Beer Brewing

One of the guys I work with decided to brew a batch of beer for our upcoming company picnic. I went to the Vine Park Brewing Company with him yesterday to start the batch. That's the step where you end up with a fermenting barrel of stuff.

We'll return in two weeks to bottle it (and sample some, I'm told).

I brewed beer with a friend several years ago in his apartment. At the time, he had his masters in Chemistry and was working a his PhD in something related. I was sure he'd be a great partner. I figured because he works in labs, we'd have clean and sterile stuff and we'd follow the directions exactly.

It didn't work out that way. We boiled the wert over the pot on his stove. It went behind his stove and inside every crevice in the stove/oven. We couldn't get it all out. His apartment smelled badly for ever after. When I helped him move out many months later it still smelled a bit.

Our beer turned out to be some of the worst crap ever produced. My friend suspected that we had some bacteria get in the ruined it. We didn't keep a clean enough environment. I knew after a couple of sips that our beer sucked. I felt as if it were my duty to drink the first few bottles though. But I couldn't make it through the entire case. I threw out the last bottles without telling my friend. He kept asking for the bottles back. They save those, you know.

He continued to brew and got some good batches, but I had no interest.

I had bad memories of brewing the beer and the disappointing taste of our work.

None of that's going to happen to this batch. The Vine Park Brewing Company is perfectly clean and everything is organized. The guy who helped us, well he did most of the work for us, made sure we didn't make any mistakes. It was fun and the people who run the store were fun to talk to. I enjoyed the brewing.

It'll be tasty beer, I'm sure of that and I'll report on it when I have some.