 Senior pre-professional biology major Scott A. Rogers demonstrates the auto siphon, a device which pulls soon-to-be-beer from the first fermentation process to the second fermentation process. Photo by Tommy Pennick
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STAY THIRSTY, my friends
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a two-part series about home brewing and wine making.
by EMILY MELTON
Lifestyles Reporter
They once bought beer from convenience stores; now, they get it from home.
Marcus E. Taylor, senior appropriate technology major, is one of many students who brew their own beer.
Taylor began home brewing nearly three years ago.
When brewing beer, Taylor said, water is first brought to a boil. Then, malt is added, making wort.
Hops, flower clusters of the hop plant, are put into the boil to create a bitter taste, and when the boil is complete, additional hops are added, “because beer actually has a lot of sugar in it, which comes from the malt,” Taylor said. “You bring it down to room temperature and put your yeast in there, and you’re done.”
For Taylor, the mixture is typically ready to be drunk in approximately one month and three weeks.
Last
Halloween, he made a pumpkin stout and added an extra pound of sugar,
hoping the added sugar would allow the yeast to ferment the sugar,
producing a high alcohol content beer.
“It got up to
about 11 percent with that extra sugar, and so it was a really, really
high alcohol percentage beer,” he said. “It was very tasty and you
actually couldn’t tell. Most of the [low-alcohol] beers are quite
syrupy. This one wasn’t, [and] you could only tell [it had a high
alcohol content] when you drank two of them and couldn’t get up off the
couch anymore.”
Taylor once made an organic brew; he called it “Hip Hop.”
“I called it
that because it’s hip to go organic and because it had three rounds of
hops in it, as opposed to when, normally, you just put in two rounds of
hops,” Taylor said.
To experiment
with fruit, Taylor made blueberry ale, but failed to realize that the
pectin from the fruit would turn the beer sour, and though the beer was
drinkable, the flavor was strange, Taylor said.
He also tried his hand at making ale with oregano.
“I didn’t
understand how pungent the oregano was going to be,” Taylor said. “I
mean, I only put a few leaves in there, and, I think, one stem from an
oregano plant that I had been growing. It was quite good, but it was
just far too overpowering.”
Taylor most
recently made an “ESB” beer with his brother: “an ‘Extra Special Beer’
and ‘Extra Special Bitter,’ depending on whom you talk to, which turned
out really well,” Taylor said.
After buying
his first kit to make his first batch and since experimenting with his
own ingredients, Taylor said he has learned a great deal.
“I screwed up
the first couple times, wasn’t very good at it and my beers didn’t turn
out very well, and it was kind of a lost investment,” Taylor said. “But
then I put more time and effort into it, started reading more and
understanding the chemistry of what was actually going on.”
Scott A.
Rogers, senior pre-professional biology major, has brewed various types
of beer, including a wheat-flavored batch with orange peel for an added
bitter taste and citrus flavor, and coriander for spice.
“My favorite
beer and the beer that I brew the most of and the best is pale ale, and
I use Irish moss to flavor it, which kind of gives it more of a [spice
taste] than what normal beer would [taste like],” he said.
Matt D. Pigg,
junior art management major, also started brewing with a home kit and
now considers brewing a hobby, explaining, “cleanliness is next to
godliness.”
“The cleaner
you are, the better off you are,” Pigg said. “The cleaner your
materials are, the more buckets you use, the way you’re storing them
and brewing them – the cleaner everything is, the better it will turn
out.”
Pigg said
every now and then, a batch may “screw up” because of soiled equipment,
but that, if made correctly, the brew reaps larger benefits than a
store-bought brand.
“The initial
investment is high, but the pay out – if you make a successful brew,
then it’s [worth it,]” he said. “You get five gallons out of a hundred
bucks, and honestly, it would cost you a lot more than that to get five
gallons of beer, good beer – high quality, at least.”
Photo by Tommy Penick | The Appalachian
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