ll probably have to order these online or get them from a local brewing store)
A hacksaw (to hack things)
Pliers (to ply things)
An adjustable wrench (to wrench things)
Beer! (Yuengling Porter for me, as I had it left over in a sampler my neighbors gave me for Xmas)

Tasty porter on a beer man’s chest.

Step 1: Prepare your supply line

A mash tun is just a large receptacle for grain and hot water. You want your grain to sit and steep inside of it so that all of the delicious sugars blend with the water and make tasty wort. The key here is that you don’t want the grains to come with sugar/water concoction, as they can cloud up (and add nasty chunks) to your beer.

The supply line hose you bought is going to be a filter inside the cooler that stops the cracked malt from entering your wort.

First, hack off both ends of the supply line with your hacksaw. This is easier if you have a vice. I don’t have a vice, so I held it with my super manly hands. Be careful that the frayed pieces of steel wire don’t poke and hurt your manly hands. When you get near the end, if a small section of the steel won’t saw, clip it off using some wire clipper to fully separate the ends from the main tube.

Braided stainless steel is surprisingly hard to hacksaw. Who’da thunk it?

Once the steel beast has been (double) beheaded, use your pliers to pull the plastic lining out of the steel part of the tube. This will leave you with a mesh hose with very fine holes all up and down it. A perfect grain filter if I’ve ever seen one.

The tube now functions like a Chinese finger trap. Please don't stick your fingers into it.

The tube now functions like a Chinese finger trap. That was me being figurative. Please don’t stick your fingers into it.

The last thing you need to do with the hose is fold it over itself two or three times and clamp it down as tight as it will go with one of your hose clamps. This will keep grains for sneaking into your filter through the end.

Please excuse my cuticles. I need a mani/pedi real bad.

Step 2: Install your on/off valve

This is really important. If you just connect a hose to the spigot of your cooler, chances are pretty high that you’ll have boiling hot wort all over your floor as soon as your start to sparge your grain. I tried a few different variations here, and a ball-lock valve with some nice copper fixtures makes for the most solid, leak-proof seal.

You’ll need parts similar to (or exactly like) the ones pictured below:

3/8″ hose adapter, threaded extension tube, washer, inner cooler o-ring, threaded middle piece, outer cooler o-ring, locking nut, ball valve, 3/8″ adapter (+2 hose clamps for the hose on each side)

You have to build this device in two sections: one on the inside of the cooler, one on the outside of the cooler. The “threaded middle piece” sits in cooler limbo, half in, half out, all ready to receive its respective end of the device.

When you’re ready to install the valve, carefully remove the original drain spigot by undoing the plastic bolts that hold it in place. Save this piece as you could always put it back in a re-convert this into a regular old cooler when you need it for a party.

Assemble your valve, make sure the o-rings are tight against the walls of the cooler, then fill it with a small amount of water and check for leaks. It helps to wrap the “threaded middle piece” in some Teflon tape if you’re getting small drips on the outside of the cooler.

Your finished product should look like this:

Tap on, tap off.

Step 3: Install your grain filter

This part should be pretty easy, just connect your pre-fabbed toilet-hose-filter to a piece of 3/8″ inch tubing that connects to your valve on the inside of the cooler. Secure it with hose clamp if you can’t get a very good fit.

Crude, yet sophisticated.

Step 4: Buy some grain and start brewing!

As long as this bad boy doesn’t leak, you’ll be all grain brewing in no time. When using this, make sure to keep it insulated (with towels or blankets or insulated wrapping) so that all that sugar-sucking heat doesn’t escape. Also elevate it so that you can use and abuse gravity to get all of that sparged wort into your brew pot as quickly as possible!

But more importantly, enjoy. All grain brewing brings a whole new level of dorkiness to your homebrewing activities, and puts you one step closer to owning/running your own brewery. Dream big my friends, dream big.

Looks a lot like oatmeal, huh?

How to Brew Spiced Pumpkin Ale

September 6, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

I know not everyone likes pumpkin beer. But I do. A lot. Maybe to the point of obsession. Last year I went on an adventure to find and try as many new varieties of pumpkin brew I could find, which looked something like this:

-Dogfish Head Punkin Ale
-Bluemoon Harvest Moon
-Southern Tier’s Pumking
-Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale
-Wolaver’s Organic Pumpkin Ale
-Brooklyn Post Road Pumpkin Ale
-Harpoon UFO Pumpkin

And, being the kind of beer drinker I am, I loved all of them. I still argue that DFH Punkin Ale is my favorite, but at $7.99 for a 4 pack (and that’s shopping around quite a bit) I can’t justify buying much of it each year.

