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

-Charlie Papazian

How do you get cherry and malt residue out of tiles?

After ruining two cases of beer, I was turned off a bit from homebrewing. I was only having a 50% success rate and even the beer that turned out successful was still not as good as most of the better beer that's out there. I did brew up another acceptable pale ale in the spring of '96. Around summertime the lease ran out on my apartment and I moved in with a roommate who worked at Intel to try to save a bit of money.

My courage was built up by late summer. I suppose I had forgotten the horrible experiences I had so far; the wort boil-overs, the back-breaking bottling sessions, not to mention the exploding bottles. Like a bad sunburn, the memory eventually diminishes until you don't think twice about going back out under Mr. Sun without any sunscreen. I decided to try another batch.

I had been lusting after the cherry stout recipe from Charlie Papazian's CJHB book. Charlie certainly advertised this recipe well, with detailed descriptions of how luscious this brew is. I was sold. So I ventured down to the local homebrew shop and got myself the dark malt, grains and hops. I spent that night brewing and everything went well. Fermentation started as it should and after a week, I ventured out to the grocery store to get 10 pounds of fresh cherries. I spent the next two hours pitting my little heart out. I had no idea how time-consuming it was to pit ten pounds of cherries! I wanted to do it right, though, so I stuck in there. Then I racked the fermenting beer to a secondary carboy and dumped the pasteurized cherries in. I left it for a couple weeks and bottled. I had never bottled a stout and quickly noticed how easily it stains the tile. I don't know how other brewers bottle without spilling, but I must've spilled a bottle's worth of beer on the tile. It took *forever* to clean that gunk out. I wouldn't be surprised if there's still residue in a corner of that kitchen. But I did get it all bottled and waited.

When I tried a bottle is when I was enlightened as to what homebrewing is all about. It was as if a light bulb had been clicked on and I saw the world in a different way. I finally brewed a successful beer! I had never tasted a stout like this (not too many cherry stouts out there!). This was even better than Guiness or any other dark brew I had tried. It had a clean taste, with a just right roasted background and a cherry taste that complimented the stout amazingly well. I gobbled the beer up and would have brewed another batch right away, but it was around that time that I decided to get my own apartment again. This mean going back to poor town, so I put away my brewing equipment, with hopes of brewing again soon. This wouldn't happen, at least not for over three years. What changed my mind? Find out on the next and final page.

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