My House Smells Like Barn Ass

And by barn ass, I mean the sickly sweet residue that clings to trodden hay, mingled with horse pee and the faint odor of stale earth. This, I suppose, is the smell of brewing.

Today Tom and I started our first batch of home-brewed beer. It is composed of various pre-measured, hermetically sealed packets of ingredients that have been carefully packaged so that not even the village idiot could screw up the brewing process. This is a good thing, because we are heading into this venture with little information beyond the basic knowledge of how alcohol is made (which I learned from an episode of Dirty Jobs; yes, my high school science education was shit) and a strong surety that we love beer. Particularly the complicated Belgiany type that is served in a goblet by hipster bartenders who hold masters degrees in philosophy.

Yet shockingly enough, when we told the slightly nerdy gentleman working at Hop City that we didn't care for the drink known as "pale ale" for which the equipment starter kit contained ingredients, we were met with a restrained suggestion that we begin with it nonetheless and save our beloved tripels and quadruples for later.

And so we begin.

Brewing beer is purported to be an easy process: heat water + malt, add hops, add yeast, ferment. With, you know, some other steps. Yet every book and Web site I've visited, and even the 1 page instruction print-out included in our equipment starter kit, contains oodles of ancillary information and details that serve mostly to confuse me. It seems that everyone starts out with the goal of making things simple, but ultimately can't help but keep adding things. I mean, a hops chart would be nice. Oh, and an appendix with the origin of malt grains! And who doesn't want to hear about the history of prohibition and how it set back the development of microbreweries in America?

Me. That's who.

I just want the most simple, straightforward information. And pictures too, because who the hell knows what a hydrometer looks like? I'd never even heard of one before starting this adventure (see earlier parenthetical concerning my high school science education).

And so Tom and I are going to photograph the crap out of every step, and toss in individual pictures of each piece of equipment too. Except for the fermenting bucket. It looks like a bucket. If you can't Google a picture of a bucket, you are probably too stupid to talk. And yes, I'm aware that I'm calling you stupid from the position of not knowing what a hydrometer is.