For want of a gasket, the beer was lost.

(click to enlarge)

Today, I was going to tell you about a simplified home beer-making kit I got (see above). But it didn't work out. Yet.

I've recently tried some very simple bread making and enjoyed it. Beer really is just an interesting form of liquid bread, right? I don't drink all that much beer, but I thought home brewing might be interesting and fun to try.

Beer is almost as ancient as bread itself; the first beers were brewed in the late stone age. Want to know how important beer is in human history? Humankind's very first written legal document, the Code of Hammurabi, devoted an entire a section to beermaking.

The Egyptian pharaohs wanted beer in the afterlife (who wouldn't?), and so included statues and carvings of beermaking--- little beerish dioramas--- among their entombed treasures.

(Max res original photo HERE )

With that kind of historical importance, I'd be very surprised if one of the very first human sentences wasn't something like "Beer good."

(And it was probably followed by something like "Come here often?")

Beer is largely cross-cultural and universal. After water and tea, beer is the third most-consumed liquid on the planet. Almost every human culture has its own beer, from local ingredients. And most of the ones that don't, trade for it.

Yes, there are aberrations. There have been legal and religious prohibitions against beer (and all alcohol) in various times and places. But left to itself, every culture that can develop beer, will.

It's amazing when you think about it: Hardly a human kidney has ever existed that did not filter at least a beer or two during its existence. Or, somewhat more poetically, when you have a beer, you are sharing a link with almost every human that has ever lived, anywhere, for all time.

Yes: Beer good.

Hard-core home brewers start with raw grain and work from there, but that's a level of complexity I wasn't ready for. So, instead of a full from-scratch beer making setup, I opted for the disturbingly named "Mr. Beer" kit. Name aside, it's a hybrid beermaking process intended for the easy brewing of small batches of beer.

With the Mr. Beer approach, the initial grain milling, mixing, soaking, mashing (etc) is done for you. You buy a highly concentrated, non-alcoholic wort extract that's ready for blending, fermenting, and bottling. You can buy worts made with different grains and flavorings in a wide range of colors, strengths, hoppiness, and such. The idea is that you can blend different worts together to produce beers of whatever custom flavor/body/strength you want. You can also use the basic worts as a starting point to add additional fresh ingredients (eg local hops) if you wish. There are several online communities dedicated just to Mr Beer-type home brewing (and many more general home-brewing sites); these guys--- and they are mostly guys--- share recipes, suppliers, tips and such. Some geeks congregate there, too. There's a whole section I saw on "keg mods," for example. Really!

Yes, beer good.

The kit I got (above) has enough stuff to make two 2-gallon batches of beer; a basic Budweiser-style American lager and a slightly richer blonde. I'm not a big Bud fan ("What do Budweiser and making love in a canoe have in common? They're both f*cking close to water."), so I also bought a couple extra wort extracts: an "export pale ale" and a Canadian-style draft. I have no idea what any of them is like, yet.

I was going to provide a little photo essay today on setting up the kit and starting my first batch fermenting, but I was stymied by a manufacturing problem: The kit's supplied keglet has a tap assembly that fits a predrilled bung hole. The tap assembly consists of a threaded spigot, a gasket, and a mounting nut. Mine was missing the gasket, so the assembly would not seal tightly.

This may be the only time you'll ever hear me say this: Yes, I had a leaky bung hole.

I called the tech support line, and they're shipping the missing gasket.

So, my brewing plans are on hold.

Meanwhile, if you'd like a quick primer on beer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer

And remember: It's not drinking; it's exploring history!