My Search For Clearity

It was just another day at the end of May in Midvale Utah. The sun was shinning as the birds danced across the open air and while I knew the summer semester was just around the corner and there was still multiple things I needed to do, today was mine. It was my brew day. I had spent weeks justifying today, telling myself, this was the last day I can brew beer till summer semester is over. While the truth might have been a little different, I had already informed my wife that this was the case.

or those of you who have not guessed, I am a craft brewer. !eer is somewhat a labor of love with diminishing returns. My batch si"es are normally five gallons or roughly fifty bottles. While that may seem like a lot, it is not considering that # gallons will spend three weeks in a primary fermenter, one week in a secondary fermenter, two weeks in the keg carbonating, and finally two weeks in a fridge lagering. It will take two months to be ready for the ancient tradition of slowly killing one$s liver. While this process seems like an overly complicated list of tedious tasks it is actually relatively simple. !eer is made with malted barley, yeast, water, and hops. While there are many types of grains and even types of hops, these offer only the most subtle differences. The end of summer is when hops are

ready to be picked. %very year for the past three years I have been trying to create the perfect &merican pale ale matched perfectly to a season dominated by falling leaves and the ever classic pumpkin pie, this year I knew I was going to do it.

I had to make sure this beer went perfect. !eer is simple water, yeast, grains, and hops. To get the sugar you have to convert the starch to a sugar in a process called mashing. The barley malt contains its own en"ymes that break down starch into a fermentable sugar when heated to '#( degrees. )o I assembled a combination of victory malt, &merica two row malt, *ienna lager malt and crystal si+ty was all that was needed. I ,nce the mash has been completed, I began a -. minute boil. The boil started, I tossed in the &marillo hops and my porch filled with a bou/uet of citrus aroma0 typical of an &merican style hop. &s I add the ne+t hop addition, I can$t help but to imagine myself in a tradition practiced for thousands of years. It is like I am connected to a long linage of brewers that had come before me, as I stir the hops in the boiling wort. 1ike all good things in life the si+ty minute boil was over. It was time to add the aroma hops. This is where the aroma of the beer came from. I turned off the burner

and and double checked my the weight of my most important hop additions. The /uicker the wort is cooled the more aroma will be left in the beer, so I said a little prayer to the brew gods as I tossed in the hops and immersed my kettle in a tub of ice water. I turned on the garden hose attached to my wort chiller and waited. Twenty minutes later the wort was cooled. I pulled a small sample and measured its specific gravity2dissolved sugars3 it was a beautiful '..#4. tossed the yeast in my fermenter and in went the wort. I blasted the fermenter with pure o+ygen to make the yeast happy and set it in my fermentation chiller.

It seems the waiting is the worst part of brewing. This is where all the magic happens and those two weeks were finally over. I saniti"ed my secondary fermenter and syphoned the beer into the carboy. ,nce yet again I pulled another specific gravity reading this time it was '..'5. This was going to be a five point eight percent beer. I sneaked a taste, it was dismal at best. 6udging beer is a difficult thing before it carbonates. or some reason everything just tastes a little bland. In fact I thought it was too bland and this needed to be reconciled. I opened up my free"er and stared

hoping for the answer to smack me in the face, it did not. )o I stared and stared at a lonely bag of cascade hops and glanced back at the carboy and in my head debated if this was going to be the culmination of perfection or merely a last second decision that would be the demise to this beer. This was the /uestion all brewers are forced to ask themselves, to dry hop or not to dry hop, that is the /uestion. This /uestion separates the hop heads from the hop scared. I fortunately, am a hop head so in went the cascade. This last attempt to make this beer pri"e worthy was either a stroke of pure unadulterated genius or my demise. The only thing I was certain of, was this beer could no longer be called &marillo pale ale, at least without a loss of integrity that is.

&s the weeks past I kegged my beer, let it carbonate, and lagered it in my fridge. I shoved my pint glass ne+t to the tap like a kid on 7hristmas morning. I pulled the tap handle, out came the yeast that had settled in the bottom of the keg and I tossed it down the sink. 8ou never drink the yeast. I filled the ne+t glass and watched my pint fill with what I like to call, perspective. It was the most into+icating vibrant gold I had ever seen in a beer. Maybe I was just lost in moment , chances are it didn$t glow with a divine purpose, but you couldn$t of told me that. It poured with a single fingers worth or starch white head. I took a sip and my nose permeated with orange and grapefruit aromas as I chewed on the slight malt and caramel notes. The dry finish cleansed the palate perfectly preparing you for the rest

of the pint. I knew I had accomplished what I had set out to do.

The last thing to do was bottle a si+ pack and send it in to the competition. & couple weeks later I received my score. & near perfect forty three out of fifty from the judges, the only comment was my color was a little dark for the style, but they were 9all aboard.: To celebrate I had a little get together nothing big or e+travagant, just several people over during a preseason game of the ; 1. Their was a friend of a friend that pulled a pint and told me that this was not good beer as I see him hold the glass up to light attempting to read through it. I was honestly surpiri"ed at the notion that my pri"e winning beer was sub par based upon someone that is a !M7 drinker. & !M7 drinker describes someone that only drinks !udweiser, Miller, and or 7oors. I rationali"ed not caring, by thinking, well he had no e+perience on what craft beers should be anyways. The truth was it did bother me that night as I lay there tossing and turning watching my clock give birth to the wee hours of the morning. I asked myself if I had over looked something< I think I did. We want our food and drinks to not only taste good and remain fresh but, we e+pect perfect te+tures and tastes as well. In order for me to make my beer crystal clear I would need to add fining agents such as gelatin, Irish moss, or fish bladders and I am not willing to do that to my beer. While I was able to write his opinion off, it appears the rest

of the prepared food industry had not. We as consumers have sent the message that the way food looks is just as important as food tastes. This has caused additives in our food and drinks that should of never been added. I will have to face these decisions again in the future. ,ne day I will open up a brewpub called The =hetorical )ituation, featuring >erspective !rown &le, =hetoric 7ream &le, &ll &board >ale &le, and my favorite The Illiterate >orter. That dream is a ways as a way and I might decide such fining agents to be necessary to gain the popularity I would need to stay open, but as for now my beer is all I ever wanted it to be.