The Brew Arrives

We were extremely nervous about the brew when the day came...

Okay, that's not exactly accurate. I was nervous, my girlfriend had since moved on to throwing spent grain flour into everything she could think of. The beer at this point was an after thought for her. For me it was nerve wracking. I don't know why. I mean, it's not like I sell this. We didn't bet the farm on this five gallon batch of partial mash milk stout. Still, brewing beer is a bit like expecting a baby. You wait, you clean, you measure.You clear out rooms so it has somewhere to sleep after it's been delivered (which here means bottling).

So here I was, worrying about whether I could afford private school for the Milk & Honey Stout so that it could get into a good college, while the beer just sat there in bottles, judging me for being a bad brew-daddy.

So the day came, we cracked one open (we probably served it a little too warm, optimal temp here is between 38-40 degrees and ours was probably around 60 when I poured it) and drank it and it was ... good, but not great. Or at least so we thought.

When you tell people that you brew beer, if they're not into that whole DIY food thing they look at you a bit as though you've told them you're a wizard. "Beer? From your home? What is this sorcery?" And of course, because they're your friends (or at least they should be, I don't recommend giving your home brew to random passersby) every word that comes out of their mouth is tainted. "This is delicious. I would totally buy this." And I want to believe it. I want to think that on my second batch of beer I've someone managed to master what took the Belgians and Germans the better part of two millennial to perfect. But I'm far too neurotic to believe that I've produced something palatable to a human being who is not me. Even out of the mouths of the local homebrew club (which were not nearly as kind, but still very complementary) I was suspect that I had made (I say I, but really it's we, but since I'm the only one freaking out about it I'm going to continue to use first person pronouns) a good beer.

That's probably part of it though. The desire to do better comes from the belief that what you've done is not as good as what you will do. And I believe that to be true of any endeavor.

Our next beer will be better than this one. The one after that will be better than all the ones that came before.

And I will be terrified that every last one of them is a delinquent.