My name is Patrick Roach, and I love beer.
I have to admit though, this wasn't always the case. When I started drinking, I didn't like the taste of beer at all. I was a liquor guy, and sadly at that young age (I started drinking at 22), I can't even claim that I liked good liquor. I started off drinking things like Jack Daniel's Downhome Punch and Screwdrivers made with Jose Cuervo. Then, for the longest time my drink of choice was a Cosmo made with Absolut Mandarin.
I know, sad, right?
Well, thankfully it's been a long, long time since those days and I've been lucky enough to have some good friends with better taste who helped me along the way to be introduced to good drinks. On that path was also my first real beer love. Guinness.
That's me and my friend Mike at the Guinness brewery in Ireland many, many moons ago. I'm the guy on the right who is swooning.
I'll be honest here. I think the main reason that Guinness was my first beer love was because it didn't taste like most other beers. It's so thick, it's more akin to drinking a milkshake. For a long time, good old Guinness was my main go-to beer. Over time though, I began to branch out and became fond of other, lighter beers. Heineken, Newcastle and Boddington's are good examples. Basically, I branched out into brown ales, red ales, hefeweizens, pale ales and stuff like that. I considered myself to be a fairly well rounded beer drinker.
Oh how little I knew then.
As time went on, I kept trying out new beers. Some I liked, some I didn't. I've never been a fan of the big three american brewers Budweiser (now owned by InBev), Coors and Miller. I still don't like them, and I'm pretty sure I never will. I became a fan of Samuel Adams (the beer, but the man himself is pretty cool too), various Belgian ales and a number of micro brews. There was one last major hurdle for me to conquer . . . . the dreaded IPA.
I hated the very first India Pale Ale I had. I thought it was disgusting. It was super hoppy and bitter and I was not a fan of it at all. I tried a few other IPA's and thought the same thing. But, as I said, I had friends with far better taste than I. Over time they wore me down and made me try more and more IPA's. Eventually, I developed a taste for the hoppy bitterness of IPA's and actually began to like them.
Then I discovered the Stone Brewing Company.
Oh what sweet deliciousness the amazing folks at Stone manage to make with each and every beer they produce. There was no going back now. I loved IPA's. The more bitter and the more hoppy the better. Give me hops or give me death!!!
Having finally been won over to the love of IPA's, I began to explore even more. I started seeking out small, local brewing companies. I began sampling so many different kinds of beer I could no longer keep track of them. Eventually, it all came down to a realization that was unavoidable.
I needed to make my own beer.
How do I do this though? Sure, I understood the basic principals that go into making beer. Malt, barley, hops, water. Throw them together, heat them up, add yeast, magic science stuff happens and voila! Beer! But making stuff at home on my own? I had no clue what to do. So I did what any normal, thinking person would do. I put a fermentation kit on my Amazon.com wishlist right before Christmas of 2011, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. To be specific, I put this particular kit on my wish list.
Shockingly enough, my older brother Michiel bought the kit for me and soon enough it was sitting in my kitchen, daring me to use it to make tasty booze. Having the kit and knowing what to do with it though are two different things. I'm a bit OCD when it comes to learning new things. I need to read up on everything I can before I'm willing to try a new endeavor, so it's a good thing that my brother also bought me this book to go along with the fermentation kit.
The Joy of Home Brewing is a lovely, easy to read book that has been very helpful with learning the step-by-step basics. It makes it all look so simple. So, having read what I could, there was only one thing left to do; go buy some ingredients and and start brewing.
To Be Continued.....
