With extensive home repairs in my future, I naturally began to think of the paramount importance of good beer. Good beer, of course, isn’t inexpensive – or maybe it could be? – and with my lingering interest in fermented foods and beverages, home brewing seems a natural fit. In typical fashion, within two days of this conclusion a stack of books appeared in the house. Of these, four stand out as books that I am likely to draw from heavily in the future. These are: How to Brew by John J. Palmer; Building Homebrew Equipment by Lutzen and Stevens; The Homebrewer’s Garden by Fisher & Fisher and, last but not least, Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher, which tenaciously exposes the history and lore of all of things beer.
I am not really a “beer person.” There are a few beers that I like but I am not an avid consumer. My motivation in brewing is to provide my friends with something a bit special in return for helping me with the house and, perhaps, to take some of the sting out of those long and arduous home repair tasks that lie ahead.
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The Homebrewer’s Garden
features a number of herbs that hearken back to my years of dabbling with medicinal herbs and I hope to put in a garden of brewing and medicinal herbs (no accident that they overlap, but more about that later) next spring, when the most serious interior projects are well underway.
The most straightforward brewing tutorial I have found online is at Seven Bridges (they have some good tips there, too). I’m still pondering which recipe to tackle (as there are many in the aforementioned books) for my first brewing.
