The Girls Team is lucky to know many creative, talented people, and as we work our way through the THIRD (!!) year of MIHM, we want to continue to highlight our friends and family and their many skills. This week, we'd like to welcome back Beer Master Tim to the blog! You might remember him from the Irish Coffee blog when he brought back all the whiskey secrets from Ireland!
Recently, Tim began brewing his own beer, and decided to let the Girls Team and Corey in on some of the action. Back around the holidays my Girls Team partner and Corey learned the basics of home brewing from Tim, and a few weeks ago, we were able to taste his delicious creation! Here are a few pictures of his home brewing process...
Before we get into the Girls Team review of Tim's beer, let's get the scoop from the master himself!
Q: How long have you been brewing your own beer? What made you want to start?
A: I've been brewing my own beer for almost a year. I got into it because I love beer and it seemed like a fun thing to do. I'm glad you're highlighting beer brewing! I've talked to so many people who want to do it but think of it as an intimidating and difficult task. If people knew that it was fun and easy, a lot more people would probably do it.
Q: What kind of beer did you brew for us to taste?
A: This beer is an amber ale.
Q: What are the main steps when brewing your own beer?
A: There are only a few steps in brewing beer. First you make the wort, which is basically the sugars from grains mixed with water. You boil the wort for an hour, adding hops three times throughout the boiling process. If you want your beer to taste like something (fruit, that kind of stuff), you put it in during the boiling process. Then, you cool the boiled wort, stick it in a fermenter (a bucket or glass carboy), and put the yeast on it. Then you leave it alone! During the fermentation, you might add hops (this is called dry hopping), and you might move it from a primary fermenter to a secondary fermenter, but most of the time is spent waiting. After a few weeks, you'll have flat beer, which means it's time to bottle. When bottling, you boil sugar (called priming sugar) in water and add it to your beer, then stick it all in bottles and leave it for a few weeks longer, until it's time to drink it!
Q: What's the most challenging part of the process?
A: The most challenging part is the waiting. Generally, as long as you keep everything pretty clean, you're going to get beer and it's not going to taste totally wrong or anything. But when it's all just sitting in the fermenter smelling good, it's really hard to resist!
Q: Were you happy with how this batch of beer turned out? Anything you'd do differently next time?
A: I was really happy with this beer! I couldn't decide whether to use honey or brown sugar as my priming sugar before bottling, so I split the brew in half and did half with each. I'm not sure which one I like best, but next time I'll definitely try to decide on what I'm going to use and do the whole batch with one priming sugar. It wasn't really a big deal in the end, but it was just kind of a hassle.
Q: What advice would you give to our loyal MIHM readers who might be interested in brewing their own beer but might need some encouragement to start?
A: Do it! It's a fun hobby, and it's not incredibly time consuming or strenuous. It's a great hobby because there are so many different scales and you can do whichever you have time for. If you want to get a whole set up with kegs and taps and things, you can do that, or you can just occasionally make some bottles to drink while watching football.
Thanks for the expert insight Tim! Now we are even more excited to try your creation! Fast forwarding a few months...The Girls Team plus my dad and Nelson popped open Tim's beer and gave it a taste.
Like Tim mentioned, he experimented with sugar and honey in this batch. We sampled them each separately. The Amber Ale with honey had more foam, appeared a tad darker in color and the hops taste was relatively light. And even though there was honey in the beer, it wasn't an overwhelming flavor. The Amber Ale with sugar was less foamy, smelled sweeter, and was a bit lighter in color. It also wasn't as hoppy as the brew with honey.
Rich amber color!
Of course we had to bust out the Lil' Reds for tasting.
Cheers to Beer Master Tim and his great beer!
Full disclosure, the Girls Team and our crew are by no means beer experts or worse, beer "snobs." So you can take our review for what it's worth but we LOVED Tim's beer! It was interesting how a variation like honey versus sugar really did make a noticeable difference, even to the untrained taste buds. And the votes were evenly split - my dad and Nelson liked the hoppier beer better (honey) and my mom and I preferred the less hoppy choice (sugar).
We are so proud of Tim's creation and can't wait to see what he whips up next. Maybe Beer Master Tim will be MIHM's first official alcohol sponsor? Tim, call us...let's discuss this budding partnership! :)
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