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Home-brewing enthusiasts turn to technology
Hey, everything else seems to be computerized these days, so why not the age-old art of brewing.
Visit a home-brew hobbyist as he embarks on his next batch, and chances are he’ll have some type of software assistance at hand.
Amid the brewing essentials in his basement, for example, Chris Brunetti has his PC with a program called BeerSmith. It does everything from recommending the ingredients for certain styles of beers – seemingly endless varieties of ales, stouts, porters, lagers – to keeping inventories of everything he’s made, how he’s gone about it and how much each batch costs.
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By contrast, Doug Allen and Jerry Moncheck started making beer together just this year, but they caught on early to the high-tech angle: A laptop sits in Allen’s Cecil Township kitchen as the kettle starts boiling for the next batch.
“It kind of builds a profile of what you’re making,” says Allen, as he and Moncheck – they’ve come up with name Blue Dog Brewing for their fledgling operation – begin work on a pumpkin porter in time for Oktoberfest.
And in time, they’ll come up with a catchy name for their latest brew, along the lines of some of their other creations, like Mad Blonde Bombshell or Whistling Pig Wheat.
Or Mr. Beer? Actually, that’s the name of the brewing kit that Nicholas Kraft received for Christmas, which started him on a series of beer-making ventures.
Since then, the Bobtown resident has produced about 20 batches, including some flavorful stouts using such ingredients as vanilla and maple syrup. He also plans to go the computer route with ProMash, another program that helps brewers select and calculate their ingredients as they strive for a certain end product.
In a nutshell, the brewing process involves boiling milled grain – or malt extract, a concentrated liquid that eliminates a step or two – then adding hops (the bitterness factor) and other flavorings, and finally cooling everything down to put in yeast and trigger the fermentation process.
Harry's note: In a nutshell, that explanation isn't quite right. I received an e-mail from Tim Mihalek of Washington, who's secretary and newsletter editor for the Three Rivers Alliance of Homebrewers, and he set me straight:
"One does not 'boil milled grains.' One soaks the grains in hot water to convert the starches in grains to fermentable sugars (a process called mashing). The resulting liquid is the boiled with hops and fermented to become beer."
Thanks for clearing that up, Tim!
Then comes the hard part. As Moncheck says, “When you start this, you get so excited for the finished product …”
“… you don’t want to wait a month,” Allen finishes the thought.
But that’s the time it takes, and maybe even a bit longer. Once the beer is ready, though, brewers are eager to share their wares to determine what others think.
“I’m getting a very warm response,” Kraft says about his offerings, and that helps him keep up with the Joneses, so to speak: A couple of friends and two uncles also brew their own.
As for Brunetti, He can offer visitors their choice of a variety of home-brews he keeps in a refrigerator with a series of taps built into the door. One of his latest concoctions is a kölsch style – it’s prevalent around Cologne, Germany, but not so much in Western Pennsylvania – that even a beer novice would have to call delicious.
When you taste one of Brunetti’s brews, he wants honest feedback.
“It doesn’t hurt my feelings if someone doesn’t like my beer. Hey, they don’t like all my beer,” he admits.
An example is an apricot ale he made for a friend’s wedding. Kind of as a lark, he entered it in the fruit, spice, herb and vegetable category of a Three Rivers Alliance of Serious Homebrewers – yes, the acronym is TRASH – competition.
Brunetti won second place.
“It’s funny to see how things work out,” he muses.
The Blue Dog boys’ spirits were buoyed when they took some of their home-brew to the charity Brew at the (Pittsburgh) Zoo event in August, and theirs was greeted with a particular enthusiasm.
Speaking of which, home brewing and fundraising seem to be going hand-in-hand a lot lately.
Brunetti is getting a batch ready for Brewing Up a Cure, which the Three Rivers Underground Brewers group is hosting from 7 to 10 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 17, at the Pittsburgh Athletic Association in Oakland. The event benefits the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
“We show up, donate our time, donate our beer, and we’re happy to talk about our beer,” Brunetti explains. Meanwhile, since no beer needs to be purchased, more of the proceeds can be devoted to philanthropic purposes.
And people who appreciate good beer have an opportunity to sample what essentially are unique offerings, whether they’re made from formulas handed down through generations, or they’ve been generated by a computer program.
As Allen says as he works on his pumpkin porter, “It’s my recipe. No one’s ever made this beer before. That’s exciting, too.”
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