Growth by leaps and bounds

I've got brewing on my mind.

In fact, I find that's the case much of the time. I've caught the bug, bad, and it isn't letting go. I see that as a good thing. After all, the result is delicious homebrew.

Most recently, I brewed two batches about two weeks apart. The first was an organic Belgian-style golden strong ale based on the extract version of the recipe that won the organic brewing competition a year or two ago. After getting it into the fermenter, I had an urge to brew a good session beer for the summer and decided on a bitter, basically following the recipe for Palace Bitter in Charlie Papazian's Complete Joy of Homebrewing.

The Belgian has been bottled, and it hit the targets for original and final gravity. The sample was very promising, spicy and potent, and I'm eager to see how it matures. The bitter should be ready to bottle by about now. With every batch, I've gotten more and more relaxed about the process. In fact, I find it rather meditative, and I'm able to think more closely about each aspect of brewing. I've gotten into altering recipes to suit my tastes. I've also played around with beginning to create my own recipes. Beer is one of my favorite things; why not make it my favorite ways? I've been encouraged as well by the fact that some of the detail work has become more routine. I'm attentive to it, but I'm not sweating it as much and can really enjoy each aspect of the experience. My wife's been great about it, too. She experiences similar joys in creating fermented foods. Besides, she loves the beer, and that's best of all.

In addition to brewing more, I've started a hop garden, which now includes a few cascades and a couple of nuggets, courtesy of generous homebrewing friends. It's set against the south wall of the house, and I spent some time today running lines as high as I could get them given my ladder. Now all they've got to do is climb and produce. Thanks to our other cooking pursuits, we have a dehydrator, so any hops I don't use fresh can get dehydrated and stored. In addition to my little hop garden growing, and countless others like it, I'm excited that hop farming is catching on in Michigan! Hops grown right here in the great beer state.

Another kind of growth is on my mind as well. Until now, I've been doing malt extract brews with specialty grains. But homebrewing taps right into my creative side, and I have been dying to do all-grain. I want to experience brewing from the starting line.

After reading a wonderful post by Jon Abernathy on Hop Press about leaping into all-grain - actually, he referred to it as "stumbling," but I still see it as a leap, and a joyous one at that - I just had to do it. I couldn't not do it. So, I picked up some additional equipment from Adventures in Homebrewing over in Taylor. It's a hike from here, but man, those folks are fantastic. Going over there reminds me of going to an old-style, full-serve gas station. You know, the ones that were called "service stations" for a good reason? There was one pretty close to my house in L.A. when I was growing up, and the owner would even stop by our house to check out our car if we were having trouble with it. He and his crew seemed able to fix anything, and the folks at Adventures in Homebrewing are similar. They know homebrewing through and through. Patient and enthusiastic, they'll help with every bit of the shopping and set you up right. Well, now I'm all set up, and I bought the ingredients for a brown ale. My first extract/specialty grain batch was a brown ale, and it feels right that it should be my first all-grain batch as well.

As I've delved deeper into brewing, I've thought increasingly about what goes into the amazing commercial beers I enjoy and the folks that make them. When I'm able to do so time-wise, I'd like to write a series - probably cross-posted on my Examiner.com column - of in-depth features on each of our local breweries. We have some great ones, and I'd like to highlight the folks that make them great and the impact they have on our community.