My yeast is deceased

Yes - it's true. My Wyeast German Ale Yeast (ideal for Altbier) was dead on arrival at my house. It's not the fault of the extraordinary US beer yeast people at Wyeast Lab. Time of death for the little critters is unknown, but some time between the time over a year ago when they got sealed in their little plastic sachet (where they are only supposed to live for up to 6 months), and yesterday, when I burst the little container invisibly into the outer sterile culture medium. Sadly the supplier (who shall remain nameless) was to blame for loosing the pack in the back of the warehouse for quite a few to many months.... I did all I could to revive the patients with fresh food - but to no avail. RIP little chaps.

Altbier - eh?

So what is Altbier then, I hear you ask (well, I don't really - but who cares...)

Altbier is a relic of the old era, before lager brewing swept Europe in the 19th centurey. It's an ale style - as were pretty much all beers back then (lager had started out as a small niche style, and only caught on when people worked out how to replicate the cold conditions found in the caves where it was originally brewed). So - altbier is an ale style - not unlike English ale styles of today (and maybe more like the English styles of longer ago). In fact it's probably closer to traditional Scottish ale styles like 80 shilling - which are a little darker, a little less hoppy and fermented a little colder than the English ales. I'm not that up on Irish red ale styles, but I think they may be similar too. Back then, all the cities of Germany would have had their own ale styles, before they went all lager on us. The ale styles that live on (apart from the wheat beer styles, which are also ales) are in the north - in and around Düsseldorf, where you  find Altbier, and Cologne - where you find the Kolsch style. I found this pretty good appraisal of  Altbier on brew-your-own (a fine and learned site, to be sure).

Anyway - what it really is is a devine nectar. Its a bit malty, with a lovely continental hop aroma and its served cool and well carbonated. I have this plan for a beer trip to take in Belgium, starting with Antwerp, where they make  De Koninck - another ale kind of in the English ale mould - and then nip across to Düsseldorf for the ultimate altbier brewpub pub crawl. I'd have to take in Uerige, which is the only altbier the Amercians have heard of for some reason, and also Schumacher-alt - which is the oldest altbier brewery in the city. There are dozens of other brewpubs and brews to take in. Got to do it some time.

In the meantime there is always Beers of Europe to fall back on - an endless world beer tour in the confort of your own living room. Or you can brew your own world beers...

What's On

A quick run-down of my current stock:

• On daft, there is the easy drinking house lager - brewed out of a Coopers lager kit - with an extra 500g of light malt and a half ounce of Mt Hood hops added for aroma. Brewed with a Fermentis lager yeast at the right kind of temperature (cold fermented, in the coldest room in the (undeniably cold) house). Very good indeed!
• Latest brew: New Belgium Fat Tire clone. I had this beer in Vegas last year, and its incredibly more-ish. My attempt is good - but came out dangerously strong. Not a midweek beer. Warm good feeling to New Belgium Brewing - awesome beer and great alternative attitude to running a business.
• Then (as I recall) Westamale Extra tribute beer. The real stuff is only brewed for the monks to have with dinner - its about 5%. My Recipe
• A "Belgian Special" Made with a Wilko Beer Kit with home-made candi sugar (loads of) - probably around 7.5%.
• An exceedingly dark (oops) German Altbier - brewed before I got my Altbier book, and with an English ale yeast. a total mish-mash and really all over the place - but one of my favourite brews. Not much left, sadly.
• Belgian Abbey Beer - intended to be a bit like Chimay. Not like Chimay but really good stuff - again, not much left (sad face). It comes in 75cl old Lucozade bottles. First of the new brewing craze, and used out-of-date hops - but none the worse for it. First beer to use home-made candi syrup.

Six beers. Need more. Plagued by dark  fear of running out.

Getting started

Before you can get started you need a few things. First off, you need some ingredients - some malt, some hops and some brewing yeast are the bare essentials (and all you should use if you go with the old (and still well observed) German purity law - the Reinheitsgebot)
Then, you need some hardware. With luck you might almost be able to make a start with what you have in your kitchen. Basically you want:

• Big pot to mash in and boil in
• Big spoon (big enough to stir big pot)
• Strainer (or lauter) to strain the malt grain from your mash, and your hops out of your boiled proto-beer (they call it wort - for some unknown historic reasons I don't know). You can make do with a muslin bag for your first shot (This is called the Brew In a Bag (BIAB) method. Or you can make something out of stuff you found in cupboards (I did this - its the true way of the craft brewer) - or splash out and buy something from one of the many MANY online suppliers.
• Saucepan - to be used as a big ladle for slopping stuff around
• Fermentation bucket - they're cheap and last years
• Piece of tube for syphoning.
• Bottles - don't pay for these - save your empties (or other peoples) - don't leave that party empty handed.

One you're started you can just go on and on improving your kit. The money you save, you can plough back into a better and better brew set-up!

My new fave site for malt is The Malt Miller - they have a lot of exciting continental stuff as well as some standard British home produced malt and hops (US hops too) and they're really not expensive. For gear my faithful suppliers are The Hop Shop (good for hops too) and Brew UK.

As for know-how there are some good forums. Jims Beer Kit is a good one in the UK. For the US Home Brew Talk is great - and its a lot broader - lots of US craft beer types, and people trying to do continental styles (with a touching naiivity mostly). I'll write more about all the fine detail in the dueness of course. Browse those links for now!! 

BTW I'm looking for some good continental forums (German, Belgian, French, etc.) to trawl for ideas. Hard to find as a language-challenged Brit - any pointers gratefully received...

How I do it

I've been making beer on and off for quite a few years. In fact I started at university, making two gallon batches in the bin of my room, in halls. It was okay too (well, I thought so at the time).

Each time I return to the brewing thing I do it a bit differently. The last couple of years I've been doing what's called a full mash - which basically means you start with the raw materials - mostly crushed malt grain and hops. You soak the malt in hot water - at a prescribed temperature, then you strain off the liquor and boil it with the hops. That gets you to a stage that's equivalent to what you get out of a can when you buy a beer kit - in about four hours!

That may seem a big waste of time, but there's lots of reasons to do this. First off, its cheaper. I can make a batch of full-on beer for about £10 (UK pounds) because the malt is cheaper in the raw state. The real advantages though are taste (like the best beer you ever tasted) and flexibility. There are literally dozens of ways of doing a full mash - and they all produce a slightly different product. Add to that a thousand combinations of different hops, malts, adjuncts (i.e. other random stuff) and you have a hundred lifetimes worth of combinations to try. What I'm into is brewing stuff I can't buy. Continental ale styles like Düsseldorf Altbier, Antwerp Pale Ale, Belgian Abbey styles... American craft beer styles, defunct heirloom styles  You can create them all in your own garage. I'm obsessed with Altbier at the moment - the sad thing is, I've never tasted a real one - only my own (sobs).

Can't wait for the next brew day (but I need to find some more bottles as all mine are FULL OF BEER!)

Cheers!

This is a journey into beer... Not train beer (Rudolph the Red LOATHES train beer), but (mostly) my beer that I brew at home and other beers too. Its going to be a gas (mostly CO2).

Brewing has, of late, become a bit of an obsession. I like brewing beer almost more than drinking it. Sometimes I drink extra beer just to free up cupboard space for the next exciting (well, exciting to me) creation. I thought blogging is one way of recording what I'm brewing and how it turned out - so I can look back in future years and wonder what I was thinking of, and why I couldn't think of anything more sensible and life enhancing to do with my evenings. Also maybe some other people can read this and wonder the same thing, or, god forbid, start down the slippery slope that is brewing and consuming ones own ales.