At the Holiday Party in December, one of the gifts that was part of the Opportunity Drawing was a new beer-brewing kit from Home Brews & Gardens (our newest member business).  Some friends of ours won the kit but were already amateur brewmasters so they went in and got an exchange for some beer-making products.  This is a brief tale of our adventures in North Park beer-making.

You may have read this article recently about the expansion of great beer in North Park.  We can quibble about the impact of that publicity, and many who live here probably agree that some of our visitors need to be more respectful of our neighborhoods when enjoying all that beer, but this isn't a social commentary, its a fun post about beer.

My friends--we'll call them "Theo" and "Lana"--won some cool stuff from the place I mentioned and had my wife and I over for beer making.  If you've never done this before, it's really worth the experience.  I should say that watching it was worth the experience.  I'd like to brew some beer, but it seemed really time consuming.  Fortunately we were also hanging out and had picked up some pizza from the new Pizzeria Luigi's that opened up on El Cajon next door to Eclipse Chocolat (west of Texas).

Here are some photos of the ingredients (l to r: malt extract, hops and malt, yeast)

The process was pretty interesting also.  Theo had to boil the malt in this big sock looking thing (pictured below), and then stir in the malt extract and hops (source of "bitter" beer taste), and boil for some specific amount of time that I don't remember.

Sock Looking Thing

During the boiling we actually got some video, which I tried to embed from YouTube, but my blogging skills leave a bit to be desired.  Check it out the old fashioned way by clicking here.  Once this part of the process was done, Theo carefully poured the boiled "brew" into a big glass bottle that had a special name

After this was done, I think it sat for a few days while lots of chemical reactions went on and general beer development occurred.  Then, at just the right time Theo and Lana transferred everything using some sort of gravity based system to keep from disturbing too much of the beer, I have a picture of that, too.

This process continued on for several more days until, when precisely the right specific gravity was reached, it was time to bottle the beer (disclaimer: I have no idea about that last part, please consult a real brewmaster for details).  The good news is that Theo and Lana has this process all sewed up and ready and gave away the bottled goodness as party favors for a re-gift party.  How fitting.  If you have any tips on brewing your beer or great places in the area that no one knows about, please chime in.  And thanks to Theo and Lana for a lovely afternoon in the neighborhood.