Yaktoberfest: Ever bought a water buffalo? (Part 1 of 2)

About seven or eight years ago, Rachel and I had been feeling like we were following a boring and repetitive routine and mentioned that a new hobby might not be a bad thing. Around then I started making wine at home. I had been doing it for a few years when we moved to Austin. After we arrived, I was researching the area and saw mention of a highly regarded homebrewing store near where we moved. I knew that brewing beer was a similar process, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I've now been making beer since last Spring. It turns out a friend of mine from work, Steve, also started brewing around the same time. He knew a few other people who brewed. Most live in his neighborhood, just a mile or so from our place. It got Steve thinking, and he came up with the idea to get a bunch of the local homebrewers together to brew several batches of beer and throw a small Octoberfest-like event. Steve's house is in a perfect location, at the corner of a short road that abruptly dead-ends. After canvassing his fellow brewers, we decided to brew in September and have the party in early October.

To launch stage one, Steve had several of us over to his house to brew batches in his backyard. I followed that up the next week with what became my Baltic Porter. Making this beer involved a highly-concentrated fermentable liquid (wort), resulting in a rich, dark, high alcohol sipper.

You start out bringing 2 1/2 gallons of water to 160 degrees.


Next, toss in a mesh bag filled with with about 6 lbs of grain. Let it steep for 45 minutes or so, then pull out the bag, rinse it over the pot, and bring the liquid to a boil

Once the liquid is boiling, take it off the heat temporarily and add 8 lbs of malt extract (basically high-sugar syrups extracted from malted grains). Get it boiling again.

Most beers are triple-hopped. Your wort will boil for an hour. Start by adding hops at the start of the hour for bittering. 45 minutes in, add a second dose for flavor. Finally, five minutes before the end, add a final dose for aroma. In this case, we only added hops up front for bittering and at the second stop for flavor.

Hop pellets and the packets they come in. Nugget hops for bittering, Saaz for flavor.

Once the hour is over, put your pot in a big tub of ice and bring the temperature down, then add some water to bring it to a total of 5 1/4 gallons, throw your yeast in, and stop up the top with a fermentation lock that lets gas out but not in. A week or two later, you're ready to bottle.

Check back in later for a wrap-up of the party. Find out why it involves yaks and water buffalo. Doesn't that provide sufficient temptation?