Brew Day! Brewing up Brandon's Maple Brown Ale

Rather than fight the crowds and chase bargains on Black Friday, I decided to stay home and brew beer.  I'm now on the third iteration of Brandon's Maple Brown Ale, a tribute to my 13-year old son. Brandon has autism, so he's a little different and I've always wanted this beer to be a little different, while still being tasty.  I've never felt like I've got this beer right and once, this brew has unfortunately reflected Brandon's autism all too accurately.  I'm optimistic the third time's a charm for this brew, since the wort had the caramel flavors I was shooting for to blend with the maple syrup added to the boil just before flameout. It'll be a few weeks before I learn how it turns out and I'll let you know here.  In the meantime, I'll leave you with a few pictures from the day of brewing.

Tropical Closet Hop Head - A Fine Home Brew if I Say So Myself

Tropical Closet Hop Head in all its glory!

A few weeks ago, I brewed for the first time in about ten months.  It was a Belgian IPA, based on a recipe I made last year that a called Closet Hop Head.  At the last minute, I impulsively made a couple last minute substitutions to replace coriander with cinnamon and Cascade Hops with Galaxy Hops to create a more tropical character to the brew and decided to call it "Tropical Closet Hop Head".

Wouldn't you know, I think I pulled this off.  The cinnamon works with the tropical Galaxy hops to create a nice tropical vibe with a slight floral notes from honey, Chinook and Amarillo hops.  The honey thins out the brew to make it a little more drinkable, and I detected no off flavors.  It doesn't have a strong hop punch but the hop bitterness is certainly there, and it's got nice aromatics.  Call it more of a hoppy Pale Ale than an IPA, but it works pretty well.

Such is the fun of home brewing.  I've heard people claiming every home
brewer harbors this deep desire to brew professionally.    They're wrong!  Home brewing is fun, professional brewing is work.   Ken Grossman can't wake up someday and say "You know, today I'll ditch the Cascade hops and go with Galaxy Hops in Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and see what happens."   And if Ken Grossman did cook up something tasting like Tropical Closet Hop Head, I think he'd be pretty damn proud of it in my totally unbiased opinion.

Brew Day! Tropical Closet Hop Head Belgian IPA

It's been something like 9-10 months since I last home brewed and with a free weekend, decided I had to do something about that.  So last Sunday, I did a little twist on my last home brew, a Belgian IPA I called Closet Hop Head.  Giving it more of a tropical vibe, Galaxy hops replaced Cascade while cinnamon spice substituted for coriander.  Making snap changes on a whim is part of the fun of home brewing which professional brewer rarely have the luxury for.   Can you imagine Ken Grossman waking up one day and deciding to use Galaxy hops instead of Cascade in his Sierra Nevada Pale Ale?

I call this beer Tropical Closet Hop Head and here's few pictures the afternoon of brewing along with the recipe at the bottom.  I'll let you know how it turns out.

Floating Thermometer in a Sea of Mash

All set to start sparging

Boiling away 

Galaxy and Chinook hops, along with some cinnamon
ready to go in at the final minutes

My extremely primitive wort chilling method.
(But it works!)

Time for the yeasts to do their thing!

Tropical Closet Hop Head Belgian IPA

4 lbs. 2-row Malt
1 lb Munich Malt
1/2 lb clover honey  (added at 5 minutes)

Mash with 1 1/2 gallons water

Sparge with an additional 1 1/4 gallons water

Boil for 60 minutes
0.3 ounces Amarillo hops 60 minutes
0.3 ounces Amarillo hops 45 minutes
0.1 ounce Amarillo hops 30 minutes
0.5 ounces Galaxy hops five minutes
0.5 ounces Chinook hops five minutes
0.2 ounces ground cinnamon, five minutes
Cinnamon, Amarillo, Galaxy and Chinook hops, steeped at flame out for additional 15 minutes

Add 1/2 gallon cold water at flame out

White Labs Belgian Ale Yeast in 1-gallon fermenter
White Lab California Ale Yeast in a second 1-gallon fermenter
Makes two gallons

