Dustin Brown, assistant brewer at the Bloomington Brewing Company, takes his job seriously.
“When people are happy, they drink ... when people are sad, they drink,” he says. “I make beer for a living. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
You don’t need to be an expert to make liquid courage from home, he says.
The Process
1. Get about five gallons of distilled water, a fermentor, a large pot, a 5 lb. sack of barley, malted grains, dried hops, and a strain of yeast.
2. Take the malted grains and put them in a pot of about three gallons of hot water (about 50 to 65 degrees).
3. The grains will filter in the pot, leaving sugary water called “wort.” Boil the wort to activate all of the proteins. Add the hops. Doing so “releases the bitterness and gives you a better flavor.”
4. Pour the hopped wort into the fermentor. Add cold water to bring it down to room temperature.
5. Throw yeast into the fermentor and seal it. Put it in a dark room. Brown sits his next to the refrigerator to quicken the cooling process. Wait two weeks for all the ingredients to mix.
6. Put the alcoholic beer in bottles and add a small amount of sugar to reactivate the yeast and carbonate the liquid.
7. Put the brew in the refrigerator to chill. Drink.
