Homebrewing - Part 2: The Process, Amazing Hops, Useful links

This is the second post in our series on brewing beer at home, by special guest, award winning brewer Boaz Harel.  CLICK HERE to read Part 1: Why make your own beer?

One little piece of advice before you forge forth: Looking at all this stuff can be intimidating, and it's easy to get overwhelmed or feel like this is too complicated for you to do. It's not. Making beer is easy. Primitive stone age people did it 6000 years ago with clay pots and a bonfire, it it worked fine. The only difference now is that we've got much better equipment, and many more people to help you if you get stuck.

Using Wort Extract by Jason Pratt

In the Part 1 I discussed why you should brew your own beer at home. Now, I'm going to talk about the basic process of brewing, and try to tackle some of the common questions of new homebrewers. If you are familiar with the process (or are just impatient) you can skip to the links at the bottom of the post for more concrete instructions and resources for brewing at home. 

Let’s start with the most basic question: What does brewing involve, exactly? Well, simply put, when you brew you take the sugars and flavors from malted grain, mix it with water, boil, season to taste, cool, and ferment. See? It's simple! Now go brew!

Ok, so maybe it's not as simple as it sounds. To get the sugar out of the grain you have to rinse it out with water at specific temperatures for specific times, using the twin processes of "mashing" (soaking the grain) and "luthering" (rinsing the grain and filtering out the particles). Doing this at home means that you start with a bunch of dry grain and end up with a big pot's worth of grain-flavored sugar water, known as "wort." When you start your brewing from grain you are using "all-grain" brewing.

Homebrewing - Part 1: Why make your own beer? Guest Post

Boaz with Sam Adams Award

I am honored to introduce Boaz Harel, the first place winner for Pale Ale in the 2012 Sam Adams Longshot home brew competition in Israel, and author of the Three Cats Brewery Blog. Boaz is also married to  Maya, the author of the hilarious and informative blog How to Be Israeli. I first met Boaz and Maya when we were college students in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This October we both welcomed our first "Made in Israel" babies into the world. Congratulation Boaz and Maya!

Let's try a simple exercise. Go get yourself a glass of cola. Now look at the glass and ask yourself what's in it. Chances are you couldn't answer the question, and with soft drink companies being so cagey about their products (and for a reason - if you knew what was in it you'd probably never drink it) you'll probably never know. Now go get a glass of beer and the same question. What's in this? The answer to that question is just four words: water, malted barley, hops, and yeast. What's more, all the wonderful variety of beers in the world, from the black roasty Guinness, to the pale crisp Bud Light, is made from those same basic four ingredients. Water, Malted Barley, Hops, Yeast (and magic :) ).

Beers from Three Cats Brewery

In fact, beer is such a simple, easy, and natural beverage, that you can actually make it at home. In the second part of this post I'll show you how, but before we get into that, let's talk a little about what beer is, and why you should make it. 

Butternut Squash Soup

This evening I made butternut squash soup.  Next time I'll try to take better pictures, but I only decided to start this blog after my husband said, "WOW this is so amazing I have goose bumps."

This afternoon I asked my husband to stick the butternut squash in the oven, not knowing what it might become.  I think it was in there a couple hours.  I only remembered about it and pulled it out after I smelled something burning.

After I put the kids to bed (and the squash was cooling) I fried up two carrots, a medium onion, and two cloves of garlic (with canola oil), followed by some baby-bella mushrooms, a tablespoon of margarine, and a tablespoon of flour.  After it was getting all sticky a brown I added some beer.  Normally I'd opt for veggie or chicken broth, but we've had this single beer in the house a couple weeks, and no other appropriate liquids. 

Then I added some more water, maybe 1.5 cups, and the squash, peeled, no seeds.  I let that simmer while I seasoned it with a little black pepper, quality powdered ginger, paprika, and cinnamon.  Salt and fresh herbs would be good, but I just realized I forgot salt, and I didn't have herbs.  Honey or a couple pinches of sugar would also work, but taste to make sure your squash needs it.  I used my food processor to smooth it out, then brought it to my sick hubby in bed and got the reaction above.

This would freeze well.  You can add some water and reheat it on the stove.  You could garnish with roasted sunflower or squash seeds, fried thyme, a dash of paprika, a drop of sour cream...

You might also like Easy Roasted Butternut Squash Soup.