Honey Blonde President
So President Obama brews his own beer? We know he can write, where I can recommend his first book Dreams from my Father which unsurprisingly has spawned a rash of other books including Dreams from my REAL Father He doesn’t like the British very much (or at least didn’t when he first came to office) thinking that we try to “punch above our weight” in world affairs. Which might be the time to mention that President Eisenhower admitted that his greatest foreign policy mistake was not supporting the British & French in Suez in 1956. He is not a Muslim although between a sixth and a third of Americans think he is. His election in 2008 was the first time that total election spending topped US$ 1 billion and Americans in London tell me he will not be reelected in November – the last President to be voted out of office after one term being Jimmy Carter – author of 27 books.
Brewing your
own beer – hobby or necessity? Fermentation goes back millennia and seems to have been discovered accidentally, while fermentation for beer goes back to the 5th millennium BC. Brewing was part of a housewife’s duties even into the twentieth century where I discovered recently that my own grandmother sometimes made beer. Before the days of piped clean water that you could drink without having to boil it first, a housewife would have a barrel of beer in the kitchen which the whole family would drink. This even spawned its own label – brewster the female version of brewer. It might have had hops and barley floating in it and may have been cloudy, but mum made it and was much safer than drinking the local water used as the bath, laundry and toilet by the next village upstream.
Beer but not as you know it
Originally “beer” as we know it did not have hops and was known as Ale. Use of hops in making beer goes back to the 8th century with Dutch hopped beer being first imported into the UK around 1400. The hops act as a preservative, give a bitterness which helps quench thirst and gradually become the standard, but not before established brewers here try to get hops banned, condemning them as a wicked and pernicious weed First British hops are grown in 1524 and they cross the Atlantic a century later. Unhopped ales are very rare these days with a few micro breweries making it, Froach Heather Ale being one example and if you prefer a lightly hopped beer, then Mild is one to ask for.
Fast forward to the 1970s and home brewing is quite popular. Having just got married and with my own home, it’s fun and popular with guests where at 10p a pint you don’t really mind if they want a second or a third one. Not so good though when a pint or two after work means that the decorating you meant to do gets put off to the next day. With a local homebrew shop at the bottom of the road for advice, one soon gets the hang of it. It’s really just cooking on a longer timescale. Early lesson in married life and brewing is that you can’t have two cooks in the kitchen. Wife says that she has nearly finished in the kitchen and I can start, but when I am cooking I do things my way and don’t want any advice from someone who has never brewed anything before. After a couple of brews, I wait until I can have the kitchen to myself.
A different kind of Pitch
Like President Obama, I used kits of ready made malt and in my brewing reading discover that there are two types of yeast: bottom-fermenting (used for lagers) and top-fermenting (used in bitters and baking). The malt and sugar is boiled up and put into a plastic dustbin. Hops can be added then or later for extra flavour and you pitch in the yeast. A cooking thermometer is essential as the brew has to be tepid not warm, which will just kill the yeast. Cleaning has to be without detergent, traces of which will also kill the yeast and there are plenty of cheap specialist products available. The smell of the fermentation is quite strong at first and taking the lid off the dustbin to smell it closer gives a slight pinching sensation in the nostrils, which is the alcohol. Do this for a few minutes and you will feel quite lightheaded without touching a drop! Inhaling it means it goes straight into the bloodstream without having to go through the digestive system.
With any hobby, joining a club can be worthwhile where a Google search reveals London Amateur Brewers here and American Homebrewers Association on the other side of the pond. Should you visit Brussels, there is the Belgian Brewers’ Museum which lists 15 categories of beer mentioned in Et qui va promener le chien? and you get a free glass of beer, blonde or dark afterwards.
Where to start? One facility not available in the 1970s is Ebay which lists lots of Homebrewing equipment Once you have the hang of it, you might even like to try Brewing Beers like those you Buy especially with…Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat….
But let me finish as I started, with President Obama. He makes one beer which I avoided – Porter, a dark heavy beer. Probably because of the subtitle in my beer recipe book, “Is this the beer that launched a Thousand hangovers?”
Did anyone else’s grandparents brew their own beer? Any other current or lapsed homebrewers out there?
Further Reading: H A Monckton’s Classic: A History of English Ale & Beer
Or even: Set up Your Own Micro Brewery
Christmas is Coming: 300 Beers to Try before you Die!
