Walking through the Total Wine store two years ago, my husband
spied a beer making kit complete with one plastic barrel, eight plastic
bottles, and ingredients for one beginner’s batch. He talked me into it. The first brew turned out tasty. As beer goes.
It took me a few months to get inspired (by a nagging
husband) to make the next batch. These
kits for beginners are designed to be pretty much fool proof. To George’s
dismay, I proved them wrong. We poured
it down the drain.
Now, two years later, I decided I needed to surprise my
patient man and give it another try. I
sterilized the plastic keg and bottles and mixed up the brew. You’re supposed to let it sit in a dark place
for at least a week. Then you pour out a
little to see if it’s still cloudy. And
you taste it. If it tastes like stale
beer (which, to me, tastes like I imagine urine would taste) and if it has no
hint of a sweet taste, then it’s ready for the final stage.
So I waited and tasted.
It sort of tasted like molasses. I
waited and tasted again. After about six
weeks, I said, “I’m going to move forward with this stuff.” (I didn’t say “stuff,” though.)
As I tapped the potential beer into quart-size bottles in
preparation for adding the 2 ½ teaspoons of sugar that would work the magic, I
thought, “There’s not enough beer in that little keg to fill eight of these
bottles.” Guess what? There wasn’t.
The markers on the side of the keg showed that my brew was five
quarts. I looked again at the instructions
(which I had followed so carefully) and found that I should have added enough water
to bring it up to eight quarts. For a
moment, I really did consider adding the water now and waiting another week or
so.
Down the drain went the third potential batch of beer. I swore (pretty loudly) that I was never
going to try this again. But I
will. I learned to cook when I married
this person who doesn’t like beer all that much, and I refuse to be defeated by
a stupid beer recipe.
