Brewing Your Own Brew

Brewing your own beer or cider is great for any party, but especially for Halloween when people can be a little more adventurous. I know - it's the middle of July - do you really need to start thinking now about what you might want to serve at the end of October for a Halloween party? The answer is yes. Although brewing your own beer or cider is not particularly labor intensive, it does take awhile for all of the steps to take place. Last year, I waited too late and so I still have quite a bit of Pumpkin Porter left and I'm not really sure if it is safe to drink. Lesson learned: If you want a good beer or cider to be ready for Halloween, you should start brewing no later than mid-August (possibly as late as Labor Day).

Homebrewing can be as hard or as easy as you want it to be. We became homebrewers a few years ago and went with the "Cliff Notes" version of homebrewing. We use a Mr. Beer kit and order basic mixes from Mr. Beer. We've tried adding our own ingredients and have had mixed results. (See discussion below.)

If you don't try to get too fancy, making the beer or cider is super simple and involves 6 steps using the Mr. Beer method.

1. Sanitize everything. This is very important and the most labor intensive of the steps.


2. Boil water and make the wort (for beer) or must (for cider). The sanitizing and the boiling generally take less than an hour.


3. Wait the requisite amount of time for fermentation to take place - usually takes about 2 weeks.


4. Carbonate and bottle your brew. Basic white table sugar creates carbonation. Be sure to measure carefully though. For bottling, we bought a capper and save brown glass bottles from other beers for our homebrewing. If you're saving bottles, make sure that they are the kind that you open with a bottle opener and not twist-offs. They will need to be sanitized the same way that all of the utensils were sanitized. This step - including sanitizing the already clean bottles - usually takes about an hour or so.


5. Allow carbonation to take place (i.e., wait some more). Usually between 2 and 3 weeks, but at least 1 week.


6. Condition your brew (i.e., wait some more - Are you noticing a theme here?). Conditioning is really just chilling your brew. It's not sufficient to just ice a homebrew for a few minutes before drinking. Conditioning in a refrigerator for a period of at least a week or two allows the flavors to meld together. It's also essential if you are making a lager.
   

I don't want to sound like a commercial for Mr. Beer. There are a lot of other kits available from places like Homebrew Heaven, Monster Brew, and Midwest Homebrewing Supplies. I originally bought the Mr. Beer kit as a last minute present for my husband for Christmas. I wasn't sure if he would actually like homebrewing, so I went cheap (using my 20% off coupon from Bed, Bath & Beyond). We have friends that make their own beer from scratch - boiling their own hops and everything. We like beer, but not that much and I had concerns it would end up like a lot of our other kitchen gadgets (i.e., collecting dust in the basement).

Throughout our brewing exploits, I have learned a couple of basic but important tips that are not necessarily apparent that I though I would share:

• Label your beer. We forgot to do this for our first several batches. Now, we go to the refrigerator and hold the bottle up to the light and guess what type it is. Our failure to label also became an important mistake when we tried our "recipe." For our next batch, we ordered water-resistant white polyster labels from Labels By The Sheet. They're made to be used for DIY water bottle labels, but I figure they should work for beer as well. You could go low tech and use a sharpie to write on the cap, but it may rub off. Different colors of fingernail polish on the cap would also work provided you keep a legend of what's what.
  
• Too much of good thing is not necessarily a good thing. My husband and I like sweets. Our friends would tell you that you could serve us sugar water and we would be happy. We especially like a raspberry flavored lambic style beer that is hard to find and expensive. So . . . we decided to try to make our own. We took a simple wheat beer recipe and doubled the amount of raspberries you would normally add for a raspberry wheat. We forgot that in our simple brewing process, it's the sugar that provides carbonation. Raspberries have a lot of sugar. When I opened the first bottle, it exploded sending raspberry chunks flying all over the kitchen and me. Second bottle - same thing. We made another beer at the same time and failed to labor either of them. For awhile, all bottles were opened outside or in the shower for fear that they would explode.


• To recycle bottles to be used for homebrewing: (1) Only use bottles with a real cap. Bottles with twist off caps do not work. (2) To remove paper labels and glue from bottles, soak them in hot water for 30 minutes. Peel as much of the label as you can off. Then scrub with a "scrubbie" to remove any remaining label and the glue residue. Additional soaking may be necessary to get everything off. (3) I prefer to use only bottles with paper labels (i.e., Don't use bottles where the label is actually painted onto the glass like Corona or Rolling Rock.). (4) It doesn't hurt to stand the bottles up in the dishwasher to clean them, but you will still need to go through the sanitizing process.


