I love beer. I love the taste, the smell, the history, the culture, the magic. Mostly I love brewing it. If you live in most other places, brewing your own beer doesn't save you all that much money. Depending on what you drink, it may very well cost you more. The ritual, though, of making your own beer, of following an ancient tradition is really nourishing. I talked about it yesterday as one of my favorite play spaces. It is, for me, creation at its finest. So, let's brew some, shall we?
Bucket 'o beer
A little history of beer in Belize
We end up selling some of our excess supplies and equipment here in Belize because beer here is a little ridiculous. Here's the situation. There is one beer brewed here. One. No, I'm not kidding. It's a testament to how much I love this country that I would live here under such absurdity. Belikin, the beer of Belize, comes in a few flavors. Beer, stout, light, and a few seasonals, like Sorrel Stout and Chocolate Stout. It's good for a macro brewed beer. Nothing revolutionary, but it beats the hell out of US macros.
The founder of Belikin, Sir Barry Bowen, was the child of a Belizean woman and a British Lord whose mother would hear nothing of her blue blooded son marrying a Belizean. He always sent money, though, and Barry used the money to begin the Belikin Beer company. He brought over several German Brewers to help him get started, which is probably why the beer is infinitely better than any US macro beer. Barry was rather protective of his beer and his market and used his influence to ensure the import duties on any other beer would be exhorbitantly high. This fell right in line with Belize's protectionist philosophy. While I get wanting to protect local industry, the tax is 50 something percent. That's outrageous. The only exemption is for products from other countries in the Caribbean. As a member state of CARICOM, Belize was required to lower the tax on beers coming in from other Caribbean nations. Belikin is also known as somewhat mafia-esque. They are now also the distributors of all Coca-Cola products in Belize, and until a year or two ago, you had to search high and low for a Pepsi. Things that make you go hmmmm.
My little helper with the beer of Belize, and no, I didn't let him drink that
A few years back a few brave souls decided to start a small micro brewery in San Pedro, Belize's number one tourist destination. It took them two years to get a license, and representatives of Belikin were at every single meeting. We have wanted to start a micro here in the south, but even if we had the cash, we've had a hard time convincing a lawyer to take it on. Barry died a few years ago in a tragic plane crash, so the chokehold seems to have loosened a bit. This is life here. A little Wild West style.
Let's make a Saison
So, there's the long story on why brewing is so extra valuable here. If you want a really good beer, you have to make it yourself. Today we are doing our first Saison. Saisons originate from French speaking Beligium. They were brewed for farm workers to keep them working through the harvest, so they generally had a low alcohol content. We'll be making about five gallons worth using extracts. Importing 50 pound grain bags just isn't in our budget right now. Like I said, we end up selling our extra supplies and equipment, and we've taught quite a few people to make beer. If you want more detailed instructions on making your own beer, just comment below.
Ready to roll
Step one! Clean your equipment!
The first step is always sanitizing. After the beer is brewed, it sits for a week or two in a bucket with yeast. In order to avoid introduction of any nasty bacteria, it's really important to make sure all equipment is clean. Any brew supply store will sell the appropriate cleaner. It's basically super pure oxyclean. If you really want to sanitize, iodine is usually the best choice, although it's really not good for the groundwater. If you have a graywater system, I'd definitely skip it.
So fresh and so clean
For this first step, you need to sanitize your fermentation bucket, a long spoon, a bowl, a thermometer, a hydrometer, an airlock, three gallon sized containers, and the brewpot.
Step two - boiling the malt extract
After everything is good and clean, fill up the three gallon-sized containers with water and put them in the refrigerator or freezer. Then, you usually want to get your water warmed up to about 160 degrees to steep your specialty grains. However we aren't using any for this Saison, so we are skipping that step. We are bringing 2.5 - 3 gallons of water in the brew pot to a boil.
Turn the heat down and add the liquid malt extract. This is malted barley that has been mashed and dehydrated to the point of thick syrup. We also added a pound of sugar to this batch, though we don't usually do that. You can also use honey if you like. After stirring it in good, you bring it back to a boil. It will foam up several times, so watch closely and remove the lid before you get this stuff on your stove. It's a bitch to get off.
Step three - yummy hops
When it stops foaming up, you can start your clock. Today we are brewing for an hour. Every recipe is different. For this we are adding two ounces of hops at the beginning of our time.
Two ounces of hop pellets. In the background you can see what the pot looks like before spewing barley syrup all over the stove.
Step four - extra shit
With ten minutes left we add about an ounce of orange zest. Our oranges here are grown for juice, not good looks. Even though they're green, they are actually ripe. Not pretty but definitely yummy. Of course I managed to grate my thumb as well. I manage to do that almost every time I zest a citrus. At the end of our boil, we added in a little more hops for aroma and turned it off to sit for an hour.
And five - into the fermenter
Now it's time for the fermenter. I pour in one gallon of the cold water first because pouring hot liquid straight into a plastic container freaks me out. Then we pour in the magic in the brewpot, now called wort. Add more water to get to five gallons. If your bucket is five gallons, don't go above four or four and a half because it needs space for fermenting expansion. Our bucket is six and a half or seven gallons. Yes, you can probably find a free one, but it can be hard to find one that is food grade and didn't have something totally gross in it. Absolutely worth $14 at the brew supply store in my opinion.
Last, but not least, the yeast
Now you add the yeast. For the love of all that's holy don't use bread yeast. It makes your beer so gross. Beer yeast is available at any homebrew supply shop, and it's cheap, cheap, cheap. You can sprinkle it on top, but this yeast is a little old, so I'm going to stir it into some warm water in a sanitized container, just like you do with bread. Dump it on in there, put the lid on, and shake it up for a few minutes. Oxygenating the yeast is very important in the beginning. After this point it's best to keep it as still as possible.
Measuring the specific gravity with the hydrometer. This is how you tell your ABV% and also how you tell when it's done fermenting.
We have a secret weapon for this batch that I am pretty excited about. We made some cashew wine probably seven or eight months ago, and there was a bit left that we didn't drink because the yeast was sitting down there, and that makes it kind of gross and also really hard on your belly. However, that yeast has been sitting there multiplying all that time, so we're gonna toss it in and hope for the best. Ideally, it will give it a little bit of that sweet cashew fruit flavor and provide additional yeast to eat up those sugars and amp up the beer. Of course something horrible could happen too. Time will tell.
In case you've never seen one, this is a cashew fruit. They also come in red and are called cashew apples.
I'll do another post in a couple weeks when we get to the bottling stage. Let me know what you think! Do you enjoy brewing your own beer or wine or mead? What's your favorite recipe? I think my favorites of what we have made have been our IPA, Heffeweizen, and a Chocolate Coffee Porter that would make your mama cry.
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All pics are mine or Pixabay