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.