A few others are comparable in terms of pumpkin taste, but there is something about the spiciness of the Dogfish Head variant I love.

The spices make the beer warm and cozy. They remind me of a night outside in the woods with my buddies, telling stories, drinking beers, keeping the chilly winds of late October at a distance with a pillar of fire and the warmth of fun and cheer.

Being all overwhelmed by sentimentality, but also very cheap, I decided to try my hand at making a Punkin Ale clone, with a little bit of LitLib spice (read: unprofessionalism) dashed in for good measure.

How to Brew Spiced Pumpkin Ale:

The recipe isn’t straight forward, but it also isn’t difficult. There is a good amount of prep time because you have to cut up and roast the pumpkin before you even start your boil. The boil itself takes at least two hours, and cooling the wort can take a while if you’re not setup correctly, like me. Make sure to set at least a six hours aside if you want to do this right.

Drinking pumpkin beer while making pumpkin beer. A multi-generational experience!

Stuff you’ll need:
-Pumpkin (I used 10 lbs, which equals about 4 smallish pie-pumpkins once all cut up.)
-Butternut squash (these add to the pumpkin flavor, and tend to be more fragrant than pumpkin alone. I cut up two large gourds, about 3lbs each, and added it to my pumpkin.)
-Cracked Malt (I used 1lb of Vienna, 1/2lb of Crystal 20, and 1/2 lb of wheat. You could sub in any malt that blends well with an American ale, so feel free to be creative here.)
-Liquid Malt (I used 6.6lbs of liquid light malt extract. You could use anything you want here, but the amount of sugar is going to dictate your final ABV.)
-Hops (I used 1oz of Mt. Hood for the primary, as I wanted something to compliment my spices. I also used 1/2oz of hueller bittering hops right at the end of my boil. You could certainly change things up here if you wanted a less citrusy/less spicy final product)
-Yeast (I used a liquid American ale blend. Not a lot of give here if you’re making an ale.)
-Spices (This is where you can go crazy, or not very crazy. I used cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, ground cloves, vanilla, brown sugar, and a tiny bit of molasses. I wanted heavy, sweet, and hearty. You could leave any [or all of these] out and still have a nice, pumpkin flavored beer, but it would lack the things that make it taste like you’re drinking a liquefied pumpkin pie.)
-A big, sharp knife (seriously, butternut squash is no joke. It will make lesser blades look silly.)
-All of your brewing stuff (I won’t harp on [too much] about what you need to brew, as hopefully it is a given if you’re reading a brewing recipe.)
-Water (this is something I always forget when I collecting my ingredients, and it makes a big difference. Grab five gallons of filtered spring water. Any one who drinks your beer will thank you for starting with fresh, clean water.)
-Beer (I chose Harpoon UFO Pumpkin because it is really, really good.)

Step 1: Chop n’ Bake

Before we can even start our primary boil, we have to prepare the fruit. Gourds. Vegetables. Whatever the hell pumpkins and squash are. We’re going to roast everything in the oven for about an hour at 350 degrees, so get to preheating. While the oven slowly bakes itself, start cutting your gourds into manageable chunks. You want them to be small enough to bake quickly and fit into a muslin bag or cheesecloth.

Pumpkin = soft and easy to cut. Butternut Squash = made of solid titanium.

When you’re done, spread them out on a cookie sheet and add a bit of water to the bottom of the tray. I ended up having to use a shallow Pyrex container as well, because it turns out 10lbs of pumpkin and squash is a lot of fruit-flesh. If you’re going to use cinnamon, sprinkle a liberal amount onto the raw chunks before they go into the oven. If you’re not using cinnamon, don’t.

Completely full tray 2 of 2

Step 2: Bag n’ Boil

While the pumpkin roasts and fills your house with the delicious smells of autumn, you can start your primary boil. Fill a large stock pot with as much water as you can effectively cool down later.

Note: There is some debate in the home brew world about doing a partial boil (in which you boil as much as you can of the actual beer, then add water to reach the desired final quantity) or a full boil (in which you boil the full volume of the beer and don’t add any water afterwards). A full boil is usually preferred, but if you’re doing this in your home kitchen and don’t have access to a fancy wort cooler, you can’t really get away with boiling 5 gallons and cooling it quickly enough to pitch your yeast. That, and heating 5 gallons of liquid on an electric stove top takes approximately one epoch of time.

