On Being a Patient Boy

I'd like to think I'm reasonably patient. I have moments when things get the better of me, I'm sure we all do, but they're pretty few and far between these days. It has been tested lately, with my second daughter being born three months ago, and for the most part I've held it together amongst the nappies and tantrums and vomit and crying. Having an amazing wife helps of course.

We traveled together for a while, my wife and I, and once you've sat on the side of the road in rural Laos waiting hours for a truck that may or may not turn up to take you to the Vietnamese border, and then sat on a stationary bus at the Laos-Vietnam border for two hours while people argued over the price to get to Hanoi, and then been kicked off the bus in a town half-way to Hanoi late at night with no idea where you are, you kind of learn to suck it up and wait. And you have to know, really know, that things will be alright.

And you learn that things will happen at their own pace after you get engaged in a jungle treehouse in the north of Laos and it takes a week-and-a-half before you find a working phone to call your family and tell them the good news. It's one of the more valuable things you can learn from traveling through developing countries, that they have their own time. Nepali-time, I wish I could invoke that here in Australia sometimes.

But it's not something that comes easily, patience, and for that reason, amongst many others, I'm not sure that its value can be overestimated. There's a reward that's not immediately obvious from waiting patiently; a certain pleasure that can be derived from the confidence you need to believe in something that hasn't arrived yet.

Brendan wrote a nice post over at The New Timer the other day, about slowing down and enjoying things as you go, rather than chasing after that ultimate goal as fast as you can. And he's right, in that waiting feels pretty damn good.

That slowing down of time is one of the great things beer, and especially home brewed beer, has going for it, and why the beer store in Richmond, Slow Beer, is one of the best named small businesses I could ever think of. Waiting for that bottled beer to carbonate, anticipating the punchy hop aroma when you flip off the bottle cap, and looking forward to sharing your beer with your mates, there's something special in that. Strangley, that approach is completely opposite to how a lot of folks (well, me) start drinking beer; as a teenager, when all you want to do is get loaded and forget things, and you'll drink anything that helps you get there.

The first brew that Luke and I put together has been in the bottle now for a month. Once we'd bottled those 27 long necks, we penciled in this Friday night as the time to crack them open over a few pizzas and with the Tigers game on the telly. In the meantime, we planned our second brew. Another pale ale, but this time using a light malt extract, steeping our own grains and doing a full hour-long hop boil, rather than throwing together a kit as we did for the first batch.

Ingredients were bought weeks ago, but then my 2-year old copped a broken nose and a bout of gastro on the same day, while my three month old fought a cold. So we postponed for a few days and rescheduled. Tuesday night, after work, we said. Which was all fine, until Luke texted me at 9pm Tuesday night to say he was still stuck at the office. The weekend after was out, while we journeyed home to Echuca for a family get together. Which brings us to this week, where brewing plans have once again been put on hold while Luke's wife fights a nasty bout of the flu. And I don't mean one of those colds when someone sitting next to you at work coughs and then moans, "Oh, I've got the flu". I mean the FLU, where you can't get out of bed for days. To add to the woe, her ear drums have both burst, and she's 27 weeks pregnant. So Luke and I have postponed again, indefinitely, while he looks after his wife and two-year-old.

Having to wait to make your own beer seems pretty darn easy, given the circumstances.

On diving right in

I started riding my bike again a few years back. After hardly riding at all during the 2.5 years Bec and I spent overseas, even riding a clunky old mountain bike I borrowed off Bec’s brother was a joy. I rode the rickety old tank to my job on a building site in jeans and work boots and hi-viz vest. As much as I enjoyed it, I would never wear lycra, I said. I didn’t need to. Soon I got my own bike, an old Italian racer off my brother that I converted to a single speed. But I still didn’t need the lycra. “Just because I’m riding a bike,” I explained to Bec, “doesn’t mean I need to look like a dork.”

A few years later, I had shaved legs, a carbon road bike that I was racing in multi-day stage races, and a dedicated track bike that I raced on the velodrome. And lots of lycra.

When we started travelling, back in 2005, I got my first digital camera; a relatively simple point and shoot. Just to take some happy snaps on the road, you know? Two years later I was trekking the back streets of Kathmandu carrying thousands of dollars worth of camera gear (a digital SLR, multiple lenses, tripod etc.) getting immense joy from documenting what I saw.

I have this tendency to dive right into things; driven by an urge to learn and soak up as much as I can. If I’m going to do something, I want to do it bloody well. Strangely this doesn’t seem to extend so much to my professional life, but let’s not get into that now.

I think this is why I’m enjoying this beer brewing stuff so much, despite it not really making any sense for me to start. In the last nine months I’ve probably drank the least amount of beer since I started drinking as a teenager. I no longer have that urge to crack another beer as soon as I finish one, so instead of drinking six beers on a Friday night watching the footy, these days it’s more like two. So why would I start an endeavour that’s going to produce around two-and-a-half slabs of beer every time I brew?  It makes even less sense when I consider that I plan on brewing every two to three weeks.

Much like photography, brewing beer has that perfect combination of science, nerdiness and creativity that I love. Once you understand how the beer is made, what the science is behind the beer’s structure, there’s comes the freedom to create flavours and styles however you wish. You want to make a chocolate IPA? Sure, give it a crack.

It also goes back to that slightly obsessive nature of my personality, the joy that comes from burying myself in new things; reading forums and asking questions and stumbling through until you learn to walk and then run. I’m not doing this to make cheap beer, I’m doing this to make great beer. And that’s going to take practice, practice, and lots of drinking tasting.

The first batch of beer has been bottled. I’m brewing with my buddy Luke, and we managed to avoid any major disasters on bottling day. Only just though. It was with enormous pride that we got to the final bottle, having filled and capped 27 others. As I went to put the final cap on, I stopped, as if struck by the ray of a stun gun. “Oh fuck.” Luke stopped too, looked at me, and then realised exactly what I’d just realised. In perfect harmony, we both exclaimed, “We haven’t put the sugar in!” Uncap all the bottles, add the sugar, re-cap the bottles. Job done.

The beer is now sitting in our linen cupboard, and I’ve crossed my fingers in the hope that none of the bottles explode. The beer is a basic pale ale, made from a Blackrock Pilsner kit, with some Cascade and Williamette hops added at the end of the wort boil. Supposedly, if done correctly, it should taste similar to a Little Creatures Pale Ale. I have no doubt in my mind that our beer will taste nothing like Little Creatures Pale Ale. But if it’s drinkable, we’ll be happy. Three more weeks and we’ll find out.