BeerPup's Homebrew Manifesto

Here's another repost from 2004:

I'm a beer snob. You've seen us, turning our noses up at Budweiser, scoffing at Coors, shuddering at the thought of even being near a Natural Light.

Not that anyone asked, but I'm here to tell you what makes a beer snob what they are.

We are not the type who drink primarily for volume, though we do that too--often. Rather, we prefer the joy of a really good beer to tantalize the taste buds, satisfy the tummy, seduce the sinuses and sedate the cerebellum, all in one fell swoop.

Most "premium" beers don't do this. "Premium" is another word for corporate conglomerate product. Premium beers--Bud, Miller, Coors, et al--are beers for volume drinkers, and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I'll give all volume drinkers the benefit of the doubt and assume that they have other ways to satisfy their senses, like really good pizza, or sushi, or filet mignon, or oral sex. Now there's a great way to satisfy the taste buds. Yep, all the volume drinkers are down with goin' down.

I believe what Ben Franklin said: "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." I think he meant the whole process of beer consumption, and not only the lovely inebriation we cull from it.

Beer--real beer, that is--contains barley malt, hops, yeast, and water. The primary ingredient is malt, which is sugar that has been extracted from barley. Most commercial breweries buy the malt in bulk, pre-extracted. This malt looks like molasses and varies in color according to how much the barley was roasted prior to extraction.

The novice homebrewer will also use entirely pre-processed malt. The intermediate brewer will use some extract, but will also add (aka adjunct) some cracked grains to their brew to give the beer a more distinctive flavor. Don't worry, we strain the husks back out again. No one likes chunky beer.

The advanced homebrewer will extract their own malt, not using any pre-processed products. These people are insane.

One thing that should never be used as the primary ingredient of beer is rice (meaning plain old white rice). Read a Budweiser label carefully. It's made with rice, not barley. This is a beer snob's abomination.

Let's review. To be beer, a product must contain barley malt, hops, yeast, and water. Is the word "rice" in that list? Nope. Therefore, whatever it is that Budweiser is, it is NOT beer. It's more like a horse voidance by-product.

On to the next vital ingredient: hops. Hops are flowers that are dried and added at three stages during the brew process, to add initial taste, aroma, and finish taste. The geographical differences between beers--American vs. European, etc.--is mostly due to the type of hops used.

Yeast is necessary to make the beer ferment. Once added to the brew, it first reproduces itself--a veritable yeast orgy--which releases a lot of CO2. Then it converts the available sugars--AKA malt--into alcohol. Then it dies and just becomes an empty hull; however, it's rich in vitamin B12 which is excellent in preventing hangovers.

The bubbles in beer are produced by adding a small amount of sugar just before bottling so that the CO2 produced can't be released until the seal is broken on the bottle.

Additional ingredients may or may not enhance the flavor and/or quality of the beer. For instance, one of the best beers I ever had was a homebrew, courtesy of my friend Armen (named after Armenia) which was a very rich beer made with wild rice as an adjunct. Only Minnesotans bother to brew and sell wild rice beer commercially, and only a serious homebrewer would bother to make their own. Not an easy task. However, the beer was wonderful. Thanks Armen, wherever you are.

FYI, wild rice has no relation to regular rice. It is the seed of a grass that grows naturally in rivers and lakes in northern climates (Minnesota and Canada and a few other places) and must be harvested by a boat and two sticks. The good stuff is harvested by the native Americans and sold for an arm and a leg. The bad stuff is grown commercially in a rice paddy and is sold for less than an arm and leg--maybe just a hand or a foot. It's worth it to pay the arm and leg.

Wild rice is an example of a good adjunct to beer, along with some fruits and other sugars, as in Sam Adams Cherry Wheat, Leinenkugel's Berry Weiss, and honey brews.

You can put just about anything in beer to flavor it. But really, the best beer is usually a fairly simple one. And if a beer snob is being honest with him or herself, the quality of the beer only matters for the first three or four. Once the senses are sufficiently numbed, we all become volume drinkers. We'll drink anything.

Even a Budweiser.