Prologue

I have known beer all my life. It hasn't been a really close friendship, but more than just a passing acquaintance. My first taste of beer was in Germany, where I spent much of my youth. They don't make such a fuss over drinking ages over there, so I could legally taste beer when I was a teenager. I had a few bottles of some German brands, but not so much as to get into trouble. After returning to America, I grew to adulthood, and drank more than my share of Budweiser and Coors.

As I have gotten older, I have become more discerning in my tastes, but still I am an amateur at even drinking beer. I like to drink a cold beer on a hot day after working, and I like to visit brewpubs wherever I can find them. I particularly enjoy going to a beerpub, drinking a sampler of their offerings, and eating a meal of fish and chips. I have had some pretty awesome fish and chips. Every once in a while, I'll get a sausage sampler, which reminds me of good old-fashioned German food and beer.

I have a scientific mind, and an appreciation of chemistry and biology. I also like to cook. Last weekend, my wife and I visited a place called Folsom Brewmeister, and invested about 300 bucks in a home brew setup. It comes with everything you need to get started, and a book about home brewing. It's sort of an instruction manual.

I haven't even cracked the book open yet. The ingredients are in the refrigerator, and tomorrow night I will begin the first steps in learning to brew my own beer. This blog will hopefully become a log of my experiences, and also a good place to learn about brewing for others someday. That may be a bit presumptive, considering the huge numbers of beer blogs on the internet. A brief Google search yielded a plethora of links to all kinds of blogs, and the first few blogs had links to even more blogs.

I plan to spend some time dwelling on the different aspects of beer brewing. There are things like barley malt, mash, grain, wort, and yeast. There are biological processes, like malting and fermentation. There are chemicals, both good and bad, which can make the all the difference between a good beer and an undrinkable waste product. All of these things are worth thinking about, so that is what I will do.

Check back tomorrow, when I will attempt my first baby steps towards making a brew which I can be proud of, or forced to pour down the sink.