Hubris led us to call Pierre Celis. We’d compared notes over pints of other people’s beer. And while not certified master brewers, we had a combined 12 years of home-brewing experience. We were, in hindsight, a bit cocky.
We had brewed delicious beer in a variety of styles, we told one another–ales, lagers, bocks and doublebocks, everything from light, tangy wheat beers to 40-weight imperial stouts. Mark was the only one to admit ever having made a bad batch of home brew, but then, he comes from Milwaukee.
We didn’t need Celis–the founder of the Austin brewery of the same name and a god among beer geeks–for his experience. But we did think we could use some distinguished company.
And now we have a confession:
We, the above bylined, were braced to stand before you utter failures. We believed we had wasted the time of Pierre Celis, a gentleman and a brewer whom we admire, nay, worship. (“You’re why I live in Austin,” Pat said as he wept and clutched the master’s ankles.)
Our batch of beer was invaded by something, most likely Ebola, and what began as a promising golden brew looked like a description author James Ellroy used to describe the sky over Los Angeles: carcinogenic tan.
Pierre held up his end. If there is a more genial and gracious person in American brewing, we have yet to hoist one with him or her. And while the idea of having one of the world’s best brewers oversee the effort of a couple of amateurs sounds preposterous, Pierre was only too happy to play along.
We had chosen to brew a Belgian-style grand cru, an homage to Celis Grand Cru, a personal favorite of ours. (Though Celis is no longer associated with the Austin brewery, his Grand Cru was its flagship brew.)
Brewing, we tell anyone who makes the mistake of getting us talking about it, is as easy as making a big pot of soup. And it takes less than $100 of equipment to get started. We embrace the credo of Charlie Papazian, whose book, “The Complete Joy of Homebrewing,” is the bible for home brewers. “Relax,” Papazian repeats again and again. “Don’t worry. Have a homebrew.”
And we did. We decanted Pierre’s Grand Cru into the proper Belgian glasses. We toasted Pierre. And then we focused on the five important elements of home brewing: malt, hops, water, yeast and a slavish devotion to cleanliness.
Think of home brewing as building a home for your four main ingredients, and then assume they cannot live harmoniously in anything less than a spotless domicile.
Home brewers use different methods to sterilize equipment, but a special brush for bottles and a gallon of bleach is plenty adequate. Before we picked up Pierre, Mark had washed up all the equipment.
Beginners usually start brewing with malt extract, a thick syrup created from the magical (hey, anything involving chemistry is magical to us) conversion of malted barley into the sugars that yeast love. The yeast eats the sugar; our buddy alcohol is the byproduct.
We dissolved our extract in 10 gallons of water in the brew pot that once was a half-barrel keg liberated from a big, evil American brewer. The barrel’s top is opened like a can and its bottom is fitted with a spigot for draining the cooked liquid, which is called wort. (Gnarly lingo is one of many benefits of home brewing.)
Mark acquired this modified wonder so he could cook on the kind of propane burner folks use for shrimp or crawfish boils. He likes brewing outdoors.
As the water warmed up and a bemused Pierre looked on, we steeped a couple of pounds of specialty grains in a nylon mesh grain bag in a gallon of water on the stove. After an hour of steeping to extract its malt sugar, the solution would be added to the outdoor pot and the grains discarded, having nobly done their duty.
The entire crude operation amused Pierre, a man of European stature who had to get up on his toes to get his nose over the brew pot.
“I have never seen this kind of brewing before,” he said in a way that cast doubt upon whether this was brewing at all. “From this you can make good beer?”
We assured him it was so.
He taste-tested our malt extract. He breathed deeply into our nylon mesh bag full of bright green pellets of hops, dropped into the wort at various times to add bitterness and aroma to the beer. He wondered whether the coriander and orange peel necessary for the spiciness were fresh enough.
Blessedly, Pierre refused to pass judgment. When we dithered over whether to stick to a grand cru recipe in one of Mark’s brewing books or modify it based on a few Belgian secrets Pierre imparted, he turned oracular.
“You do this for your pleasure,” he announced. “Make it once like I make it and once like this. See which you like better.”
Pierre was sharing one of the great joys of brewing. With light and dark, roasted and pale malts; with spicy and citruslike, bitter and mild hops; with hard and soft water and yeast strains from all over the world, every beer you make is unlike every other ever made.
This is why we invited Pierre. This man who had more than 50 years ago in Belgium learned to brew a 500-year-old recipe for “white” beer.
Celis began brewing this tangy, cloudy beer made with wheat, barley malt, hops, coriander and orange peel on his own in 1966. So beloved was his beer that when his brewery burned to the ground in 1985, a European brewing conglomerate rebuilt it for him and kept him in charge.
As the wort was in the last stages of boiling, merging sweet malt and bitter, aromatic hop flavors, Pierre bid adieu. We suspect he just didn’t want to stick around to help clean up. We didn’t give it a thought. Our mood was enhanced by the fact that we were into our second or third bottle of Pierre’s precious beverage.
At the completion of the boil, we dropped in a coil of copper tubing with a hose attached to one end. By running cold water through this wort chiller and out the open other end outside the brew pot, you quickly bring down the temperature of the wort to a level that will not kill the yeast you add to get the fermentation started.
For the record, Pat was a little wigged out because we didn’t cover the pot–this is the point where the beer-to-be is most vulnerable to bacterial infection, but Mark assured him that “this was how they did it in Milwaukee all the time.” Pat relaxed. He did not worry. He had a Grand Cru.
We sanitized two carboys–the kind of glass bottles once commonly found on water coolers–stuck a sanitized filtered funnel in one and opened the spigot. We had had a hard time cleaning a persistent residue out of one of the carboys, and the memory of that would come to haunt us.
When both carboys were topped off with golden liquid, we added the yeast, gave them both a manly shake to allow the yeast more oxygen, kissed them good night and tucked them in for a fortnight’s fermentation.
By morning, a creamy white head had formed at the surface of the beer in both carboys in the garage. The yeast adored their new homes, busily converting the malt sugars to alcohol and sending the byproduct, carbon dioxide, through a plastic tube fitted to the top and into a bucket filled with water.
For two weeks Mark checked the beer. When it appeared that the carbon dioxide blow-off had slowed, he transferred the beer into two other sanitized carboys. From there it’s usually a simple process of bottling and capping the beer.
Then, apparent tragedy. What was supposed to be a week’s rest for the beer before bottling turned into a brand-new fermentation.
As the beer bubbled all over again, the shimmering gold turning to swampy ochre, we were certain the yeast had found something else–something unsavory–upon which to feed. Carbon dioxide blew off for three more weeks before the beer stopped growling.
Was it contaminated as it chilled, or was the residue in the carboy to blame? Probably not the residue, because the contents of both carboys turned on us.
Home brewers will tell you it happens to everyone. Yeast is a living organism, as susceptible to contamination as we are the common cold. No self-respecting home brewer quits after a bad batch. You should try it. Really. It’s easy.
Our home brew shop suggested we bottle at least some of the roughly five cases of skunky beer, let it age for a couple of weeks and taste it to try to discern what went wrong. This was a first for both of us–a beer that needs to be autopsied.
Then we drew off a portion of the brew, just to see how bad it was. It had magically cleared, its color a bit more amber than Pierre’s Grand Cru.
We poured it into coffee cups. Not a trace of those funny smells that warn you not to sip. So we did. This was remarkably delicate, spicy and high-octane–just like Pierre’s.
All that needless worry. Our grand cru was saved. Not to mention our pride.
