Proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy

In our never ending quest to spend less money, Not Michael Landon and I decided we could cut the alcohol budget. Not by drinking less, of course. By homebrewing.

I was raised a beer snob. I did the college thing of course, but at this point in my life I'm too old for Bud Light. I'll take water instead. But if there's a problem with good beer, it's that it's not cheap. Small batches, craftsmanship, and increasing grain prices can add up to a six pack for $9+. I've seen estimates that basically say if you drink the mass-produced big 3, skip it, but if you're into good beer, homebrewing will save money. I'll get into dollars later, but we've found this to be the case.

One of the (many) great things about homebrewing is it's naturally easy and uncomplicated. It's about drinking beer for pete's sake, it's not going to be rocket science. Brewing supply shops sell kits of equipment to get you started, as well as kits of ingredients with instructions. The simplest recipes are literally "boil a can of hopped, sugary goo for an hour".

On brewing day, we set up our turkey deep fryer, fill the pot with water, and steep some grain tea on the stove. Once we're boiling, pop in the grain tea and malt extract, and add hops at various points according to recipe. Boil for an hour, then cool down as quickly as possible. Siphon into the glass fermenter, add yeast, and leave it in the tub for a week or two.

On bottling day, we spend about a half hour washing and sanitizing bottles, then boil the bottling sugar, decant into bottles, and cap. Everything ages for another few weeks, and then we're ready to drink.

We buy mainly organic, quality ingredients, from a local co-op. We've tried a few more mainstream kits and found a difference in clarity, sediment and evenly tasty flavor. A kit of ingredients, adding yeast and bottle caps, will run $40-$66 with most around $42-$47. This is for a batch of 5 gal, from which we usually net just over 48 bottles. Math math, yada yada, that's $5.56/6pk or $11.12/12 pk. This usually beats even the best sale prices on decent 12 packs.

So... drinking. What are we drinking already?! We've tried a dark lager (lagers are trickier, and this was our first batch, so that shows just how easy the whole thing is), strong scotch ale, ESB, porter, British bitter, and we just bottled a red ale. I can't say there's one I wouldn't do again, and they've all changed slightly over the 2 cases, but if I had to pick a favorite, I'd probably go with the dark lager. Flavorful, malty, just enough hops.

If you're interested in learning more, check out http://www.breworganic.com/index.htm. There's tons of good info, and you can even buy all their products and equipment online. We're lucky to have them local to us, but considering beer is mostly water, even ordering online has a smaller carbon footprint that buying ready-made beer, unless it's very local.

Happy Brewing!