Brewing Geekery

Dogfish Head's steampunk treehouse
(via Chris Potako)

I've been hesitant to blog on DC Geeks about my homebrewing experiments because they never struck me as particularly geeky. After a bout of diytastic Makers Faire videos, I've noticed a few other geek/tinkerer/brewer crossovers:

• Make found a cool-looking beer making kit.
• Good Eats has a whole episode on homebrew (although the quality is debated).
• The Penny Arcade forum has some impressive pictures of DIY brewing systems.
• Wil Wheaton's offer to start up a Homebrew Circle on G+ was swamped with replies.
• Greg Dean did a story arc about homebrewing on Real Life Comics.

Then again, maybe it's not geeky, just common. Even the White House has a homebrew. Either way, I'm geeking out about it this week.

I ran across a great description of beer geeks from Sam Calagione. If you live on the East Coast and like beer, you've probably already tasted some of Sam's genius: Dogfish Head. (Dogfish is so awesome, even the Red Cross "gets slizzerd" on it.)

Beer geeks love beer. Beer snobs just love knowing more about beer than you.

A beer geek on the other hand might have a hard time concentrating on writing her blog post because she's trying to tinker a way to fix the weak mouthfeel in her batch of brown ale (force carbonate it?)... or brainstorm how to rig up a cheap wort chiller for the batch she's starting next week. Not me though! I'm going to tell you where I found for homebrew supplies.

The result of my Great Brown Ale Experiment:
five gallons of (slightly under-carbonated) tastiness.

I started my brown ale experiment with a recipe from Maryland Homebrew. When I went up to visit the renfaire, I stopped to buy my equipment from MDHB. This place is intense. With over six thousand square feet, the new location is a bit intimidating at first. I get the feeling that I'll be back here for advanced equipment for things like kegging. (Do want).

For ingredients, I stocked up at Jay's Brewing at the recommendation of some the SCA brewers. It's worth the drive out to Clifton. The shop is small, but well stocked and newb friendly. There were plenty of people available to talk shop and give advice. So I got all my extracts, hops and grains, and started my "Not So Old" Castle experiment that evening. 

After a few weeks staring into a dark carboy, wondering if I'd made any egregious mistakes, I was able to change things up and stare into dark flip-top bottles. Honestly, even for a first try, everything turned out pretty well. The bottle pictured above? Totally empty now. When I first made it, I'd intended to do a head-to-head taste test against Newcastle the second that my beer had finished bottle conditioning.  Now that the time has come, I think I'll save my ego the hit and just enjoy my first attempt without trying to hold it to commercial standards.

If the best day to plant a tree was ten years ago, then the best day for me to start my braggot and barley wine would have been about two years ago. Instead, my delicious, honey-filled oddities are still clarifying in glass carboys. I decided to take on the challenging mead-beer hybrids because the whole reason I started brewing was because I had fun helping a friend make mead.

Soon... (via Toholio)

Mead requires fewer pieces of equipment than beer, but takes a lot of honey. I know that the Bee Folks (bulk price $4.33/lb) are a local favorite, but to save money, I decided to swing out to Pennsylvania and hit up Dutch Gold (bulk price $1.93/lb). This was partly because between me and a few friends, we were picking up over a hundred pounds of honey, and partly because I wanted alfalfa honey. However, if you're making a single batch, the Bee Folks have great mead kits to get you started.

For those of you not ready to turn that spare bathroom into a nano-brewery, there's always places and events around DC where you can appreciate craft beer. There's always Bilbo Baggins, which hits the trifecta by being local with craft beers and a nerdy name. You can check what's on tap this week at the DFH Alehouses, and follow Twitter to see where Randall is going to show up. Last but not least: the Northern Virginia Brewfest is this weekend. Their list of available brews has crested fifty different varieties. The number of breweries is equally impressive.