• If you're not going to recycle bottles, look for local homebrewing supply stores. Shipping is every expensive for glass bottles because of the weight. We actually found a local store operated out of a guy's basement. We thought it was a little sketchy at first and felt weird knocking on his door, but he actually had a pretty good supply and decent prices.

This year, I have decided to make a cider and a wheat beer for our Halloween party. On top of my usual libations, I will be serving "Baker's Blackberry Cider" and "Whispering Wheat Weizenbier." I can't wait to try them! (And you can be sure, I will only use the prescribed amount of blackberry to avoid potential explosions.)

Inaugural Post

Welcome to Baker's Broom Closet. I'm Baker and I guess it's time that I joined the blog bandwagon. I've thought about creating a blog for some time, but couldn't decide what to write about. Yesterday, I got an email advertisement from one of my favorite Halloween stores and then an email from a friend asking for my sangria recipe and a lightbulb went off. Throwing parties - especially awesome Halloween parties - is something I know a little about, might interest others and could fill up the pages of a blog. And so . . . Baker's Broom Closet is born.

Each week or thereabouts, I will try to provide info on throwing great parties with a heavy emphasis on Halloween parties. I'll include recipes and decorating tips.

Why Halloween? My love for Halloween goes back to my childhood and the time and effort my mother put into my Halloween costumes and school Halloween parties.

It got off to a rough start. For my first Halloween in 197~, I dressed up as Raggedy Ann with a cheap storebought costume. If you grew up in the 1970's and 1980's - you know the type with the two tiny plastic holes that you're expected to breathe out of and the elastic band that goes around the back of your head to be snapped by evil little boys sitting next to you. I was miserable.

My mother vowed never again, and so the following year I had a "costume" of a long flowy gown, large curly wig (I was still lacking in the hair department), and floppy hat. I was Little Miss Muffett (there may have been a fake spider and bowl of porridge which I ditched for my bottle that I took everywhere even though it was empty). It was an improvement over the plastic mask, but still nothing to brag about.

The next year was the beginning of the extensive planning and fabulous costumes. Breaking out the skills learned in a high school home economics class and an old, super heavy Singer sewing machine, my mom went to the local Benjamin Franklin and bought a pattern and some material. She decided to do Raggedy Ann the right way. I had a cute little blue jumper, red and white striped socks and the piece de resistance - a handmade yarn wig. My mother spent hours on end cutting and hooking the yard to create that wig. Add some heavy rouge circles on my cheeks and eyelashes drawn on with mascara and voila - one adorable little Raggedy Ann! I won the costume contest at the local YMCA, got my picture in the paper and racked up some serious candy on the trick or treating trail.

For the next several years, I went through a series of elaborate costumes.

• Red Riding Hood - Complete with red satin cape, red satin skirt with matching suspenders, white top with lace cuffs, and of course my basket to take to grandma's house.


• Bride - I had a white satin dress with white organza overlay and lace appliques. My cotume was topped off with a "wedding ring" we found at a local yard sale. (I'll admit that I still have this ring nearly thirty years later. It doesn't fit, but is a nice memento.)


• My all time favorite - the Southern Belle - I wore a beautiful full blue satin dress with a lace butterfly applique and tiara. I'm not really sure why I wore a tiara other than I liked it and I already felt like a princess in that dress, but I did. Unfortunately, this costume came complete with a hoop skirt. I'm clumsy and a few of the neighbors flower pots didn't fair so well when I turned to leave after receiving my treats. (I heard about this for years afterwards. "Watch out for my pansies!")

I credit my love for Halloween parties and abundance of food at parties to this era as well. As a first time parent, my mother asked the school principal (who had been her principal when she was in school - oh the joys of small town life, but I digress) if it would be okay to bring cupcakes for my class's Halloween party. He said that that would be great so long as she brought enough cupcakes for "everyone." I'm sure he meant enough cupcakes for everyone in my class of 20 to 30 students. She understood this direction to be enough cupcakes for every child in the school. We stayed up until the wee hours of the night in our tiny little apartment making and decorating enough yellow cupcakes with orange icing and a black piped-on jack o'lantern face for the ENTIRE school -- all 200 or 300 students. The principal was a little shocked when she showed up and asked for help to bring all of the cupcakes in.

And thus my love of Halloween began . . .

Yes, Halloween is my Christmas of sorts. I can barely sleep the night before and wake up with glee, waiting on pins and needles for the costume parade. I drive around for weeks before looking at decorations and trying to one up my neighbors. At least I come by this love for the holiday honestly. I'm not a recent convert, but a life long 'weenie!

I hope you enjoy my blog and return often. Happy Haunting!