Over the last year, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some outstanding homebrewers on some barrel projects. Basically, we get 10 or so people to each brew a batch(es) of a particular beer, then we get together to siphon it into a bourbon barrel. The beer then ages over a month to many months, changing in character and gaining oak and bourbon flavors. So far I’ve reaped the benefits of a baltic porter and an imperial IPA.

The process of turning raw ingredients into delicious beer is an extremely complicated one. It involves chemistry, biology, physics, and magic, plus a potentially infinite budget for copper, stainless, and rubber whizbangs. I have only scratched the surface of the possibilities. That is by design. So, completely neglecting the science involved, and getting to the sequence of events that need to take place to make beer, here is the brewing process in a nutshell.

I cannot believe how long it took me to build my mash tun. In then end I think I was a bit intimidated, partly because I didn’t really understand what a mash tun was. Whenever I set down to research it, I’d end up on some long-winded analysis of manifold efficiency and sparge mechanics. What I’ve since learned is that a mash tun is a container that keeps water and grain at a stable temperature.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about writing a series on homebrewing. By no means am I a great homebrewer…in fact I am only beginning to dabble in brewing all-grain beers. However, after surveying the various writings on the internets about the subject, I have found that most have one flaw in common: they go too deep. To make good (often very good) beer, it doesn’t take a deep understanding of flocculation curves or the dynamics of viscous fluids.