The big day had arrived, the day I've been building up to for a good few months now, the brewing day. So the scene is set - the books have been read, the tutorials have been watched, the beginners knowledge has been gathered, the equipment all laid out and sterilised, the ingredients all accounted for and checked off, let's get cracking!
I’m stood there in the kitchen with equipment and ingredients surrounding me like some sort of beer enthused Mary Berry and I take the big first step, to loosen the brewing mixture by submerging the can in in warm water upside down, easy, I’m there, I’m away. Brimming with confidence from my already highly successful step one masterclass I get cracking with step 2 - fill the brewing bucket with “x” amount of water (X being the variable dependant on how much beer is being brewed) So I knew my ingredients were in quantities to brew 40 pints so I fill up the water accordingly and all seems to be going well still.
By the time step 3 comes round I’m exuding so much confidence from the highly successful step 1 and 2 that you would think I’m James Watt - (Co-Founder of Brewdog). Step 3 is where it starts to get some what trickier and the mixing begins. There are 4 core ingredients at this point - Water, Brewing mix, brewing sugar and a little sachet of Yeast. - so as you can imagine this isn’t the most complicated of place to begin for anyone. My brewing mixture is already loosened from my masterclass of step 1 so step 3 is basically chuck it all together in the right order, this actually wasn’t far from what the instructions said so my prior reading was beginning to come in handy.
So I chuck the sugar in, mixing as I go, and the water now has an appearance of a lumpy mess which doesn’t fill me with much confidence as all I’ve done so far is add sugar, in hindsight this was the first sign it was all going to go wrong. I plow on hoping that it’s meant to look like that and it’s more about taste after a month anyway so we’ve got a long way to go. Next I get my softened brewing mixture which I can only describe as a mixture between melted caramel and some sort of sticky adhesive both in appearance and consistency. I begin to chuck it all in again giving it a good mix as i go and now the lumpy water has turned into lumpy goopy brown water but unphased i just keep mixing until it seems to be as mixed and settled as it can be. I’m mindful of the temperature of the brew as if that’s not correct then it all goes to pot and the taste will be unbelievably bad and stick with you for weeks, with this in mind it’s a little low so I put a bit more warm water in it to bring it up. Much to my amazement this worked and now I have a happily warm gooey pot of brown water. All that’s left it to sprinkle the yeast over the top chuck the lid on and leave it to get fermenting!
All this time that I’ve been merrily mixing away like some mad beery scientist the side has been getting wetter and wetter, I assume this is just myself being heavy handed spilling water all over the place and I’ll give it a clean when I'm finished (This is the second sign). The bucket is hanging slightly off the edge so there’s drips on the floor so I decide now is the time to mop all this unwanted water up, now at this point the bucket has a lot of liquid in and isn’t the lightest thing I’ve ever lifted especially considering it’s above waist height and has no handles at all. So I shuffle it over the edge more and pick it up somehow - now I'm precariously balancing the brew whilst simultaneously attempting to mop up the bottom of the bucket and the side, I pop the bucket back down and all seems well and I continue to mop up the rest of the side and clear up the bombsite that I’ve made of the kitchen. The floor is being dripped on again so I stomp over the bucket to wipe everything up, I analyse and inspect the bucket to see what one earth is going on, thinking the worst I’m just hoping everything is fine. When there was just water in the bucket it didn’t appear to be leaking so all is okay surely? This was a very bad presumption to make and also the third sign.
Now is the point I realise that all of the dripping seems to be coming from around the tap area of the bucket so I start fiddling with the tap assuming that it’s just been knocked and loosen a little bit, the liquid isn’t pouring out so it’s not a major issue at this point. After about 10 minutes of fiddling and nothing is working still just this little drip which at this point has been dripping for long enough to make a small puddle on the floor beneath it so starting to really need to fix this issue. Residing myself to google must have the answer of how to waterproof something using household items (And not waste all the brew inside by leaving the bucket non air tight) I walk away to get the Ipad and this is when the disaster happens.
A loud “bang” rattles around the kitchen, the sound of a gunshot, I turn around to see what on earth could have made that noise and this is the moment the whole of the tap from the bucket rolls to my feet. At this point it dawns on me what has happened and I’m staring at the floor still, hoping it opens up and I can just leave and go to the pub and ignore it ever happened (I’m sure my Girlfriend wouldn’t mind at all). I summon the courage to look up and yep, there it is, clear as day, hours of work, months of preparation, months of reading, all literally sloshing its way down the drain, over the kitchen side, over the floor, seeping under the appliances. Of course at this point it was a brew so not only water sloshing everywhere it’s this deep dark brown lumpy bubbly sludge covering and engulfing anything it touched.
So there I am - Sat in the middle of the kitchen at the dining room table head in hands not with 40 pints of beer brewing on the side but a kitchen which is cleverly disguised as a swimming pool and a bucket with brown sludge dripping into the sink which looks a violated toilet bowl.The swimming pool at this point had a slightly hoppy aroma which wasn’t the worst thing in the world but it was a painful reminder of my failure, if this is how good it smells how good will it have tasted, we will never know.
On the bright side there are lessons learnt (somewhere) and hopefully next time my brew actually gets a chance to start brewing. Never forget to meticulously check the equipment before commencing the brew.
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