It's been a long while since I've written one of these stories and I guess I kinda evaded the whole purpose of trying to keep me accountable for telling them. Yes, I had 30 different adventures and yes I had 30 different stories to tell but I let life catch up with me again and overwhelm me and avoided the creative process in order to further advance and succeed in my career. I can't promise I won't do that again but I can promise this...I never stopped having adventures, I never stopped dreaming big and pursuing my passions. My goal of 30 things metamorphosed into something completely different. Now I have dozens more stories to tell with a goal to try to create more than I consume for the year.
It's appropriate that this is the 25th story. Because it all sorta started when I was 25 years old. I had recently gotten out of a very long relationship. With my new found time I was looking for some new hobbies and friends to surround myself with. My buddy Dave invited me to his weekly beer night with some of his friends. I never was a big drinker let alone a beer drinker but was happy to oblige and get out of the house for a change. We went to the Maritime Pacific Brewery and little did I know I was about to meet some lifelong friends.
It was a big group of guys and I'd sorta stumbled into a going away party for one of the servers. All the guys were regulars and from the stories they told over the next few years I came in at the very end of the golden days of free beers and 80% off your tab. But it didn't matter, it was a cool group of guys and we bonded over guy talk. Zombie escape plans, cars, guns, comic books and movies. I had a lot in common with these guys but more importantly I was learning how to socialize. Learning that I really did add value to people's conversations. Learning that I actually am a pretty funny guy but also know how to give solid advice and opinions. I also learned how to have a taste for beer which oddly enough these newfound skillsets aided me in my career. I started to get invited out for happy hours after work and golf outings both of which had tons of drinking and socializing involved in them. But most of all I learned that this was fun. No longer was I trying to escape to video games and other introverted activities. I actually enjoyed meeting new people and developing relationships with my coworkers.
Week after week I kept going back, hanging out with these guys and building friendships. Friendships that developed into the kind of buddies that would be there for you for anything. Call them up in the middle of the night and they'll have your back. Overtime we'd tell dating horror stories, found relationships, grew into groomsmen, bachelor parties, weddings, birthday parties, baby showers, breakups, new jobs, new opportunities, friends moving away. I watched new guys come in and out of our group until the guys who originally started it were no longer even apart of the weekly meet up. It all kind of comes full circle because our group doesn't even exist anymore. Too many guys moved too far away. I stopped drinking beer in an effort to become more healthy. As our commitments grow there's only so much time allotted in the week. Things change, people grow apart and that story may have come to an end but how I learned how to brew is just beginning...
One night as I was explaining my 30 for 30 to my now half decade long friends they were nothing but supportive. I had a few ideas lined up and some jotted down. As they looked through my list the challenge was accepted. "Dude! We can get like four of these things done TONIGHT!" The quickest and easiest was of course take a behind the scenes impromptu tour of the brewery we frequent every week! By this point we were regulars and all of the servers knew us by name so when we asked to tour the brewing process it was like we already had the golden ticket in hand. One of our favorite servers Jim brought us beyond the big brew doors into the boiling room and started giving us a tour.
We got to walk up the catwalks and see where the mash gets converted into syrup for our favorite beers. Where everything gets aged and fermented all the way down to their bottling process and storage for distribution. I had only ever been in the taproom so little did I realize how huge this place was. It was pretty impressive of the scope and scale for our little microbrewery. The tour was maybe about fifteen minutes tops but it did awaken an old Sesame Street sense of wonder in me.
So I reached out to another buddy named Dave who I knew brewed beers. It just so lined up that my aunt had also gotten me a gift card for a homebrew shop next to my work. We set out to the shop and he helped me get all the supplies I needed. We kept it simple with a beer kit that already gave you your pre-made syrup/sugars, mash and yeast. Over the next couple days we focused on preparing everything for brew day. Buying purified water, sterilizing all of the tools and equipment. Prepping containers and boilers for the big day.
We went to Dave's friend Kenny's house to do the initial step which is the boil. Kenny had been brewing beer for a while and had a pretty cool country style setup. He had an old barn out in his back yard that was converted into a man cave of sorts. With guns, guitars and a container of live baby ducks?! Guess that's what you do on the farm. Kenny was also boiling that day but he had a couple other buddies over and they were doing an entire 55 gallon drum of beer. I put my socializing skills into action; introducing myself and finding commonality with these potential new friends. No longer were the days of hiding out in the corner and globing onto the only friend I had in the room. That being said; Dave and I setup in the corner as to not disturb the big brew session. Our little 5 gallon pale was dwarfed by the colossal drum the other three guys were working on.
The first step to the brew process is boiling your mash. Luckily my little beer kit had all the right amount of ingredients in it and required no special measuring. We brought the purified water up to a boil and then dumped the mash into a special straining sack. It kinda functions like a teabag. Separate from the mash were my sugars which came in the form of a simple syrup. The syrup was hard as a rock so we had to make room in the boil to make the bag more pliable. Once everything was all warmed up we were able to finally get our mix going. Boiling out all the good stuff from the mash then pulling the teabag out of the water leaves you with your brew remnants. Then mixing in the syrup is what will eventually give you your carbonation down the line once you add yeast to the mix.
We filtered out any other impurities by doing a couple of gravity pours through a strainer. This way you make sure your beer has nothing to chew in it. We put the beer in the purified buckets and at this point there's not a whole lot left to do in the process so we just helped out Kenny where we could.
A large part of brewing comes with patience and waiting for the next step. Around two weeks later I went over to Daves house to do another gravity pour, strain, then add the yeast. This step the beer has a kind of disgusting sludge at the bottom of it hence the straining again. Same process, pour and strain but now we add the yeast to create the carbonation. It's kinda funny putting these little sea monkey guys in this mix to eat up the sugars and fart out carbonation. You add a hydrometer to the mix to be able to tell when you're ready to switch over to a glass bottle. Couple more weeks go by and you do another inventory of the mix and before you know it you're putting your creation into glass bottles and capping them yourself. A few more days and a little more patience then you can finally drink...Overall I don't think brewing is a hobby I'd enjoy. There's a few too many steps when you come out with a product that's good but widely more readily available than waiting 6 weeks for it. I would much rather spend that time cultivating friendships drinking beer someone else made.
Friendship can be a lot like brewing. There can be a great deal of patience required. Sometimes a few folks get strained out of the mix. The best ones will turn out good for you but if you neglect to strain out some of the sludge you'll always come up with a bad batch. All in all there's always room for a few more guests to the party and if you do things right you'll have enough to share with everyone.
Today I learned:
About self value and the art of conversation
Making those friends that will be there for you in a single phone call
How to brew beer
