Our New Roomate

Meet Stew, our new brewer! Stew is a gift from Mom and Dad. When Ethan and I figured out how much beer costs here – especially beer that isn’t a poor cousin of Budweiser*, we decided to go the home brewing route. I have been trying to convince Ethan to brew beer for a while now. While in Kuwait, he wanted to brew carbonated wine. I wasn’t too keen on that, because I don’t really like to drink it, and our house was mostly covered in white carpet, or at least all the potential wine storage areas were. I had visions of giant red stains everywhere. I also wanted to grow our own hops.

While we haven’t gotten to the hops growing stage yet, we have mixed up and brewed our first batch of beer. Stew was part of a kit that included all of the brewing hardware, 30 PET bottles and a lager brewing kit, for $100 AUD. Not too bad! While lager is not our first choice, it’s a pretty simple recipe to start out with. Also, if we screw it up, we won’t be as disappointed (I hope).

Currently, Stew has been emptied into the bottles, with only one accident when the bottle filler broke and about a cup of beer poured on the floor. Thank goodness for tile floors and cleaning solution! Now we have to wait about 2 weeks to sample our wares. The quality of the beer is highly dependent on the sanitization of the equipment, so let’s hope we got it clean enough.

We did try some of our brew while measuring the specific gravity to see if it had finished fermenting. It wasn’t awesome, but it was certainly as good as any lager I’ve had here. It will taste a lot better cold, as well. If all goes well, we should have it ready just in time for a Halloween party we are tentatively planning for the end of the month!

*Not saying that Budweiser is a beer we would prefer, by any stretch of the imagination.