Original Gravity:  1.070
Final Gravity: 1.016
Approximate ABV 7.1%

The Session #84: Autism in a Glass

For this month's Session, Oliver Gray encourages us to go in the novel direction of reviewing a beer without describing its taste, mouthfeel, look or giving it the obligatory 1-10 scale rating.  It reminds me of two home brews I made a couple years ago. As a tribute of sorts to my eight year old daughter Verona, I brewed a Verona Coffee Porter using cold filtered Starbuck's Verona Blend Coffee added at bottling. Forgive the bragging, but the beer turned out to be a perfect representation of Verona: sharp, sophisticated and vibrant.

Encouraged by this, I turned to my next project, a brew for my then 10 year old son Brandon. Brandon is different. He has autism, a disorder that affects at least 1 out of every 100 children born in the United States. Autism is a neurological condition which greatly affects social skills and people with autism often engage in odd and repetitive motions. No two autistic people are alike. In severe cases, a person can be rendered completely non-verbal and perpetually rock back in forth, their mind completely closed off to the world. At the other end of the spectrum are people with Asperger's syndrome, eccentrics with awkward social skills but in some cases, great talent in math, science or art. There is reasonable speculation that Albert Einstein, Michelangelo, and Thomas Edison had Asperger's Syndrome.

Brandon is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the autistic spectrum. He talks to people only when spoken to, although will solemnly recite the words from movie trailers and TV commercials non-stop in his own form of soliloquy. He'll flap his arms wildly when he gets excited or stressed and sometimes bursts unpredictably into a carefree state of big smiles and laughter. I catch a few glimpses of my lucid, personable son through the fog of autism, but these moments are always fleeting.

For Brandon, I chose to brew Brandon's Maple Brown Ale, since he enjoys Saturday morning pancakes so much. In addition to the standard roasted malts used in a Brown Ale, I added some cinnamon and vanilla, since I add these spices to the pancakes, and maple syrup in the secondary fermentation. When I first tasted the final product, the flavors harmonized unexpectedly into a unique, undefinable brew that unfortunately was overwhelmed by an obvious brewing infection. Contemplating this odd brew, I suddenly realized I had stumbled into brewing a good representation of Brandon.

Like Brandon, I could sense a fascinating brew struggling to get out from underneath the suffocating off-flavors. I certainly didn't intend to brew a flawed beer after Brandon, but there it was, an undeniably accurate representation of him in my glass.  Bad beer can simply poured down the drain.   Children thankfully don't work that way.

I always enjoy hearing brewers talk about their beers. The way they describe what they did to create them and how they brought them into the world, many sound like they are talking about their own children. Then there was the time I asked a brewer at a summer beer festival about his wheat beer, and he made a face and nearly sneering, told me "I just brew it for the summer crowd because they like the light stuff ".  His indifference to his wheat beer showed as it was timid and frail.

We've all met home brewers who despite the fact they brew fairly underwhelming beers or ones with noticeable flaws, still talk enthusiastically about them whenever given the chance. Most of us totally relate. We realize a crucial element of the creative process is simply loving what you've created.

I work hard with Brandon to help him overcome his autistic deficits, but one of the things I've come to terms with is that loving Brandon means embracing the autism. If you've ever brewed a flawed beer and loved it anyway, I think you'll understand.

Homebrew Diaries: Closet Hophead 2, Honey Belgian IPA

Sparging the grains for Closet Hop Head 2

A while back, I tried my hand at brewing a Belgian IPA called "Closet Hophead".  It turned out OK, but I thought I could do better.  Now to brew a better beer, I certainly could delve deeply into books on brewing science and work hard on improving my brewing techniques.  But it's a lot easier to simply steal ideas from better brewers.

At the Bistro Double IPA fest during SF Beer Week last February, I got to talking with a home brewer who suggested using two types of yeast for a Belgian IPA.  According to him, Belgian Ale yeast gives a beer nice aromatic qualities but tends to suppressed the hop flavors.   Yeasts such as California Ale yeasts are better at bringing the hops to the forefront.  Later on, I spoke with Hermitage Brewmaster Greg Filippi about Hermitage's Single Hop IPA series, and discovered Greg used a lot of late hop additions to the boil to bring out bright hop characteristics.

