"Relax... Don't Worry... Have a Homebrew!"

-Charlie Papazian

If at first you fail.... read the *&$*^% manual!

Discouraged with my failed batch of homebrew, I decided to venture back to the homebrew shop that set me up with the equipment and that first, doomed, kit. I was just about at the point of never returning to the shop, with feelings of shame of producing such horrible beer and anger from feeling like I was given poor equipment and no direction. But, seeing as how there was only one real homebrew shop in Albuquerque, I decided to give them another chance.

I stepped into the shop and began to casually browse of the selection of kits they had displayed. I finally got around to talking with the owner and told him my delima. He briefly listened to how I brewed my first batch, how it turned out, and shook his head slowly. I wouldn't say he REFUSED to sell me another kit, but he strongly recommended against it. Instead, he sold me a copy of "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing." This opened up the whole foreign world of homebrewing to me. I read the book cover-to-cover (mostly) in a weekend and it seemed that every other page a light bulb lit up and I silently thought "aha! THAT's what I did wrong!" Needless to say, after finishing the book I felt like a moron for not reading up on this hobby first. I suppose it sounds like a simple procedure, perhaps simple enough to do without any information. But not if you want even mediocre beer!

What had I done so wrong? First, I didn't boil long enough. This doesn't have a profound impact on flavor as much as the appearance. Next, I cleaned the fermenter, but didn't sanitize it. Even in dry New Mexico, bacteria still exists. Next, I set the fermenter outdoors. It wasn't excessively hot or cold, but the fermenter did sit in the sun. Though the fermenter was made of fairly opaque white plastic, I'll bet Mr. Sun had an affect on it. Next was my constant playing with it. Each time I popped the lid, I was introducing oxygen into the beer and other harmful compounds. I even think a couple times, while taking a specific gravity measurement of the beer, I poured the wort back into the fermenter. GASP. And, lastly, I didn't sanitize the bottles and had excessive splashing while filling them. It's starting to make sense now, eh? I decided that I know knew more, and wasn't going to give up quite yet.

So, while I was thinking of what beer I wanted to try next, I sent away for a catalog from "The Home Brewery." After receiving it, I started to get an idea of how small our homebrew shop was. This company had page after page of kits, and even had some kits made exclusively by their store. I decided to buy a pale ale kit from them. I think it was around $20 and came with 6 pounds of malt extract, some crystal malt, and several ounces of hops. They gave detailed directions on how to steep the grains, how long to boil, etc etc. I avoided the dreaded boil-over that night and sanitized everything well. I used bottled water, cooled the hot wort well, hydrated the yeast, pitched everything just right and put the fermenter in the closet. I tried to avoid opening it up too often, but did a few times to take measurements. It started around 1.045 and took a few weeks to drop to 1.015. I bottled and waited. Weeks passed, and I cautiosly popped a bottle and tasted.

WOW! This was almost drinkable! It still had a slightly off-taste, which decreased over the following weeks. It started with light carbonation again, but built up nicely. Too nicely, as a matter of fact. After a month or so, I started seeing "gushers" and tried to finish up the batch. Alas, I had to dump a few bottles that over-carbonated too much. But I was inspired to keep at the hobby.

Over the next months, I made a couple more batches of beer. Each had its unique problems, but they all turned out decent. Until, come next fall, I decided to make a Christmas ale. This was a lesson in patience that I failed, resulting in exploding bottles. Read the next story to get the whole scoop.

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