I did a 3 gallon boil, and saved another 2.5 gallons of water to add afterwards.

Place your pot on the stove and set the heat to high. While the water very, very, very slowly heats to a boil, put your cracked malt into a muslin bag. I dumped all of mine into one bag because I overestimated how many bags I had left in stock, but feel free to separate them to make them easier to dispose of when you’re finished. Drop the bag(s) into the pot of water. Let the flavors seep into the delicious pre-beer as the water reaches a boil.

Malt striation: a rarely seen beerological phenomenon.

By now, the timer on your oven should be letting you know that your pumpkin is hot and roasted. Remove the trays, forget that Pyrex gets very hot, burn your hands. After swearing and pressing the cold glass of your Harpoon UFO Pumpkin against your burn, transfer the newly roasted foodstuff to a muslin bag or large swath of cheese cloth. You’re going to put this into the pot with the malts, so you want it to be relatively contained by the cloth. If a few pieces escape, don’t freak out. You can always scoop them out.

Ever wanted to know what 10lbs of pumpkin looked like in 4yds of cheese cloth? No? Well, here’s a picture anyway.

Your setup should look something like this by now:

Appetizing!

Step 3: Sit n’ Sip

Now comes the idle part: waiting for the pot to boil. I heard that if you try to watch the pot boil, it never will. Seems crazy to me, but I’m not one mess with tradition. This is a great time to collect the spices for the next step, or just sit around watching a ba movie on SyFy, nursing your burn and breathing deeply the aromas of primordial beer that are filling your house. Your wife will tell you that it smells like breakfast cereal. Take that as a compliment.

It took about an hour and a half for my boil to get rolling. Once it’s there, remove the malt and pumpkin. They will hold onto a lot of delicious liquid, so do your best to press or drain the bags before you throw them in the trash. They’ll be scalding hot, so do your best not to add a trip to emergency room to this guide.

You can now pour in your liquid malt and add your Mt. Hood hops, sugar, and molasses. Even though the mixture is boiling, be sure to give it a good hearty stir (with a sterilized spoon) to make sure none of the malt sticks to the sides or bottom. Stuck malt can lead to scorching which can leading to burnt taste which can lead to “gross beer face.” Nobody likes burnt beer, not even me.

Sundry supplies supplement spicy suds.

More sitting and waiting. You want to let the whole concoction boil for about an hour, so set your timer accordingly. After 45 minutes, you can add your bittering hops. At the end of the hour, add your other spices and vanilla.

Your final product (sans yeast) should look something like this:

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

Step 4: Cool n’ Drool

This next step is arguably the trickiest; you have to cool your work down to ~75 degrees as quickly as reasonable so that you can pitch your yeast. Letting the beer sit around and cool works in theory, but it can also lead to the unwanted creation of sulfurous compounds that make your beer taste all funky-like.

An ice bath is the easiest solution. I tried a rapid cool-down by adding the rest of my water (slightly chilled) but it didn’t work as well as hoped. To cool it down even more, I used my kitchen sink (with the wife’s permission, of course) as a beer bath. You can do the same, just make sure you have enough ice on hand to keep the bath cold.

I didn’t have enough ice. I used frozen 2 liter bottles of water instead. Ingenuity!

I mean, it’s still ice, it’s just not in cube form. Think outside the cube.

Every fifteen minutes or so check the temperature of your wort. You can use a cooking thermometer, but be sure to keep it clean, as you don’t want to contaminate your beer.

Or, if you’re a DIY dork and IT nerd like me, use your infrared laser thermometer to check the temperature. It’s hyper-sanitary, and the cats love it.

I freakin’ love this thing. I use it to take temperatures of literally everything. The inside of my mouth, the cat’s butt, the list never ends.

You’re almost done! Once the wort is sub-80 degrees (or so) you can pitch your yeast. Any higher temperature and the heat might kill the yeast, so don’t rush it.

You’ll also want to make sure the wort is aerated appropriately, so give it a nice big stir just before you pour in your liquid yeast.

Yeast: it turns brown sugar water into beer.

Now, seal your bucket, add an airlock, and put it in a nice, darkish corner to ferment. Primary fermentation should start in 6-24 hours. If you hear crazy fast bubbling, you’re in business. If you don’t, you did something wrong. Repeat steps 1-4 and do better this time.

This is what your airlock should look like ~15 hour after you add the yeast: Bubbles!

I’ll post again when it’s ready for kegging and I can tell you what it actually tastes like. For now, fingers crossed.

Happy fall!