I’ve been told if you get bucked off a horse, you’re supposed to dust yourself off and jump right back on again. The idea I suppose is to help you conquer any initial fear about a repeat performance that might build up inside if you let any great amount of time slip by. When it comes to one of my favorite hobbies, homebrewing, I’ve let far too much time slip by before jumping back on the “brew horse”.

I knew nothing of the hobby until a friend and co-worker of mine introduced the idea. Of all places, I think the inspiration came from an episode of The Simpsons. Have you ever seen the one where Homer tries to make bathtub beer? Needless to say I wasn’t immediately sold on the idea but decided to give it a shot. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

At first it almost felt like we were wading into illegal territory. A run to a local brew shop just blocks from the Arizona State University campus made it seem even more lascivious. I undeniably enjoyed drinking alcohol so the prospect of creating it with my own two hands seemed pretty damn amazing. An hour or so later, the friendly brewer had helped us assemble a kit complete with everything we needed to brew our first batch of beer.

The process proved to be nothing short of great mystery and intrigue. Were we following the instructions right? Did we put the hops in at the right time? Did we aerate the wort enough? Was it the right temperature before we pitched the yeast? Was everything sanitized properly? We’d have to wait a long four weeks before getting it into bottles and then another couple weeks beyond that before we could relish our first taste of that liquid bread we’d toiled over what seemed like ages ago.

As it turns out, our first batch was a hit and then I guess you could say we had both been officially bitten by the brew bug. Like a religious ritual, every four to six weeks we gathered around a stainless steel brew pot and assembled the next beer of the month while sipping down a few cold ones from the previous batch. This tradition carried on for a handful of years until life took my brew buddy and me in two different directions. Since it was a 50/50 investment, we opted to split the brew setup down the middle. Half going with me and half going with my brew buddy made the split seem like an awkward breakup, deflating the sails of this once jovial pastime.

I packed my apartment with Homestead Hottie and made the long trek up the mountain to Flagstaff, Arizona where we planned to launch a new chapter of our lives together. Talina must have sensed my depression creeping in over the loss of my hobby because that Christmas she bought me everything I needed to complete the one half of the brew rig I painfully hauled up to the high country.

Flagstaff had a pretty exciting craft brew scene cooking along with a well-stocked homebrew shop, something I have now come to realize was pretty remarkable for a town of just 50,000 people (most of them crunchy in some sort of way). I brewed off and on and even found a new friend and co-worker that was also into homebrewing. Sometimes, having a brew buddy is just the perfect motivation to punching out some extra energy and getting a batch made. It also helps when several of your friends and coworkers really seem to enjoy chugging down the fruits of your labor. I was in a brewing groove for our 5 years in Flagstaff but when it came time to pack the brew rig up again, I was feeling defeated again.

Our nomadic lifestyle took Homestead Hottie and I to where we still are today: southwestern Indiana. The last three years has proved busy without a doubt and felt like we’ve been moving at warp speed ever since our vintage RV limped us on into town. A new job, the birth of our first child, a layoff, another new job and then the birth of our second child last August seemed to all happen in a flash. The powder keg of life just happens and then you get over it.

Needless to say I haven’t had much time to brew, let alone the toddler-free space to tuck a 5-gallon glass jug full of fermenting beer away for a few weeks. Thanks to the gift of another batch of brew ingredients from Talina, I’m finally jumping back on the brew horse again. I’m breaking myself in with an Irish Red Ale kit and am once again sweating the small stuff while I wait. Was my yeast alive when it pitched? Was the fermentation enough even though it seemed dead? Was the wort exposed to too much oxygen?

I just finished racking my Irish Red Ale over to the secondary fermenter and will bottle in another two weeks. Only then will I know for sure if I’m going to be able to fully get my brew mojo back and ferment some wicked ales. Time to sip a cold one and wait.

Popularity: 4% [?]

A lot of people have funny thoughts about home brewed beer. One of the many visions people get is the quintessential picture of someone brewing beer in their home bathtub. It is a funny thought but not one that represents home brewing at all!

I’ve had the hobby of brewing for about 7 years now. A good friend of mine down in the Valley of the Sun decided to try it out one day and were quite impressed with our results. We both enjoyed fine liquors, beers, wines and cigars. Beer happened to be one of those products we could make ourselves! We used to brew pretty regularly, putting together a batch about every other month. It’s definitely motivation to have a “brew buddy”. When I moved away, I kind of lost the spirit and enjoyment of the process without my “brew buddy” and really only brewed once or twice a year. It didn’t help that I ran across some batches of brew I didn’t particularly enjoy. What do you do with two cases of beer you don’t like? Give it away…and hope the bottles find their way back to you!

