My First IPA Recipe

Today was a big day in the world of Sarah Stone homebrew!  I ventured off the safe path of pre-packaged recipe kits and traversed onto the uncertain road of creating and making my very own recipe.

I did have a little help, though. Back in March, the Craft Brewer's Conference was held here in Washington, DC.  The CBC is the craft beer industry's main event and I was ecstatic that it just so happened to be held here in DC just around the time that I've been brewing beer on a regular basis.  Of course I had to figure out how to weasel my way into an event of some sorts.

Thankfully, one of the local home brew clubs here hosted an event at the start of CBC featuring a lecture on IPAs by the acclaimed Mitch Steele, head Brew Master at Stone Brewery in San Diego (yeah, I know, they stole my name). This piqued my interest because I had recently visited Stone's brewery in November whilst on a business trip to San Diego. Talk about the most beautiful brewery you can imagine!  Mitch lectured on the history of Indian Pale Ales and I picked up his fascinating book on the subject.

Nerd alert! Learning about Burton's IPA

There is a whole entire book on IPAs!

duh, of course I got mine signed

This wonderful book includes several historic as well as modern day IPA recipes.  I had been wanting to brew a great IPA, and what better way than from a recipe out of a whole entire book on the subject!

I decided to brew the recipe for Stone's IPA.  The book provides the grain bill, hops and yeast strain that each recipe calls for.  It's up to the reader to figure out the math to make the amount of ingredients work for a five gallon homebrew batch.  I am fairly confident that my interpretation will work out alright. (o_O) I call mine Sarah Stone IPA!

I might sound confident now, but you should have seen me this morning. I was totally second guessing everything.  The recipe was pretty loose, so I had a lot of desicions to make about boil times for the grains/malts/hops.  Hopefully I made the right choices!

My first time using White Labs yeast

Nice mix of 10L and 20L crystal malts

LOOK MOM, A WORT CHILLER!

Chinook, Columbus, Centennial Hops

Bad boy in action

The two other milestones from today include using White Labs yeast for the first time and using my new piece of equipment, the mighty wort chiller!  Best investment I've made thus far.  Say goodbye to ice baths and say hello to easy temperature changes.

I'm pretty nervous and excited to find out how this IPA turns out. I am expecting great things!  Will let you know what happens.

Inspiration to Brew

I want to become a Brew Master. 

I am constantly wanting to "become" something. For example, "I want to become a florist" or "I want to become a photographer" or "I want to become an organic farmer." I have this funny (or pretentious?) tendency to always think I that I would probably be pretty good at many professions in life. I see someone doing something cool (something usually other than a desk job) and tend to think "hmm, I could probably do that" and then proceed to imagine myself crafting amazing floral arrangements or milking cows or capturing outrageously amazing photos. Most of the time, this all just stays in my imagination. 

Not this time. This time, I want to become a Brew Master. 

It all started a few months ago when I went to go visit my friend, Elizabeth, in Charleston, South Carolina. On one fateful day in July we visited a winery, a distillery and a brewery! This really wasn't too hard to do, since Firefly knocked out two of the three locations.  But as nice as our first stop was, my favorite part of the day was visiting Holy City Brewery, which capped off the marathon of tastings.  This local brewery had only been in business for like one year, but they had crafted some delicious beer that Elizabeth, Thomas and I thoroughly enjoyed.  

As we sat there in the summer heat, drinking and laughing and enjoying ourselves, I thought of how cool it was that these guys had started up their own microbrewery. How in the world does one start such an operation?  How do you learn to make beer in the first place?  My curiosity naturally lead me to imagine what it would be like if I opened my own brewery.  What would I name it?  What kind of beer would I make?  Would people enjoy it as much as I was enjoying theirs?  

My fascination with microbreweries developed even further when more recently, one of my coworkers visited Port City Brewing in Alexandria, Virginia, for a birthday celebration.  As he told me about the tour he took of the facility and the beer he enjoyed, I began thinking the same thing I had thought in the summer: How did these people come to open up their brewery?  What a cool job that must be!  After all, who doesn't enjoy a good beer?  I could totally do that.  

The yearning to be a creator, to make something physical welled up inside of me once again.  I've always enjoyed the type of work where you get a physical end product.  Some of the most satisfying work I do now involves producing reports, albeit not tangible ones.  

Brewing beer began to sound more and more appealing to me.  

After briefly entertaining the "I'm totally going to open a microbrewery one day" idea, I realized that instead of daydreaming about "what if" alternate realities, I could actually start a home brew operation right now in my own kitchen.  I had heard of people brewing beer in their basements and such, so I turned to the internet and spent a Sunday afternoon with my pal Google searching things like "beer making kit".  A few hours into my extremely preliminary  research, I was sold.  I happily purchased my kit from Northern Brewer and thus began my quest to become a brew master. 

Brew Master Goals: 

1. Learn to recognize what ingredients makes beer taste the way it tastes.
2. Learn more about the process of brewing, fermentation and bottling.
3. Learn how to craft my own recipes in order to make my own great tasting beer. 
4. Share my brew and bring joy to friends and family. 
5. Have fun!

Potential Problems: 

1. Something goes terribly wrong in the process. 
2. The beer I make really sucks.
3. No one wants to drink my beer. 
4. I don't actually enjoy the experience. 

With these goals and pitfalls in mind, I shall embark on my quest to become a Brew Master.

Elizabeth and I at Holy City Brewery in Charleston,  SC