JamesBrau or James's Beer

I have long been an advocate for good beer. I love beer. It is one of those sweet inventions like penicillin and chocolate chip cookies that just make life better. There is nothing I enjoy more than sitting down with a new beer and becoming better acquainted. So, my very sexy, hyper-intuitive fiance Marissa made an excellent decision in purchasing a Mr. Beer Home Brewery for my birthday. I have always wanted to brew my own beer. I wanted to get inside the process. Just as a car obsessed youth will learn the intricacies of the internal combustion engine, I want to get under the hood of beer, so to speak. I was very pleased with the gift. I hugged Marissa. Kissed her. Showed her all kinds of affection which comes with receiving a great gift. I couldn't wait to break out the Mr. Beer keg and get to work making JamesBrau. But, as it turned out, wait I did. My birthday is in May (only 119 shopping days left) and it was only tonight that I finally got around to embarking on my beer making adventure.

I was afraid. I was afraid i would make terrible beer. I was afraid I would mess up. I was afraid my apartment with its constant shifts in temperature does not offer the proper enironment for fermentation. I was afraid the plastic Mr. Beer would explode leaving rancid beer all over my kitchen. Finally, I just gave in. Sure, any or all of these things may end up being true. I will actually be surprised if my beer actually ends up being good. I think I will be perfectly satisfied with barely drinkable.

These are the tools I had for my first foray into the art of beer making. I was provided with the super cool plastic keg from Mr. Beer. It has most of the pertinent measurements right on the keg to make it as idiot proof as possible. Idiot proofing home brewing seems to be the goal of the good people at Mr. Beer. The box also came with a can of West Coast Pale Ale beer mix, a one-step sanitizer to sanitize all my implements, a packet of Booster, which has all the fermentable ingredients, and brewers yeast. All I needed was a mixing spoon, a can opener, a pot, and a surface I could sanitize to hold my tools (the plate). I also decided I would add some honey to the mix of fermentable ingredients to give the beer a little extra flavor. At first, I was thought I would just make the beer pretty much exactly as provided in the box, but eventually I said screw it, and decided to give the beer a little personal stamp. Looking back on it, this may prove to be my beer's undoing. More on this later.


Well the first step was to sanitize all of my tools. This proved an easy if dull step. Basically, you fill the keg with warm water and all your tools and then put in some of the sanitizer. Then, you slosh everything around and wait ten minutes. Empty some water into your pot and some onto the plate. Let it sit ten minutes. Then everything is sanitzed. The only problem I had here is that my mixing spoon was to big to fit into the keg. I had to take off the plastic handle. With that problem solved I moved onto the next step.

Now it's wort mixin' time. What's wort? I'm glad you asked. According to the instructions (which have no reason to lie) wort is the unfermented beer. I gather that making wort is a normally a long, soul-crushing endeavor consisting of endless boiling of malts, hops, and the like followed by straining and cooling. I did not have to do this, because it was all in the can (note: someday I hope to make beer from scratch, but not today). First, I filled the keg about halfway with water.
Yes. I used Beaver Falls tap water. And Yes, I am about 98% sure that this will cause my beer to taste a little - if not a lot - like potting soil. Looking back on it. I may have subconsciously done it so I have a built in out if the beer taste terrible. Oh, well.

After filling the keg I had to mix the booster into four cups of cold water in the pot. This proved to be an absolute bitch. You need to stir the water as you slowly sprinkle in the booster. According to the directions this is to avoid clumping. Sadly, clumping is about all the booster wants to do. As soon as is hits water, it forms tiny crystals of corn syrup solids.I spent about twenty minutes stirring. No matter how hard I stirred the damn crystals would not dissolve. My pot looked like a fourth grader's science project. I even double checked the instructions to make sure I wasn't supposed to do this over heat, but the instructions never mentioned heat until after the Booster was fully dissolved. Eventually, I cheated and turned my stove to a low setting. Sure enough the crystals dissolved as soon as the water got a little warm. Of course, I might have totally screwed the beer up, but at least I could move on.

I Brought the water and dissolved Booster mixture to a boil. This proved fun as some of the corn syrup-y water had sloshed onto my electric stove coils leading to the wonderful odor of burning sugar and my smoke alarm going off. After I took the mixture off the heat, it was time to mix in my Pale Ale Beer Mix and the honey.

Remember when I said the honey may end up being my beer's ruin. As it turns out, I misread the instructions. There is no problem adding other fermentable ingredients to the wort such as sugar, honey, molasses, or fruit syrups, but I guess you are supposed to use less of the booster if you do. According to the manual I should have used half the pack of booster if adding honey. Instead I used the whole thing. This could lead to any number of scenarios. My beer may end up with a super high alcohol content (yay) and extra flavor (yay), or the beer may taste awful (boo) or I will have a harder time figuring the proper time for fermentation (boo). Hell, as far as I know the keg will explode from too much pressure. I'm not a food scientist. Who do I look like? Alton Brown?

It's too late to worry about it now. Maybe everything will work itself out ok. Maybe it's a good thing I spilled some of the wort all over my stove and floor when I was trying to pour it into the keg. Yeah, so I made a little bit of a mess. Guess what. Wort is sticky. Really sticky. I cleaned my kitchen floor about three times and still every time I walk across the kitchen it sounds like the floor from the dollar theater. Next, time I'm going to need to get some sort of funnel system going.


The rest of the process was pretty simple. Stir everything together real good. Sprinkle in the yeast. Let it sit five minutes. Stir it again. Screw the cap on. Now of course, I'm in the middle of the next step: fermentation. Now, all I have to do to enjoy the delicious, unique, possibly nauseating flavor of JamesBrau is wait.


Shalom