I've got the gun, you've got the brew - you've got two choices of what you can do

Seven or Eight years ago I got a home brew kit for Christmas from my parents. It was something I always wanted

to do and I was psyched to get the kit. Ultimately though it turned into a disaster. THe kit was this big sack to

which ingredients and water were added. The instructions were to leave it in a cool area for a week or two so I

hung it up in the basement and left it there until disaster struck. The bag exploded, spilling beer all over the

floor - apparently I did something wrong. It was the sad end of my nascent career as a brewmaster.

I gave up the dream until my friend Jesse filled my head with the tales of the glorious batches of beer he had

brewed while a student at the University of Wisconsin. His first effort had actually been a project for a biology

class that he had done in leiu of writing a paper. The resulting beer was so good that he continued brewing through

graduation producing 10 or so different batches. For two years Jesse talked up his homebrew, but never produced so

much as a bottle of it.

Sensing that he needed a little push I offered to serve as an assistant and put up half the money for a batch in

return for an equal portion of the yield. A plan was hatched. Jesse dove back into his tomes and brewing records

and drew up a plan of attack:

The recipe called for malt extract as well as malted barley, a variety of hops, gypsum, irish moss, and some

brewers yeast. He already had most of the major equipment, but we'd need a few other things to get started as well.

We picked this past Saturday as the day to do our shopping and finalize the recipe.

Incredibly, we couldn't find a brewshop located in the city so we had to drive all the way out to East Northport

in Suffolk County on Long Island to a hardware store where the owner runs a mini brewshop in the back of the store.

I didn't like going to Suffolk county when I lived on Long Island. The next option was even further away, in Islip

so we sucked it up and made it a roadtrip.

The brewshop itself was weird. We were hoping for a little more help from the staff. It seems that the owner of

the shop was the only one in there that really know his stuff when it came to homebrewing and the rest of the staff,

while friendly was not up to the task of lending their advice when it came to subjects like yeast selection. If it

hadn't been late we might have jetted for the islip store. Still we picked up everything we needed. The

ingredients came out to about $45. If we get our planned yield of two cases, it will be less than a dollar a

bottle. Not bad. On an impulse I also bought myself a copy of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. It is THE

tome of the homebrew process. Jesse already had a copy, but I felt like reading something on the train that night

anyway and I'd need one if I ever did my own brew so I decided to splurge. After that we were ready to hit the

road.

Here's the brewshop:

The staff: they were friendly, but didn't really know their homebrewing, apparently if you want real help you've

got to catch the owner.

The Karps'Brewmobile! (cue the batman music):

Here's Jesse ready to get his brew on in front of the brewmobile:

Here I am repping for the upper west side. Even nerds got to carry their flag for the hood:

Here I am pointing to my new copy of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian. If this beer

doesn't taste damn good these pictures will look really stupid.

First stop after the brew shop was Jese's parent's house in Roslyn to commandeer an appropriate brewpot, neither

of us had one that was big enough. Next up was my parent's house to salvage two cases of empty beer bottles for

future bottling. It was a hectic afternoon, but we got everything we needed and were ready to brew.

Check back tomorrow for the description and pics of the actual brewing process. I wanted to get it into this post, but the post is now stretching on the long side and I'm kind of wiped out too.