Any adult may, without payment of tax, produce beer for personal or family use (26USC5053)

So here I am, thinking I'm being oh-so-adventurous by trying to make ethnic dishes. Then, bam!, the real cook in the house, TJ, reminds me that I am a mere amateur, with a single round of homebrewing. Of course, I instigated this slap in the face by demanding pumpkin ale, having no idea that making beer is like following the longest and most complicated recipe ever.

Speaking of recipes, I can't share the ones we actually used, mainly because TJ's recipes are a work in progress -- and completely illegible (below left). So here are some suggestions that contain similar ingredients to our pumpkin ale, English pale ale, and mead. A major shopping trip for supplies, including malt extract and hops (below right), took place a few weeks before our brewing on Christmas Day (thus the seasonal Noche Buena bottles in the background of both of these photos).

One of the recipes called for a special ingredient: a pumpkin we picked up after volunteering at a nearby organic farm. TJ bisected the gourd and removed the seeds (below left) before slicing it and roasting it in the oven for about an hour (below right). After brewing, I salvaged the pumpkin meat for soup and hummus, but regrettably, we threw away all but a few seeds, which I deposited in our backyard, in hopes of another batch of pumpkin ale next year.

Besides the ingredients, we already had purchased quite a bit of equipment. TJ had most of the accoutrements, but we needed the infrastructure of containers for fermenting the beer (below left). Considering the frothy returns, the investment is more than worth it. But the investment of time in sanitizing all the equipment (below right) is not as rewarding. Obviously, I don't bleach all the cookware I use when making food, but apparently, it's important in beer because even a small bit of bacteria can ruin an entire batch of beer (read: skunky).

With everything assembled and cleaned, we were ready to start cooking. The first step in our pumpkin ale was "steeping" some grain (barley) and the pumpkins in water to create a tea (below left). TJ occasionally checked the temperature to know when to add the malt (below right), which happens just before a long period of boiling.

Right before the boil began, TJ poured in some dried malt extract (below left). Using extract allows a homebrewer to skip the step of mashing, which makes any beer recipe that much more complex. The boil is carefully timed to determine when to add hops and other ingredients. Typically, the longer the boil, the hoppier the beer. The "minutes" in Dogfish Head's 60-Minute and 90-Minute IPAs refers to how long the hops stayed in the boil.

You actually don't boil all the water that will turn into the beer; some of it is added right before fermentation (below left). (Living in a country where potable water does not come from the faucet made many steps of this process a bit more complicated.) After mixing the boil, sans hops and pumpkins, with the extra water, we had to cool the beer, which we did by setting it outside and putting in ice packs (below right), so the heat wouldn't kill the yeast when we added it.

With the brew at the proper temperature, TJ "pitched" in the yeast (below left). For the pumpkin ale, we used a dry yeast that was mixed with water, much like yeast used in bread; for the pale ale, we bought a form of yeast that was already wet. Yeast ferments the beer by feeding on the sugars leftover from the malt (and pumpkin bits), creating alcohol and carbon dioxide; a little gadget called an air lock (below right) keeps those byproducts in the container and proves, with its little bubbles, that the beer is actually fermenting.

This go-round, TJ decided to ferment his beer in two stages. After a few weeks, we transferred each of the brews into new (re-sanitized) containers. TJ did this to clarify the beer, hoping that removing some spent yeast by scooping it out by hand (below left) and by siphoning it through a strainer (below right) would make the beer less murky.

Besides getting rid of the waste, the transfer from one container (below left) to another (below right) allows a bit of oxygen to mix with the brew, which can speed up fermentation. Although it's tough to wait, fermentation is important to the character of a beer because different types of yeast produce different kinds and amounts of esters, which cause different flavor profiles; for example, Guinness has actually registered its strain of yeast, which the company believes contributes to its distinct flavor. Another way to change the beer flavor is with dry hopping, which TJ did to the English pale ale by adding a bag of hops to its second container.

 

After more days of waiting, we were finally ready to bottle the mead and pumpkin ale. As with the fermenting process, all the bottling supplies have to be thoroughly sanitized (below left), lest you risk even one pint getting spoiled. Some priming sugar, corn sugar dissolved in water (below right), is added before bottling so the beer will continue fermenting -- and therefore will continue carbonating so it doesn't go flat.

TJ gave me a chance to put on the caps, but I deferred to him (below left), because I didn't want to be responsible for too much air getting in and ruining the beer -- or breaking any bottles. After the Great Christmas Ale Explosion of 2010, I am now well aware of how volatile bottled beer can be; therefore, we put them in containers (below right) and covered them with blankets, so glass shards wouldn't scatter if there were a beer blast.

Upon arriving in Tijuana, TJ acquired a kegerator, which meant that at least one beer should and would be kegged. After cleaning out the keg and coating it with some carbon dioxide (below left), we siphoned the English pale ale into the keg, just as we had with the bottles (below right). In case you didn't know, siphoning requires building up some pressure by sucking it like a straw, a method by which TJ performed quality control throughout the homebrewing process.

With the English pale ale, we didn't use any priming sugar because the carbon dioxide would provide enough carbonation. I rolled the keg delicately, like a baby, to mix the gas into the liquid. Then TJ lovingly placed our baby -- I mean keg -- into the refrigerator after giving it one last quality-control taste test.

 

So now, we have about 10 gallons of homemade alcohol sitting around our house, thanks to TJ's expertise and persistence -- and despite my incompetence and impatience. All that's left for me to contribute is a Beef Wellington to go with the English pale ale. From now on, my attempts at cooking will revolve around drink pairings, all based on our homebrews, of course.