Armed with this stolen knowledge, I set out to brew a second iteration of Closet Hop Head.  I brew 2-gallon batches using two 1-gallon glass jugs as fermenters, so it was easy to simply pitch Belgian Ale yeast in one, and California Ale yeast in the other, to get both the best of both yeast strains.  Then, I tweaked the recipe to increase the hop additions later in the boil in an attempt to bring out the hop flavors. 

The result was the most complicated brewing recipe and process I ever tried.  Here's the recipe:


4 lbs. 2-row Malt
1 lb Munich Malt
1/2 lb organic wildflower honey (added at 5 minutes)

Mash with 1 1/2 gallons water

Sparge with an additional 1 1/4 gallons water

0.3 ounces Amarillo hops 60 minutes
0.3 ounces Amarillo hops 45 minutes
0.1 ounces Amarillo hops 30 minutes
0.2 ounces Cascade hops five minutes
0.2 ounces Chinook hops five minutes
0.2 ounces ground coriander, five minutes
0.2 ounces Cascade hops, steeped at flame out for 15 minutes
0.2 ounces Chinook hops, steeped at flame out for 15 minutes

Add 1/2 gallon cold water at flame out

White Labs Belgian Ale Yeast in 1-gallon fermenter
White Lab California Ale Yeast in a second 1-gallon fermenter

Original Gravity: 1.066
Final Gravity: 1.010
ABV: 7.4%

The result was a good, not great homebrew.   The brew is a good mix of honey, aromatics from the yeast, and a floral hop character.  The malt is crisp, simple and dry, and which works as a good canvas for all the different flavors.  It doesn't have the hop bite I was hoping for and while the brew is definitely complex, it's also a tad muddled.  A nice beer, but still needs a little tweaking with a little more hops......and a couple more swiped brewing secrets.

Home Brew Diaries: Closet Hop Head Belgian IPA

I never quite saw the point of taking notes as I home brewed, as I barely knew what I was doing.  And taking notes is something I do a lot during work.   Taking notes is a great way to improve brewing skills but since home brewing is hobby, I was a bit loathe to make it seem more like work and less like a hobby with obsessive note taking. 



Do you have any idea hard it is to take a
picture of a beer beer inside a closet.

But one of the best ways to learn something is to organize one's thoughts so you can tell other people about it, so I've decided to commit my home brewing exploits to electronic papers here in periodic installments I've brilliantly named "Home Brew Diaries".  Which is a signal to you, dear reader, to skip these posts if your not into reading about my home brewing exploits as I readily admit, these posts are more about me than they are about you.  Then again, some of you out there home brew, and part of my satisfaction from home brewing is the insight gained from understanding how hops, yeast, malt, and water come together to create what we all know as "beer".

And so we start with my first attempt at a Belgian IPA, Closet Hop Head.  I've brewed beers inspired by son Brandon and daughter Verona, so it seemed time to brew a beer in honor of my wife Linda.  One of the most memorable times in her life was whiling away the afternoons long ago on a trip to Belgium with one of that countries many wonderful beers.  Back here in the States, her favorite beers are the most hoppy ones.  So a Belgian IPA seemed a pretty obvious as a tribute beer for her, and since I sometimes joke "Don't let her good looks fool you, she's a closet hop head!", that's where the name comes from.

For this beer, I chose Chinook hops in an attempt to give it that nice grape fruity peel character Linda always likes and Cascade to give it additional citrus-like notes.  Linda always loves a beer with great hop aromas, so used a little additional Cascade for dry hopping.  To let all the hop goodness shine through, I used clear Pilsner malt.  The two gallon recipe:

Closet Hophead

Makes approximately two gallons.

10 ounces 40L Crystal Malt
4 lbs. Pilsner Malt
0.5 ounces Chinook Hops 60 minutes
0.5 ounces Cascade Hops 30 minutes
0.2 ounces Cascade Hops 5 minutes
0.2 ounces Cascade Hops, dry hopping
3 twists of ground pepper from a pepper grinder (An impulsive decision near the end of the boil!)

