I am a homebrewer

Mike Mraz, an awesome brewer of Sour Beers

if you’ve been reading this blog for some time, you might have realised it’s not just for shouting about the latest and greatest beer we have on our shelves, but my wittering, mumbling and drunken pondering s.

I am quite into brewing, as much as time allows – I love it, I occasionally get invited to brew on a professional scale, which is pretty cool and very scary when you await the feedback from both the brewery and the consumer!    I actually started brewing “professionally”, accidentally when I was a student, I really got back into it when I looked at putting a brewery in at the old pub, way back when and have been brewing ever since, our recently July 4th party, there was more homebrewed beer than commercial beer!    This past trip to California, I have been drinking amazing homebrew, from Chad Moshier, Mike McDole, and Mike Mraz, IPA’s and Sours, that were awesome!  (Check out the Brewing Network and this article in the Sacramento Bee for some indication just how big this whole scene/movement is! )

Normally for me,  it’s just brewing beers that I can’t get, originally big hoppy American IPA’s, then right through to big coffee stouts and more recently hoppy belgian style beers, (somewhat been “spoiled” buy Beermerchants.com, lol).  I still brew fairly regularly, I have been goofing around with Oak, fruits and adjunct cereals for fun to see if I can really nail a few different styles; in fact I think just learning to brew an IPA, a Pale Ale, Stout and Belgian would be enough, and just keep rebrewing them and refining your pracitce is more than enough. I wish that I had a decent homebrew store local to me, and  I just wish the water here would be more conducive to rounder beers,  it’s just so damn hard.

I believe that homebrewing really is a great foundation, even a basis of the American craft beer revolution, perhaps even a better foundation of knowledge than any out there.   You can learn to appreciate the finesse that some brewers out there have, digest the nuances and importantly be really amazed by what is often percieved as a “simple” beer.

anyway, what prompted this blog post, was this excellent “homebrewed” video, an homage to the excellent “I am a Craft Brewer” film professionally produced by Greg Koch of Stone Brewing.

Watch it here, the homebrew’d version, and excellent work it is too!