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In the past year since I’ve posted on my blog (wow, has it really been that long?!), I have thrown myself into the world of microorganisms. You know, the good kind. My interest has come from a few things: learning the art of food preservation that the refrigerator has nearly killed off; the health benefits of good bacteria; the cost savings; and most importantly, I’m a guy, and guys play with bugs from a very early age. Mine are now just microscopic.

I started out with the sourdough bread, and then to sauerkraut. Since then I’ve moved onto kombucha, kimchi, yogurt, and I’ve finally arrived at beer. I’ve had a few experiments that didn’t turn out so well. The kombucha was a bit scary to look at, so I couldn’t bring myself to drink it. The brusselkraut, while I’m sure it was perfectly edible, was not pleasant on the taste buds. But for the most part, things have been turning out well.

There are lot of misconceptions about homebrewing beer that I want to clear up:

• Brewing beer at home is completely legal. It’s not even a grey area. In 1979, President Carter signed a law allowing people to homebrew up to 200 gallons of beer a year without license or taxing. Unless you live in Alabama, Mississippi, or Oklahoma. Oh, and if you brew in Kentucky you aren’t allowed to share.
• Beer is not made in a bathtub. It’s a very clean and sanitary process, taking place in a simple 5 gallon glass jar much like the plastic jugs on office water coolers. I store it out of the way in a closet.
• Brewing beer does not smell. The smell of warm bread and grains goes away as soon as I’m done with the 1 to 2 hour brewing process. Once it’s fermenting, I can only pick up a mild beer scent if I sniff right at the airlock on the top of the jar. Otherwise, nada.
• Things don’t explode. The only part of the process that takes place under any sort of pressure is once the beer is in bottles and is carbonating. There is a small risk that a bottle will burst, but only if you don’t measure things properly or if they get hot.
• It’s not dangerous to drink. If the yeast takes over and starts converting sugars to alcohol, that alcohol prevents nearly anything that’s harmful from growing. If wild yeast or bacteria infects it, the alcohol will make things safe. It may, however, taste disgusting if it gets infected.

Homebrewing is surprisingly inexpensive. You can spend thousands of dollars on a setup, but to get going, you really only need about a $150 investment in equipment. Once you have that, the cost of a bottle seems to run around 75¢ to $1, depending on the style and not counting labor. I’ve calculated that if I switch from my current method of extract brewing (brewing using cans of reduced grain sugars) to all-grain brewing (soaking the grains myself) I might be able to get it down to about 30¢ per bottle. All-grain brewing is a little more involved and requires a bit more equipment, but the biggest problem with it is that I would really need a much bigger place than my condo to do this in.

I’m still learning my way around the terminology and technique of brewing beer. So far I’ve done a couple batches of a Belgian witbier, a chocolate porter, an Irish stout, an oatmeal stout, and a hefeweizen. I’m starting to get comfortable enough with the process to move onto getting creative with the recipes, emulating beers I’ve tasted or creating something entire new.

A couple of weeks ago on Boing Boing I read about making sauerkraut and decided to give it a try. Mine didn’t ever look as gross as the photos Boing Boing showed. I sliced a head of green cabbage and red cabbage and let is sit in a big pickle jar. That was two weeks ago today, and I decided to “harvest it”. I dumped it into tupperwares and put it in the fridge, where it should last a few months.

Opening my sauerkraut. Photo credit: Preston

Next up I’m going to try green cabbage with carrots and caraway seeds. I need to slice it a little thinner though because it is a little too crispy.

The process of fermentation fascinates me, and since  refrigeration has come into common use, fermentation has waned in popularity. We still consume lots of beer, wine, soy sauce, chocolate, vanilla and yogurt, but I can’t imagine that our factory-produced food has the same taste and nutritional value. One of the great benefits of fermented foods is the live (good) bacteria culture, and the canning process destroys it.

I’d love to try making mead, yogurt, and sourdough bread.

This weekend while shopping at The Giant, I saw a man wearing a kilt. Now I’m not passing judgement, and more power to a man who can do something like that, but I thought it was rather entertaining that he obviously wasn’t on his way to or from any pub performance or anything of the sort. His hair was dissheveled and he was wearing a baggy tee shirt and shower flip flops. It was likely the most comfortable thing to throw on or the only thing he owned that was clean.