Ah, Christmas! The season of happiness and cheer, where the hope for peace on Earth and goodwill to all is a dream shared by many. Now don't get me wrong, I think that peace on Earth would be just swell. Probably, as attainable as a hen that lays golden eggs and almost as cool as a having a cat that you trained to pull romex through an attic. Never-mind all that. The point is that my Christmas experience is divorced from much of the cheery, gushy, holiday spirit that normally stalks you from the seedy dark corners of Christmas carols.
One holiday sentiment that I DO agree with is that it is better to give than to receive. But even this old favorite was ripped away from me this year when three of my sisters went in on a home brewing kit for me. The outlook for world peace is improving. Imagine the sheer glee I felt when I unwrapped the gift. My eyes filled with wonder, and I was speechless. Talk about the gift that keeps on giving! It totally blew the year I got an EZ-Bake Oven for Christmas right out of the water!
I spent the next few days reading everything I could about home brewing online and in books. My brew kit came equipped with an instructional DVD about home brewing beer that I watched with the same earnest attention that a toddler would give to Finding Nemo. By New Year's Eve I felt ready enough to try my hand at a brew. A visit to the local home brew supply shop (I know, how progressive that we have one IN Utah!) and I was armed with the ingredients I needed to begin. I decided on an American wheat beer. It seemed to be a fitting choice since the first beer I ever had was a wheat.
One of the great things about brewing your own beer is that the whole process can be kept fairly simple. Until you are ready to use more advanced brewing techniques, extract brewing is the way to go. Basically, the process of mashing the grains (more on this later) has been done for you. You are therefore free to focus on the basic mechanics of beer making without getting hung up on the more complicated aspects of beer until you are ready for them. In my next post I will describe my first experience brewing beer by way of malt extract.
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