Lately, I’ve been trying to get back into my homebrew hobby. So, over the weekend I got together with a buddy of mine from work who also brews and we put together two separate batches. Last fall, I brewed a Pumpkin Ale. It was like drinking a slice of pumpkin pie only in a beer! A couple of bottles were fun to try but not anything you would drink on a regular basis. This year, I opted for something a little more mainstream…a Honey Brown Ale. Most people should be able to enjoy more than a couple of bottles of that! Fermentation began within about 8 hours of pitching the yeast. That’s always a good sign when your fermentation kicks off that quickly. This morning, when I woke up, fermentation was literally on a roll. The wort (liquid that is fermented into beer) towards the bottom of the jug looks like it’s boiling. Streams of tiny bubbles rush toward the surface of the carboy (jug) and then burble through the airlock to be expelled. No matter how many times I see it, I’m always fascinated.

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Two weeks from now I’ll rack the brew into another carboy for secondary fermentation. On December 16th, my homebrewed Honey Brown Ale will be ready for bottling. Homebrewing is a fun and rewarding hobby. While it’s really no cheaper than buying good store bought beer it is a good lesson in self-sufficiency. With just a few simple ingredients available at your local homebrew shop, you can whip up some suds you really enjoy and know that it didn’t take a truck, traveling thousands of miles and using hundreds of gallons of fuel to get to you.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Referred to as a “nectar of the gods”, I can firmly say my first experiment with dandelion wine has left me with my stomach turning inside out. The wretched brew smells more like the “nectar” of a porcelain god, enough to send anyone with a working sniffer to run far, far away.

My dandelion wine experiment began last year. Seeing fields of yellow, perky dandelion blossoms painted through the grass left me wondering what could be done with the pervasive “weed” that leaves many lawn enthusiasts seeing red. Using the greens for a salad is a popular notion but you have to catch dandelions before they bloom, otherwise the leaves turn horribly bitter to our sensitive human palette. Vintage wine books however paint tantalizing imagery of a sweet and wild wine that trickles down your gullet and warms the depths of your belly with the sunshine captured by perky petals. Who wouldn’t want to lap that luscious sounding sun juice?

Last year my Darling Daughter and I spent the better part of an hour in a nearby field on our hands and knees. It’s hard work plucking a gallon of petite, sticky flower heads dotting the field grass. Some issue or another prompted me to delay the process of getting the wine started so I stuck the gallon container of flower heads into the fridge. By the time I went to work on them the next day, those darned dandelions had all clamped shut. They looked like a pack of clams with their mouths firmly sealed. Those flowers made it into the trash since they were no longer fresh and it would just take an inane amount of time to pry them open and pluck their petals. That was the last attempt of 2010.

Kicking off spring 2011, we’ve had rain storms measuring feet instead of inches of rain and the resulting carpet of dandelions was magnificent. Silver dollar sized, fuzzy lion heads bobbed and swayed through most grass patches up to just a week or so ago. Before our first official mowing of the year, Homestead Hottie, Darling Daughter and I grabbed a bucket and started plucking. From the front to the back (can you handle that?), we managed to pick 6 quarts of dandelions.

The recipe I used was from a vintage dime store paperback titled “Successful Wine Making at Home: How to make your own wine and liqueurs,” by H.E. Bravery. I only share the recipe so you can look at the process yourself, not because I endorse trying it out!

Ingredients:
- 1 gallon flower heads without the tiniest piece of stalk
- 3 lbs. sugar
- 1 oz. yeast
- 1 gallon water
- 2 lemons

1) Pull out the petals by gathering them between your fingers whilst holding the base of the flower head. Put the petals in the fermenting vessel and pour on 3 quarts of boiling water, covered tightly and left to soak for 7 days.

2) Stir daily and cover at once

3) Strain and wring out fairly tightly and return the liquor to the fermenting vessel. Boil half the sugar in a pint of water and when cool add to the liquor. Then add the yeast and juice of 2 lemons. Cover and ferment for 7 days.

4) Pour carefully into a gallon jar leaving behind as much deposit as you can. Boil the rest of the sugar in a pint of water and when cool, add to your liquor. Fit fermentation lock until all fermentation has ceased.

More than an hour's worth of work went into pulling out the dandelion petals and discarding the flower heads, seen in a pile on the right. It's not a fast process and I was hoping the payoff would be sweet.

I dutifully followed the directions to get this “nectar” going including taking sanitary precautions and sterilizing the equipment coming in contact with this wine. By day three though, the vile brew was putting off an aroma that indicated to this brewer’s nose it had gone sour. I was ready to pitch it at that point but Homestead Hottie urged me to let it run its course before dumping all our hard, dandelion pickin’ work down the drain. When it came time to pitch in the first batch of sugar the stench was overwhelming and one whiff was enough to send your stomach convulsing. Talina even likened it to the sickening and so hard to forget stench of one of our high school math teacher’s breath.