White Labs Belgian Ale Yeast

OG 1.064
FG  1.018
ABV 6.25%

The Final Results
As with a lot of my home brews, this didn't turn out the way I expected.  I'd characterize the final results as more of a Belgian Pale Ale, as it just didn't quite have the hop bite one expects from a good IPA.  The ground pepper was a weird last minute thought while brewing, and like a lot of impulsive last minute thoughts, it doesn't seem like a good idea in hindsight.  Maybe next time I'll use a different spice like coriander to make the brew more "Belgian".  The White Labs website indicates with their Belgian Ale Yeast strain "phenolic and spicy flavors dominate the profile".  That was certainly true here, with those flavors at the forefront and the hop flavors unfortunately muddled and too far back in the background. Not cooling the wort down enough before pitching the yeast may have caused that.   I could certainly use more hops to ramp up those flavors, but having recently read hops available at most home brewing stores tend to be low quality, that might be the real problem.

The brew is a bit cloudy and has a nice meringue-like head to it.

While the end result was a bit of a letdown, Closet Hop Head started growing on me the more I drank it, which is always a positive thing.  I'll just tweak the recipe, possibly find a better source of hops, and give it another go sometime.

Linda drinking something hoppy.

How do you capture autism in a bottle?

Should I brew a beer in honor my autistic son Brandon by brewing a beer with noticeable defects and strange tastes?   Most people would say of course not, but this is not as contrived a dilemma as it might seem.

Consider that we have to take Brandon's picture a bunch of times to finally get one where he isn't flapping his hands, looking away from the camera, or scrunching up his face in an earnest attempt to smile.  But aren't all those other pictures we delete or otherwise hide part of Brandon's true character?   I've learned that loving my son means loving the autism, so there's a part of me that doesn't want hide his autistic traits, but celebrate them, as weird and unnatural as they might be.

Brandon with one of his favorite Lego models he built.

 So how to capture this in a beer someone might actually want to drink?

Brandon devours his Saturday morning pancakes that incorporate cinnamon, vanilla and maple syrup in the recipe, so I decided to incorporate these flavors into a beer.  I thought these flavors would go well with the light nutty and roasted character of a good Brown Ale, so I took the Dad's Brown Ale 1-gallon recipe from the Brooklyn Brew Shop's Beer Making Book, and added cinnamon, vanilla and maple syrup and called it Brandon's Brown Ale.

The recipe:

Brandon's Brown Ale


1.6 pounds Maris Otter Malt
0.1 pounds Caramel 40 Malt
0.1 pounds Caramel 80 Malt
0.1 pounds Chocolate Malt
 0.1 ounce Challenger Hops (60 minutes into the boil)
0.15 ounces  Fuggles Hops (0.1 ounces at 40 minutes, 0.05 ounces at 55 minutes)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 40 minutes into the boil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract 55 minutes into the boil
3/4 cup maple syrup at end of boil

English Ale Yeast

The grains were mashed with 2 quarts of water, were sparged with an additional 1 gallon of water, and then the resulting wort was boiled for 60 minutes

As for the taste, well it is different.  Cinnamon, vanilla and maple syrup work great together in pancakes, but some flavors just don't work well together in a beer, and this one's a little different.    The maple syrup and vanilla extract gave it a woody character while the cinnamon imparted a savory, aromatic dimension, but the beer seemed to lack the malty character one associates with a Brown Ale.  Next time, I think the maple syrup will be added to the fermenter after the boil to give the brew a more mellow maple flavor and I might use a little less of it to let the malt shine through.  Using a fresh vanilla bean and cinnamon sticks would probably improve upon the flavor as well as the spice character seemed a little muddled.

But those problems aside, the beer had a smooth, slighly creamy character and the spices gave the Brown Ale an unusual dimension that was a little surprising and unconventional, but is easily enjoyed.  I think that captures Brandon pretty well.

