The Joys of Beer

So my new hobby this year is brewing my own beer. I was turned on to this lovely process by Chad, the incredibly awesome drummer from Jabberwocky. I say "incredibly awesome" with no hint of bias...the guy's really freaking good. The fact that it's my band that he plays in is just added bonus. Someday here I'll chat about Jabberwocky.

When tasting the homebrew of others, I've had some really good stuff and much more horrible crap. That's just the nature of the process. Thus far, I've been lucky and haven't had a bad batch. I'm sure that something bad will come floating along eventually, but that's OK. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I'm really not much of a cook, but that's a lot of what beer brewing is. I follow a recipe and I cook it. Then, essentially, I let it rot in a plastic pail. Then I let it continue to rot in a glass jar. Then in some bottles. Then I drink it, and it's fantastic. Please, biologists -- You may refrain from giving a lecture on the difference between "rotting" and "fermenting".

The point of this foundation is to tell a story of awkwardness. You see, Kerry's boss is a master homebrewer. The guy makes fantastic beer. He uses a much more complicated process than I, starting from actual, whole grain rather than the n00b approach of using extract. (For the record, Chad also uses this all-grain process and also makes excellent beer, but that doesn't really come into this story.)

When I had brewed my very first batch of beer, I thought it was absolutely fantastic. This isn't necessarily a false thought, but I tend to think highly of myself and I'll admit it. Oh well. For whatever reason, I though it would be a good idea to give a couple of bottles to Kerry's boss. I was giving it away to other friends at the time, and thought he might like it and stuff.

So, we got to the holiday party at Kerry's work and Kerry's boss was talking to me. He said, "Hey, I finally tried some of your beer. It was good for your first batch. I need to get you my recipe for cooking the grains, though, so you can get rid of that maltiness bzzzzzzzzzzzz." He didn't actually trail off with a buzzing sound. It would have been funny if he did, but that's really just a representation of my brain when I realized that the conversation had suddenly flown far over my head. I didn't have the heart to stop him and tell him that I'm just a malt-extract using n00b. I would have fessed up, if there were any more to the conversation, but for some reason or another I found myself suddenly talking to someone else.

The idea of me giving my unworthy beer to him seems, in my mind, something akin to me going to orchestra hall, grabbing one of the members' violins, and playing a song for them. The resulting screeches would be less than pleasant so said professional, but I can see myself getting some sort of weird enjoyment from the process. I'm going to quit writing now, before I fly too far afield. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.