BALLAST POINT BREWERY 5401 Linda Vista Rd, Ste 406 San Diego, CA 92110 619.295.2337 www.ballastpoint.com
VISITING THE HOME BREW MART:
PHOTO BY: JUSTIN HUFT
Rewind to three weeks ago and I am pulling up to the Home Brew Mart run by the Ballast Point Brewery, and wondering how I never knew it was there. A guy named Ryan was there to greet me and show me what the heck I would be doing, because up until that point, I was certain that I was going to be attending a class where we were all brewing beer together, and they would be showing me the process step-by-step. He brought me over to their fascinating recipe book with different genres of beer, and we chatted a bit in which I concluded to brew a Bavarian Hefeweizen. Ryan, being the knowledgeable Home Brew Mart manager he is, explained that this would be good for a first-time beer because the temperature can vary a bit more without screwing up the final product. He threw me two bags of malt, a bag of hops and yeast that came from White Labs, a place right in San Diego that can provide all you craft beer brewers with the freshest yeast. And what do you know? The owner of White Labs came from Ballast Point. We continued to indulge in more “education,” where I got to try some of their delicious beer on tap, including Sea Monster (an imperial stout and my favorite Ballast Point beer) on cask with caramel and sea salt. With heaven in my mouth, I kept myself from blurting, “Do you have any job openings?” because working here just seemed like it would be the coolest. While enjoying my tasty beverage, they told me how they run brewing classes where you can come in and watch them brew. They’ll show you step-by-step, and then you can come back and try it when it’s done brewing. Another neat thing they cued me in on is the Homework Series, where they brew a batch of beer and attach the recipe to the bottle so people can replicate it at home. Getting caught up in the marvel of this brewing company, I realized I had an important first-time brew experience of my own to take advantage of, and rushed home with my shiny new brew kit.
PUTTING MY BREW KNOWLEDGE TO THE TEST:
With the kit came directions that seemed like a foreign language to me. I could hear Ryan’s voice in my head telling me about horror stories of people forgetting their malt or their yeast, because with beer brewing comes beer drinking, and I refused to be added to that list. I felt that the first step was to read this packet over and over until it started to make sense, so let’s say by the fifth time I felt as though I had a pretty good handle on what to do. I started to boil the water where I would be putting in the malt, which at this point in the process is called wort. It boils for 60 minutes, and then you run cool water around the pot with the LID ON, making sure no water gets in. If there is anything I want you all to take from this, it’s that SANITATION is the most important part of brewing. They give you a bottle of sanitation, and I sanitized the bejesus out of everything, including my fermentor, bottle caps, bottling bucket, the bottles, my cat (just kidding) and my hands. The fermentor I used is glass, but you could also use a plastic one, which may be easier because a six gallon glass fermentor is a wee heavy, especially with a ton of beer in it. And if you’re 5’3’’ like I am, it’s a little tricky, although the glass one looks so fancy. You pour two gallons of water into the fermentor and then follow by funneling in the wort. After letting the wort in the fermentor cool to between 85 and 70 degrees, you add the yeast. Then let the beer ferment for two weeks. Make sure you see the beer bubbling in your cool glass fermentor, because that lets you know you did it right. It is at this point you can start to siphon your beer from the fermentor into the bottling bucket and start to bottle your beer! Make sure to boil a pint of water in a saucepan and add a cup of corn sugar into the bottom of the bottling bucket, because this is what gives your bottles the carbonation. The siphon step was the trickiest part for me and led to my bottling disaster, but besides that I gave myself a huge pat on the back for a job well done. Let your capped bottles sit at room temp for 10 days, then refrigerate, and you got some tasty beer (we hope)! The only frustrating thing for me was that I wanted it to be all done in one day! Waiting three weeks to drink my beer was torture, but it was worth the wait. The beer was light on the palate and it tasted sweet with notes of clove and banana. I named my beer “Housewife Hef,” not that I consider myself one, but proud to be a woman who successfully brewed her first beer!
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In 1920, Prohibition made it illegal to buy, make, sell, or drink alcoholic beverages.
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While wine making was treated more leniently through the years, brewing beer with an alcohol level greater than 0.5 percent remained illegal until 1978.
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Tips for Home Brewing: 1
Always use fresh ingredients.
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Chill the wort as quickly as possible.
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Sanitize EVERYTHING.
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Make sure you stir your beer in the bottling bucket every six beers you fill or so to make sure the sugar gets distributed evenly for the best possible carbonation in each bottle.
In 1978 Congress passed a law repealing the ban against home brewing small amounts of beer, although it was left up to each state to regulate.
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In the 1980s home brewing became widely popular and microbreweries started to appear across the U.S.
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Try and use dark bottles and store in a dark place to prevent light from getting in and “skunking” your beer.
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Make sure you store it at room temperature between 65-70 degrees (a feat that was hard for me because of our heat wave).
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Have fun!! Experiment using fruits or herbs with your beer.
Mississippi and Alabama were the last two states to legalize home brewing in 2013.
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Today there are over 3,000 breweries in the U.S. and about 1.2 million home brewers.
| FEBRUARY 2015 | 157