A more candid shot of Brandon building the Lego model.   In an unposed shot
when he doesn't realize we're taking his picture, he is more natural.

No Longer Home Brewing Behind Closed Doors

Brewing up a one gallon batch

Whenever I would tell my wife I would be home brewing over the coming weekend, there would be an awkward pause, and then realizing there was not much she could do about it, she'd respond with a quiet "OK".  She'd arrange to meet up with her friends for the day while I'd do my business, and when she was on her way back that evening, would give me a call to warn me of her impending arrival. I'd get everything cleaned up and put back so by the time she got home, she would have no idea what had actually happened while she was away, although there would always be some tell tale evidence if she looked closely.  Of course, she knew what really went on when she went away, but was wise enough not to ask too many questions.

OK, granted my wife is quite supportive of my brewing exploits, but understands it's best if she isn't around.  Our apartment kitchen gets pretty trashed whenever I brew up the standard 5-gallon home brew batch and I'd tend to get in a foul mood one or twice or three times brewing all that beer in cramped quarters.  My wife doesn't like watching our place get trashed and knows to get as far away from me as possible whenever I'm in foul mood.

And while brewing sounds like a pretty romantic activity, it's a lot about cleaning and sanitizing large metal and glass objects which I find about as exciting as cleaning the toilet.  And cleaning up the kitchen after I've splashed and spilt wort all over it is about as thrilling as, you guess it, cleaning up a dirty kitchen.

So after reading about brewing more manageable 1-gallon batches I set about brewing my first 1-gallon batch with a cautious optimism, choosing to brew a Honey Sage Ale recipe from the Brooklyn Brew Shop Beer Making Book .

Predictably, I screwed up recipe from the get go.  It called for using 1.8 lbs of Pilsner Malt and 0.3 lbs of Munich malt.  I  picked up what I thought were two 1-pound bags of Pilsner malt at my favorite home brew store, only to find out when I got home that I had actually picked up a one pound of Pilsner malt and a one pound of  Rahr Malted Wheat.  Luckily, this mistake was partially cancelled out by another mistake, in that I also picked up Belgian Wit Ale Yeast rather than Belgian Ale Yeast, since Wit beers are brewed with wheat malt.   Despite seriously deviating from the original receipe, the end result could be no worse than any of my previous brews.

Nice clean stove to brew beer on

So the final recipe turned out to be:

1 lb Pilsner malt
0.6 lb Munich Malt
0.5 lb Rahr Malted White Wheat
3/4 cup California Wildflower Honey
0.2 lb Cane Sugar

0.3 ounce East Kent Golding hops
3 tablespoons chopped fresh sage

Belgian Wit Ale Yeast

Mash the grains with 2 1/2 quarts water between 144-152 F for 60 minutes.  After sparging with an additional 1 gallon of water at 170F, boil for 1 hour adding 0.1 ounce of hops at initial boil, another 0.1 ounce at 30 minutes, and the last 0.1 ounce at 55 minutes.  Add 2 tablespoons of the sage at 30 minutes and the last tablespoon at 60 minutes.  Add the honey and cane sugar at 60 minutes, and stir to dissolve. 

Ferment for two weeks, and then add 3 tablespoons of honey for priming.

Original Gravity 1.070
Final Gravity  1.008

The Honey Sage Belgian Wit in all its glory

abv = 8.0%

After fermenting for two weeks, the sage and honey flavors were quite forward, with a definite boozy character to the brew from high alcohol content.  Two weeks of bottle conditioning mellowed things significantly.  The final result was a fizzy cloudy yellow unassuming looking wit beer with plenty of herbal sage flavors, some yeastiness, and a little savory and floral character from the wildflower honey and hops.  Despite the high abv, the alcohol was not longer apparent, and I didn't detect any obvious off-flavors. 

It only took about four hours to brew from start to finish, with a lot less before and after prep work than the 5-gallon batches I've made previously.  And the result was something pretty refreshing to drink during a Northern California "winter" and arguably the best beer I've ever brewed, even though I screwed up the initial recipe pretty bad.

