February 5, 2009

Crossroads ESB

I'm the world's newest homebrewer.
Don't get into homebrewing to save money on beer. Longterm? Yeah. But if my arms fall off and I never brew again, I spent as much on these instruments and ingredients as I would've on 25 great six-packs of beer (and my batch will only yield as much as almost 9 six-packs).

But I didn't worry. I relaxed. And had a homebrew. (Thanks, Greg, for the Belgian Noir)

Steeping the grains (obviously my first batch was only partial-grain, the rest LME).

Prepping primary fermentation.

Which requires pitching the yeast. Look, Ma, I'm a zymurgist.

So what'd I make? An ESB. Though I'm all about American craft beers, I wanted to brew an easy-going British bitter. Since I'll have a ton, I needed to brew a session beer. And what was my soundtrack for homebrewing? It had to rock. I wanted it to be British. And I wanted it to reflect early steps. Disc 1 from Clapton's box set rocks his pre-classic stuff: Yardbirds, Mayall's Bluesbreakers, and of course Cream. So, as I switch paths from the freeway of commercial brew drinker to the road less traveled toward homebrewing..."Crossroads ESB."

And now we wait...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Congrats Brian, we will get you kegging soon enough!