In January,we of the Brooklyn Brewery Marketing Unit decided to make 2015 the year we started homebrewing together. Homebrewing gives us a chance to learn about beer hands-on, and an admirable excuse to drink more beer and call it work. We picked out some styles to try and set forth for glory.
Our first batch was brewed at my West Harlem apartment back in January. (You may remember me from my pairing list with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s fast food awards, or from the credits section to the left of this post. Hi, Mom and Dad!) I have been brewing beer for a couple years in my parent’s garage, but this was my first batch in my apartment. I wiggled the gear into the living room/kitchen, welcomed friends from the Marketing Unit and neighborhood, and set out to brew a single-hop porter bursting with East Kent Golding aroma thanks to a flame-out addition (non-homebrewers: I dumped in a handful of hops after boiling to extract aroma.) It nearly worked!
The beer fermented in my closet using state-of-the-art temperature controls including a percussive radiator and a Brooklyn Summer Ale beach towel for about a month before I bottled it up and let it condition for some time. The flame-out hops had resulted in much more bitterness than I intended, and I hoped weeks in the dark would see the hops recede. Unfortunately, time was not on my side, as the rest of the Unit was clamoring for the results of our experiment.
I unleashed the beer in a tasting two weeks ago as Not Every Second Chance Is Deserved, Volume II. (Volume I is a story for another, sadder day.) To my great surprise, people enjoyed the beer, even earning praise from some of our brewers, cellarmen and Brewmaster Garrett Oliver. It might have helped that we were offering beers from around the country during the tasting (check out Export Marketing Coordinator Joe Soriero’s picture above), but our early success has emboldened us. We’ll let you know how the next batch turns out, even if I totally beef it. In the meantime, get brewing and let us know how your experiments turn out.