Which underlines a key difference between running and brewing.  If you screw up running, some part of your body is going to feel pretty sore.  Screw up home brewing and chances are still good you'll have a decent beer when it's all over.

The Beer Experts Have Expressed Their Polite Silence on Habenero Chili Stout

You'd think after the last three batches of home brew that ranged from barely drinkable to down right awful, I should just give up brewing altogether.  But then, there have been times running where long term fatigue and multiple injuries lead to pain and frustration for weeks and months on end.   It happens to a lot of runners, and you need just keep working through the difficulties and find ways to correct the problems to eventually come through it a wiser runner than before.  So in that spirit, I just kept at it with home brewing.  Of course, it is also possible the culmulation of all those slight jolts to my head with each running footstrike over 30 years has resulted in a certain level of  brain damage which clouds my judgement.

So whether motivated by positive thinking or simple brain dysfunction, I decided to brew a Habenero Chile Stout feeling slightly confident I'd isolated the source of the contamination that soured my last brews.  You may reasonably ask "Why on earth would you brew something like that?".  I would like to answer the strong, roasty flavors of stout and stimulating Habenero chiles are part of my personality, vision, and creativity as a brewer.  But the more honest answer is that agressively roasted malts and hot chiles are great at masking any off-flavors lurking around in the brew. 

For the recipe, I used Randy Mosher's Black Ship Pirate Stout from his excellent book Radical Brewing.

5.5 lbs Amber Dry Extract
1.5 lbs Black Patent Malt
1.5 lbs Dark Molassess
1.0 lbs Dark Crystal Malt
5 gallons distalled water

1.0 once Willamette Hops (90 minutes)
2.0 onces Styrian Golding (30 minutes)

After mashing and sparging the grain, the resulting wort and powered extract was boiled for 90 minutes.  With five minutes left in the boil, I added this spice mix:

1/2 tablespoon fresh ground pepper
1/2 tablespoon commercial chili powder
1/8 teaspoons Habenero chile powder

English Ale Yeast was used to fermet the brew, which was racked to a secondary in three weeks, and then bottled two weeks later.

The idea was to replicate Mexican chocolate, with a little heat mingling with the roasty chocolate flavors.  I'd say this came close.  You can certainly detect the heat from the Habeneros.  Its strong, but I didn't find it overpowering, and it takes front stage to a complex roasted malt background.   I'll also add that the heat from the chiles mellowed after the bottles had aged after 3-4 weeks.   I thought it was and interesting and unique beer, but then since I brewed it, I'm bound to be biased. 

So I took a bottle to this month's Bay Area Beer Bloggers meet-up and bottle share to see what experienced beer drinkers in the Bay Area Craft Brewing community thought about at.  I've known Brian Stechshulte for nearly a year and being that I am a graduate of The Ohio State University, find him to be an inspiration as he's overcome his education from the University of Michigan to become a decent, productive member of society.   (We don't need to talk about last weekend's Ohio State-Michigan game.) I don't recall what he said about the Habernero Chile Stout or if he even tried it.  For some reason, he seemed more interested in sampling from bottles of 2009 and 2010 vintages of the always excellent Deschutes' Abyss sitting on the table, as well as all the other stouts available that night from highly renowned and hard to find breweries than something from a hack homebrewer who insults his alma mater on a regular basis.  Imagine that.

Next up was John Heylin who remarked "The chiles are noticeable, but not that hot.  It's smokey."  Colin James, who graciously hosted the bottle share at his apartment agreed "You can certainly taste the chile powder".  Both Chuck Lenatti and I noticed a metallic taste.  There are know-it-alls who claim "metallic" is an off flavor, but it actually provides a mysterious complexity to the brew.   Beyond that, the silence was a little telling.  Nobody came out and said "I don't like this" or even "this sucks" something people often think, yet rarely say, but nobody said "this is good" or "I like it" either.    Never the less, I'll take this polite awkward silence as a ringing endorsement from the Bay Area Beer Bloggers of my latest home brew.

Yeah right.

