We’ve been testing out the beer and although it is not ready, it already has a great taste and a beautiful amber color.  Enjoy the second part of Mr. Petrie’s homebrewing journal.  

In the last installment I gave you a bit of an introduction, in today’s I’m going to give you the experience of the research.  No matter what I say, for me, researching is fun and I encourage you to really scope things out before you jump into the homebrewing world.

I started off by asking my friend what brew kit he got. He also recommended the homebrewer’s bible: Charlie Papazian’s The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. I soon picked up The Complete Joy and started reading through the first few sections. I recommend getting a hold of this book if you’re even remotely interested in this. Papazian makes the whole process entirely accessible. I was honestly shocked when I saw it wasn’t available at the local library. Perhaps too many people never return it.

So with the book and the kit in mind I started down the path of oblivion: Comparison shopping on the internet. I have many things to thank the internet for, I should probably thank it for allowing me to shop from the comfort of my kitchen table, but I can’t, and this is why. I can easily spend days attempting to find a way to save $10 on a purchase. Worse, I can spend even more time trying to find a way to not only save $10 but also get a better product in the process! It is a sickness. The cure? Reckless abandonment.

But before I got to give up my hope of saving $10 and getting the BMW 3 series instead of the Chevy Cavalier of homebrewing kits in the process, I had to just spend that time. I went to the homebrewing site my friend got his kit from, I checked out other homebrewing sites on the net, I repeatedly went to the homebrew sites of the local shops. I would peruse forums and then go to homebrew sites that someone would recommend. It was freaking endless!

The positive part about this was that I now knew what was a good deal and what wasn’t. I also knew that most homebrewing web sites are not all that great. But here’s the thing: This is a new hobby! You don’t want the Ultra Extreme Kick You In The Pants UBER Kit. Honest. You don’t. This is hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes. I’ve even got this voice that says, “If you don’t get the best then how can you be sure you’re going to like it?”  This is almost as much of a sickness in my mind as the comparison shopping is. Fortunately my wallet can protect me from the UBER Kit better than it can from comparison shopping until my eyes bleed and my family leaves me.

The research was really actually a lot of fun. Regardless of the endless amount of time I spent on the internet researching, it was time well spent. I started to find forums that I would eventually come back to and I also had a good idea about what I wanted and what I needed. In the next installment I’ll be writing about the purchase of the kit. Until then: Relax. Don’t worry. Have a homebrew.