Needless to say my “mighty fine” dandelion wine found its way straight into the garbage disposal. It’s disappointing but I’d rather it be that instead of getting violently ill, like the time I drank Dogfish Head’s Red & White (that’s a completely different story though).

I reviewed more than two dozen other dandelion wine recipes and all are pretty similar to this vintage recipe. Most only let the dandelion petals ferment for three days instead of 7, but remember, my wine was spoiled by day 3 anyway. I think my fermenting location was way too warm and I think there was obviously some “nasty” that made it through the boiling water infusion. I think if I try this again, I might trying actually boiling the dandelion petals for a couple of minutes before pitching the whole pot into the fermentation vessel. This longer exposure to boiling water would kill off even more bacteria, especially on a plant that hugs the ground and comes into contact with who knows what!

Have you tried making dandelion wine? What has your experience been like? Please share!

Popularity: 8% [?]

As we move from the Christmas holiday into the New Year, you might be thinking about hostess gifts or party favors to dole out at all those New Year’s parties your headed too. If you’re over baked goods, why not consider whipping up some homemade liqueurs and cordials. I home-brew my own beer and have been happily handing out a pale ale I brewed this summer. Beer and wines require advance planning though, so unless you have some ready to be bottled up, I suggest homemade liqueurs. The tasty and sometimes exotic concoctions you find lining the shelves in the local liquor department can usually be made at home with little effort.

I have about three very old paperback books that are filled to the brim with just about any liqueur recipe you could think of. Any fruit, nut, herb or otherwise worldly flavor can be steeped into just about any neutral spirit. The main player is vodka but there are also recipes dealing with whiskey, brandy and other liquors. Most recipes consist of making a simple syrup to sweeten the liquor and the addition of something to flavor it like vanilla extract, chocolate extract, etc.

Tracking down usable recipes can be a quandary though since homemade liqueurs seem to have been little more than a passing fad during the cocktail heydays of the 1930’s through the ’60s. While there aren’t many liqueur recipes spread about the internet, you can find plenty in a book that’s currently offered called Cordials from Your Kitchen . That should have plenty of recipes for any aspiring homemade-liqueur maker to dabble with. I found my small collection of liqueur making books at used book stores and thrift shops…places you can easily find things several years old that people don’t want anymore. All you have to do is find some nice bottles to dress up your liqueur and you’ve got a great gift to hand out while wishing a prosperous and happy New Year. Below are a couple of great recipes you can try out:

Ginger Honey Liqueur

A spicy, full-bodied liqueur. Try it warmed up on a cold winter night.

• 3 tbs. finely minced, peeled fresh ginger root
• 1 tsp. lemon zest
• 1, 3-inch long cinnamon stick broken into pieces
• 2 whole cloves
• 3 cups brandy
• 3/4 cup honey

Combine ginger root, lemon zest, cinnamon stick, cloves and brandy in a large jar. Stir well to mix ingredients. Cover tightly and let steep in a cool, dark place for 1 week. Shake jar occasionally. When steeping period is complete, strain and filter the liquid. You can use filters found for filtering wine at your local home-brew shop or you can just use a coffee filter. Combine honey with the filtered brandy mixture. Pour into bottles and cap tightly. Let age at least one month before serving. Recipe found in The Village Pantry’s Treasury of Homemade Liqueurs by Janet Reda.

Pear Liqueur

A tasty treat with flavors of the winter season

• 1/2 lb. mature, ripe, firm pears
• 2 apples, peels only (any variety will work, but Red Delicious works good)
• 1 clove
• 1/2″ cinnamon stick or pinch of ground cinnamon
• Pinch of nutmeg
• 2 coriander seeds
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1.5 cups vodka or brandy

Cut the pears into strips (don’t pare) and place in a jar with all the other dry ingredients including sugar and the two apple peels. Add alcohol to cover. Steep two weeks, shaking the jar every two days to mix the ingredients. Strain and filter. A coffee filter works great. If you’d like the liqueur to be sweeter, add simple sugar syrup in small quantities (about 1 oz. to 4 oz. of liqueur) to establish a sweetness ratio. Then add to the whole bottle accordingly. When the recipe tastes perfect and you’ve recorded it in your recipe book, purchase more pears and make larger amounts for cooking, drinking and gift giving. Mature pear liqueur about 2 months. Recipe found Homemade Liqueurs by Donna and Mel Meilach.