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This is a beer column that’s not really a
beer column I’ll let you decide )ust what it is.
In a sense, I have graduated (Not aca-
dcmically -1 already did that some years ago.)
In recent weeks, 1 have gone from being a se
rious enjoycr of familiar brands/tryer of new
brands/searcher for the perfect distillation of
certain genres of beer to become the creator
of my own product, if I may call it that.- Yes,
folks, in spite of the fact that 1 do not brew at
home, 1 am now a home brewer.
Perhaps the proper term is craft brewer,
because there’s definitely more craft than home
to it. John Gayer (owner and guiding genius
of Home Brewing Supply, a cubbyhole store
on Prince Avenue and an accomplished
home brewer in his own nght) and I were
sharing a pitcher of the wondrous Cells Pale
Bock one night in late September and woeing
the fact that Athens didn’t have any avail
able India Pale Ale. Tve had it in the back
of my head for some time to brew my own,” I
swigged, “because I can’t find anything on the
market anywhere around here that is like what
1 would want to drink. Porter I can find, and
Lager, and Stout, and Pale Ale, and even Pale
Bock ... but not India Pale Ale .. a TRUE
India Pale Ale, with about 65 units of bitter
ness and a strong woody bite." John licked
his lips of their Celisian foam and dropped
his head as he often does and said “You know,
Ort., I’ve wanted to do the same thing for a
long time. Let’s do one together ” A click of
glassware and an alliance was cemented We
both had something to look forward to.
I ran by John’s store on the way into
town the next Friday afternoon. We as
sembled the necessary ingredients from a vast
list we worked together to create, and agreed
to meet at the stoit that Sunday afternoon to
brew. The excitement of having our own cre
ation, out very own Frankenstein monster, was
Special Correspondent and Occasional
Beer Editor For The Flagpole.
WILLIAM ORTEN CARLTON = ORT.
Beer I Can Call My Own
(Hovetnher 23, 1994
delicious to contemplate.
The appointed time amved We worked
fevenshly to blend the two cans of malt ex
tract with the four different crushed grains,
adding the dry malt extract to finish that part
of it off. After 11,236 stirs, we threw in four
kinds of hops and let it all boil for an hour
We mixed three other vaneties of hops and
recantered them, adding a third forty minutes
into our boil, the second third ten minutes
later, and the final third at the finish. We then
cooled our liquid and siphoned it into a car
boy for its pnmary fermentation
The next afternoon, I wandered into the
store “How’s our baby’’’ 1 asked John with
the trepidation of the first-timer that 1 was
He chuckled and walked over with me to re
veal quite a show going on: fermentation was
progressing with amazing rapidity; hop clus
ters were flinging and hurling themselves
around like some sort of Lava Lamp gone awry
We both watched in utter amazement “I’ve
never had one do this before,’’ John admit
ted. Of course neither had 1. It was fun to
watch our yeast friends at work, busily eating
up the sugars in the malt and producing alco
hol in the process 1 was afraid, with my rudi
mentary knowledge of brewing chemistry, that
we had made a beer that would be so heavy
in alcoholic content that it would be disagree
able, but that proved not to be the case: I’ll
get to that in a minute.
The next Saturday, we racked our prod
uct, taking it from primary to secondary fer
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mentation On the day we brewed, John had
taken an initial gravity reading of 1.063; our
finishing gravity read 1.018. That meant our
India Pale Ale was 6.14% alcohol by volume
- just over the legal threshold for sales in
Georgia, but certainly not too intense to en
joy drinking We shook hands again at the
prospect of doing that very thing as soon as
possible
I returned to my research and John to
his work. Our paths crossed several times, but
we met again on November 4 (Fnday) to
bottle our finished product Quite a bit man
aged to get spilled, but we ended up with just
over four gallons, and it was mighty tasty, even
considenng that it hadn’t had time to become
bottle-conditioned “This’ll age real well,"
John informed me with the voice of expen-
ence “Yeah, this’ll be utterly yummy around
Christmastime."
And so our product, dubbed The Citi
zens’ India Pale Ale. has been bom But
there’s more to tell: this is only the story of
Batch One And as Batch One continues to
age in its bottles, Batch Two has been brewed,
racked, and bottled and Batch Three has been
brewed and is in primary fermentation as I
write. It should be ready in time for a Christ
mas party, and we’re looking forward to it.
Now I’m beginning to get the serious
home brewing bug. Instead of adding salts to
the marvelously soft Athens water to
“Burtomze’’ it, as it is termed, I’m hunting a
ready source for extremely hard water to
match to the genre of ale I want to create In
my travels. I’ve already run down a sulphur
spring and a Chalybeate (iron) spring together
on the same property in Madison County. An
old fnend owns it, and will gladly supply the
water in exchange for some of the beer. Fur
thermore, John Scawnght told me of an old
public mineral spring in Athens that was
bricked in about 1880 “Let’s wait for the
snakes to go into hiding for the winter and
bring a swingblade and see if we can’t find it
down in the kudzu,” he offered. “I can’t wait
to see what the water tastes like " - And nei
ther can I.
Next I guess 1 have to hunt a source for
English oak casks, because that’s what the
onginal India Pale Ale was aged m. My Mother
really will throw me out if 1 buy five or six of
those and bnng them home... I guess John will
have to volunteer a comer of his basement 1
sure hope so, because there’s no telling where
this will lead
So if you see me around and wonder how
it’s doing, I’ll try to keep you posted. Subse
quent batches ought to become tastier and
tastier, the alcoholic content should drop to
around 5.8%, and the color ought to be a deep
amber when we perfect our formula
That only serves to remind me of the
description of Ballantine India Pale Ale 1 read
years ago: “deep brown gold, pungent aroma
of hops... this beer is unquestionably long-
aged, probably in wood ..." In another col
umn, I will tell you about India Pale Ale - how
it evolved (and why) - and how I
evolved into my love of Hi But
not yet; even columny has to age
until its time, in an oaktn cat in
the comer of my mindS basement.
Wish it well. (30.) | #
€> 1994 William Orten Carlton.
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