The Brooklyn Brew Shop's Beer Making Book: Homebrewing for the Rest of Us

Last time I brewed a five gallon batch of stout in my small cramped apartment kitchen, lugging around all the hot liquids in heavy containers created all sorts of spills, drips, and splatters that by the time I was done, it looked like someone with stout colored blood had been murdered in my kitchen.   I don't home brew as often as I'd like since my small apartment kitchen didn't seem like good place to do it.  But my kitchen is an ideal place to brew using standard equipment found in most kitchens to make smaller 1 gallon all-grain receipes, as I found out reading the The Brooklyn Brew Shop's Beer Making Book, writen by Stephen Valand and Erica Shea, owners of the The Brooklyn Brew Shop.

"We wanted to create something where people familiar with a cook book could just start making beer," explains co-author Stephen Valand.  "We didn't want to say, first thing to do is go to a hardware store."  The book describes how to brew beer in small, scaled down 1 gallon batches, a far more manageable size than standard five gallon recipes found most in home brewing books and magazines.  At these small batch sizes, little specialized equipment is necessary to brew beer, such that "..if you've ever made a pot of pasta, you're in good shape".

Erica and Stephen founded their business in 2009 the way a lot of business are created: Through serendipity, followed by looking around, asking questions, and recognizing a unmet demand.  In their case, it started when Erica discovered an old glass carboy in her father's basement from his brief home brewing excersion fifteen years ago.  After making ice cream and pasta from scratch, Stephen and Eric decided their next food project would be to brew beer, so they went about reading up on home brewing.

"A lot of the books seemed to be written for someone with a Ph.D. in Chemistry," recalls Stephen.  "and there were really no place to get home brewing equipment in New York City."  This was largely due to the fact that homebrewing emerged as a hobby in the 80's where 5 gallon and larger batches of beer were typically brewed in backyards, basements, and garages to accomodate equipment like large propane heating torches.   Few New York City homes had the space and facilities to accomodate this, something plenty of people in San Francisco Bay Area can relate to.

After adapting standard home brewing techniques to one gallon batches, they developed their own one gallon recipes.  Realizing that food conscious New Yorkers were ill-equipped to join the craft and home brewing revolution, they started selling home brewing kits at the Brooklyn Flea, a local food and crafts fair, in 2009.    Making brewing accessible to the masses turned out to be good business, and they expanded into a 6,000 square foot warehouse a year later to keep up with demand.   Today you can purchase their kits and recipes in Whole Foods, Williams-Sonoma and other retail locations all over the country, as this handy dandy store locator on their website will show you.

As for their new book, it explains the equipment needed to brew one gallon batches, with a brief introduction to brewing malts, hops, and beer styles in simple direct manner.  What follows are 52 different brewing recipes, with a few standard beer styles like IPA's, Porters, and Pale Ales, but plenty of beers that are kind of out there, such as Lady Lavender Blonde Ale, Eggnog Milk Stout, and Lobster Saison which is brewed using an empty lobster shell.

Of course, it took some experimentation to come up with all those different beers.  "There are a few beers we made that have been hidden away, and we don't talk about," concedes Stephen.  "We experimented with a lot of different woods for our Bourbon Dubbel.  We tried cedar wood, which someone told us was poisonous.  It tasted like drinking the closet."

And if you ask me, experimentation and sharing beer you made with family and friends is the best thing about home brewing, an element sometimes lost in the home brewing community, where there can be a lot of emphasis on reproducing and miniaturizing an actual brewing operation.  Given the fact any professional brewing operation, even your local craft brewery, is mostly concerned with sanitizing large metal objects and meticulously pouring over brewing data to brew batch after batch of identical tasting beer, it is not surprising that a lot of mainstream home brewing really doesn't resonate with the general public.

And this book brings up one of the parallels I've descovered about beer and running.  One of the best things about running is you don't need any special equipment or belong to any elite club.  All you need to do is lace up a pair of running shoes, go outside, and you're a runner.  One of the best things about beer is that if you take grains, hops, water and yeast and combine them the right way, you're a brewer.  Thanks to this book, more of us can be brewers.

(An advance copy of this book was provided by Randon House Publishing for the purposes of this review.)