Bier Werking

Wow, six months since last posting. You’d think by the lack of reporting that the Bier Werkes is defunct. Au contrare! While we have not achieved full capacity, we are still quite an active operation.

2009 provided us with a good base of brewing knowledge. We had our share of novice failures. The raspberry wheat crash and the loss of the glass fermentation vessel was the most vicious example but the Imperial stout debacle perhaps the most disappointing. The acronym for the brew, A.S.S., was a foretelling of the taste. P.U. Another two batches were lost to higher summer temperatures in the fermentation cellar. These were expensive lessons.

The successes are mounting. We have brewed many batches of good drinkable beer. Beer I would put up against local microbrews. They are that good.

Recently, Santa delivered a grain mill to Dave and I am shopping for a larger vessel for boiling the wort. Our next phase will be toward better consistency. We’ve added kegging to the process also and Dave’s got his keg fridge up and running. Bottling is easier for sharing but the convenience and taste of fresh draught beer at home can not be overstated.

Our good neighbor John provided us with some hops rhizomes from his mom’s farm and picked buds from this year’s crop. Soon we’ll be crushing our own grains and growing our own hops. This will add a whole new dimension to our processes.

We are currently addressing a gub’mint conspiracy to disrupt our electronic communication channels. We think the MegaBrewers are behind it, donating large amounts of cash to administration officials in return for imposing harassing regulations on us beer farmers. Who knew a neighborhood brew club could attract such a high level of attention? We must be doing something right! Really, it is just a matter of a couple of the Werkers acquiring and using personal email rather than their work addresses. But the whole conspiracy theory sounds better doesn’t it?

For Christmas my nephew Sean, the offspring of That In-law and Anonymous, bestowed upon me a masterpiece of his own making. It is a Periodic Table of Brewing big enough to cover a large wall. All of the styles are represented along with gravity scales and color codes and elements enough to make your eyes and mouth water. He needs to publish and copyright it immediately before some beer thief steals the idea. It’s brewtiful!

So you see, the Bier Werkes is still up and running. Last night, our four hearty brewers toasted the Werkes into the new year with a new slogan –
We Brew It, We Drink It!

It is just over one year since we popped the top on our first home brews.

Happy 1st Birthday to the Brownsboro Farm Beer Works!