Maybe the third time really is the charm

It was brewing day here in the House of Fermentation this past Saturday. I put together an amply hopped IPA that, I hope, will have just as ample a malt foundation to balance and support the hops. Time will tell, as it always does in brewing.

Two days after brew day, my five year old woke up super early because he had to go to the bathroom, which just happens to be the room with the easiest to control temperature in the house at this time of year.  So, it's where the fermenter is perking along almost like a tiny steam engine. It smells like a brewery in there, or maybe like a hop farm, and he remarked in a sleepy voice, "What is that crazy smell?" Of course, he wasn't surprised at all when I told him it was the beer.

This was my third batch of homebrew, but my first one with organic ingredients, and I want to mention briefly how this came about. I think quite a bit about not just craft beer itself, but the beer business, the place of these breweries in local and regional economies, the environmental impact of brewing and stewardship of the environment by brewers, and community and political involvement by breweries. Along those lines, I recently read Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World by Christopher Mark O'Brien. In the course of touching on many aspects of the industry, the environment, and politics, he made a pretty compelling case for brewing with organic ingredients as much as possible.

Brewing with organic ingredients is totally consistent with how we cook at home, and O'Brien discussed his involvement with Seven Bridges, an organic brewing supply coop in Santa Cruz, California. So, I visited their website, and before long, I had ordered up an organic IPA recipe kit. I also ordered some additional hops to spice it up further. Now, I've finally gotten to brew it up.

I'm an extract brewer, and a novice at that. As I said, this batch is just my third. The first was a brown ale that went fairly smoothly except for a brief fiasco with a too-small brew kettle, and the second was a steam beer that turned out as a malty amber after I discovered too late that the original gravity was too low when I first brought the wort up to volume; I had to add more malt, and it made it taste like a rich and fruity amber ale. You learn from every batch. Maybe it was that this was my third brew and three's the charm, or maybe it was that the kit was really well put-together, but this batch went great. I was able to totally relax and enjoy as the elixir came together, filling the house with its pungent aroma. The windows were open, music was playing, and making this batch was the meditative experience that I was hoping for. The other two batches were fun to make, but this one was even more than that.

While I've found both of my previous kits (not from Seven Bridges) to be a bit under-malted, this one was perfect. I could have gotten a touch over 5 gallons out of it and still hit the mark on the original gravity, but I wanted the OG a tad high in an attempt to balance the additional hops. The kit was easy to use, and Seven Bridges was straightforward to deal with. The website is pretty well-organized, and my kit arrived promptly and in pristine condition.

I'm eager to get my next kit from Seven Bridges; I've got my eye on a Belgian-style golden ale, which just sounds awfully good right now. And I have to admit, it feels rather good to brew organic. I'm curious about whether the availability of organic barley and hops will increase and whether we'll be seeing more commercial breweries brew up organic offerings. Just like with every batch, time will tell, though if it's something people want to see, they needn't wait to make their voices heard at their favorite breweries.