Sunday 26 August 2012

One giant hop for mankind


When I turned up to the Ale Brewing Chaps new brewery this morning to learn how to make beer, I hadn’t a clue what to expect. I’d done some chemistry at University, and I’m a dab hand in the kitchen, so I wasn’t too worried, but I’m the kind of person who always harbours lingering doubts, particularly where my own abilities are concerned.
Of course, I’ve known Alan Knight for years, and I’m quite comfortable in any situation where he is telling me what to do. We’ve worked on numerous excellent theatrical productions together, all of which involved me as a cast member of some description and Alan as our visionary director. I was hoping this would be more of the same.
It was.
Some people, particularly on Waiheke (you know who you are), run habitually late. They justify their tardiness by saying they run on what is known as “island time”. Unfortunately I am geographically misplaced; I have the opposite problem, and tend to run early. Today was no exception, so Alex and I went over the road to see Jerry at IMech, so Alex (who is a fledgling mechanic) could admire what I’m told was a very fine example of a gear box.
Then a text from Alan: It’s show time.
After arriving, and observing a moment of silence for the late Neil Armstrong, we got down to the serious business of brewing a beer in honour of the great man’s life. I think we call it Armstrong Ale, but after the beer we drank to commemorate a successful brew, I really can’t be sure.
I can’t believe I never tried brewing beer before. It’s so much fun. Who wouldn’t want to play with a cross between a giant chemistry set and a kitchen?


This was what our giant vat of cereals and malt looked like. Alan explained all about how the malt’s sugars and enzymes would do most of the leg-work to create our beer. He also explained the importance of having clean fermenting tanks.


                                                  So here I am cleaning them.


                                       And here I am doing some further cleaning.

           Something you may not know about brewing beer, is that it involves lots of waiting. After you lay down the mash, which is made of crushed barley malt, cereals and hot water, there is some waiting (that’s when the starch in the malt gets degraded to fermentable sugars). Once you have carefully and slowly strained off the sweet wort and transferred it to the kettle for boiling, there is more waiting. Thankfully waiting is not an issue for me.
I have as much patience as I have knitting.
                 
             The sweet wort was delicious. Very sweet and hot, trying it reminded me of being a small child during a cold winter and being given a taste of Mum’s mulled wine, which she’d inadvertently boiled all the alcohol off. 


   It’s the kind of beverage you just want to wrap your hands around.


After transferring the sweet wort to the kettle, this was the moment when I knew all was proceeding to plan.

The plan was to make a monstrously well hopped beer. When I’d first arrived Alan had said we would be using all the hops in the building to complete this brew. He told me to weigh them all. We had four different varieties of hops. There were varying amounts of each, 1.5kg all told. We decided that would be too hoppy, even for us, so we went down to 600g of hops.



                             Here I am adding some hops. See that hat? Yes. I knitted it.



After the final hopping it was time to put the hopped wort and yeast in the fermenting tanks and wrap them up nice and warm.



I’ve just begun the process of learning how to make beer, but I took this as a sign of good things to come.



* Title credit: Linds Redding

Saturday 25 August 2012

The most effective way to do it, is to do it.


Tomorrow I’m doing my first brew. The beer shall be a bitter. At this point in time, I should mention that all I really know about beer is that I enjoy drinking it.
It wasn’t always this way. The first time I had a sip of what my Dad was drinking, I spat it out. It was warm, watery, bitter and flat. It had a kind of sickly, poisoned taste. There was even a time, as a young teenage girl, when the idea of sitting down to drink beer actually horrified me. Beer is so full of carbs, and calories, I thought. It doesn’t even taste that good, I thought.
My low opinion of beer was only reinforced by my friends. They agreed that beer was for boys. We would stick to our vodka cruisers and our cocktails, thank you all the same.
After years of prejudice and beverage based gender stereotyping, I gave beer another chance. Years before I had been involved with a theatre group on Waiheke Island, and as a result I had become acquainted with Alan Knight. Anyone seriously interested in the beer industry can probably see where I’m going by this point.
                “You simply must try this beer I’ve just brewed,” were the first words out of his mouth when I showed up at his house with some fellow cast-mates one day. “Beer?” I asked nervously, instantly becoming lost in rapid fire mental gymnastics as I tried to recalculate my caloric total for the day (I was forever on some diet).
“You’ll like this one,” he promised, pulling beer out of the hand pump and into a tall pint glass. It was a dark amber liquid with a lacey, cloud-like head. Alan passed the pint glass over the bar “It’s tasting magnificent.”
I took the glass hesitantly, and following the example of a tall, dark-haired young man, I took a gulp. Imagine my surprise when instead of the sad, stale taste I was expecting, my palette was greeted with oranges, summer sun and elderflowers. It must have showed on my face, I took another appreciative sip, and just like that, I loved beer.
Since then I learned that beer isn’t really about gender. Beer transcends borders. It unites us. Beers like Chick the beer just for women have entirely the wrong idea, because when it comes down to it, drinking beer isn’t about being a man, or being a woman. Drinking beer is about being the wonderful, gloriously flawed human creature that you are and having fun with life.
Beer is for everyone.