Mash In

It has come to my attention that I have been away from the world of internet publishing for too long. That being the case, it must be time for me to begin a blog about the most rewarding passion of my adult life; brewing.

For as long as I can recall I have loved to cook but baking did not enter my life until I was in my early twenties. I began with simple recipes for bread, forayed into the world of pastries and even managed to make a few decent batches of cookies. For all intensive purposes, I was average at best. My strong points however were my anal-retentive tendencies to learn the science behind the recipes (eternal thanks to Alton Brown) and a good instinct of when to follow the recipe and when to stray from it. Self praise aside, it took a lot of practice to improve. I do not mean simply baking during the holidays, I mean, baking just to bake. Fortunately baked goods are easy to pawn off on people so the products of my practice never went to waste.

What does this have to do with brewing? Everything! Brewing was simply the next step. Here are some simple equations I have developed over many years of research that explain why baking and brewing are so similar:

Baking
grain + yeast + time + heat = delicious consumable

Brewing
grain + yeast + time + heat = delicious consumable + a buzz

As you can see, it was a logical progression. This combined with a constant desire to save money helped me to begin brewing in the fall of 2010.

I have practiced brewing to the degree that I have original recipes that I repeat, “users” that make repeating appearances at my house and often so much beer that I am grateful for not living alone; the non-taxable limit is higher if you have more than one adult in the house. With all this positive feedback the idea of going professional has entered my mind more than once. I want to make money off of my favorite hobby.

This will be how I start to.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned.