I’m a brewer.

Since I dropped this thing over a year ago, I’ve begun making beer on a commercial scale. Petite ‘lil ole me, who is the antithesis of the 250 pound, lumberjack-lookin’, manly beard growin’ brewer’s brewer. At the very least, I can say it’s light-years better than my previous position. I feel like it’s the culmination of everything I’ve ever thought about in a career. I’ve often thought it would be cool to have a career where I could make something physical– in my head, I briefly considered a career as a construction worker. I always knew a desk job would be out of the question–I just can’t sit still that long without going into a coma. I’ve loved being in the beer industry, and I knew I wanted to make a career of it, but I was just too big of a dummy to put two and two together.

And I love it. Here’s a list of the things I love about brewing:
Wearing a t-shirt and jeans to work
Getting dirty and finding yeast on me in weird places (like dried to my arm yesterday)
Writing recipes and getting creative with ingredients
Having bosses who let me get creative and experiment
Getting buzzed from my own beer
Blowing people’s stereotypes out the window
The smell of freshly milled grain in the morning
Appreciative comments from guests
Educating people about beer and getting them excited
Being able to work pretty much when ever I want/when the brewery calls for it

Right now I’ve got a couple things in the works, including
A lagering Oktoberfest, perhaps the first lager at The Cannon, newly dubbed ‘ONE-20′
An Imperial Brown Ale that’ll go on tap next Monday
Potentially bringing my beers to Emerald Coast Brew Fest
Potentially bringing my beers to Grovetoberfest
Giving a talk about something to do with being a woman in the beer industry at Savannah Craft Brew Fest

That last one is gonna be a doozy.

My favorite kind of flying dog

Back to my objections with the reviews: only one west coast beer? The west coast created the style–that is, by the way, where all of the precious, precious hops are grown in the US. Yes, Lagunitas (and Oskar Blues, if you want me to count it as west coast) are great breweries. But where’s Stone? Full Sail? Oh well. Maybe these guys needed an article to fill some space and stopped by the nearest liquor store.

Matt bought the supplies while he was last in Gainesville–it always seems like he buys too much hops, and this time was no exception. It started out as an amber IPA, but I have a feeling it’s gonna be pretty intense because of the metric ass-ton of hops we chucked in there. He’s going with the name “Roll Deep Red.” I was given no say in the choice of name (not that I necessarily think it’s a bad one). However, I suppose maybe he should get the naming rights after he stayed up all night with the wort waiting for the baby to cool down.

Lisa pours the malt extract while Yien develops her stirring muscles

Amy gets a little too excited about adding the hops.

Matt and Albie transfer the wort to the yeast's new home and breeding grounds. The ladies and I learned the physics of syphoning.

Matt tries everything to get the wort to cool to 75 degrees and stays up until 3 AM doing so. Heather goes to bed.

We did a 90 minute boil with zeus hops added in 30 minute increments and a dry hop with cascade. After bottling last night, we’ve got a yield of about 42 bottles, which should be ready for consumption by America’s (and Matt’s) birthday this weekend. Go USA!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I still hate the Bulldawg nation. And I’m still really annoyed by that whole ‘barking’ thing. I’m a Gator by birth, and I know where my allegiances lie. But dammit, this town was cool.

I made it a point to go to Trappeze while I was there. My Gville people will know what I’m talking about when I say that it had the same vibe as the Top, but without all the kitchsy stuff on the walls, and selling insane amounts of good beer. I started out with the Terrapin bread plate that had bread made from the spent grains from Terrapin rye, and sugar used in Terrapin India Brown Ale. The bread was fantastic. It came with a orange butter, but I totally didn’t need it. As I ate the bread, I actually had a Terrapin Rye, and contemplated deep philosophical thoughts. Another cool thing I appreciated about Trappeze: you could choose between a half-pour and a whole pour. Ordering half-pours of everything certainly helped against that whole being-a-female-and-getting-drunk-faster-because-of-less-body-mass thing. I tried four draft beers total, and I would have crawled out of there had I gotten full pours of everything.

Trappeze had two cask lines- I was fortunate to get a glass of Victory Hop Devil on cask. WooHoo! I’ve enjoyed Hop Devil plenty of times from the bottle, but from the cask, it was ridiculously intense. It was pretty much like drinking an imperial IPA; it was freakin’ fantastic. Apparently, they just recently had Brooklyn Dark Matter on draft, which I missed, and a part of me died inside. (I was fortunate enough to have shared a Black OPS sometime before, and it made my soul laugh and shine.)

After stumblin’ a little out of Trappeze, I caught Morningbell, one of my favorite Gainesville bands playing at the Caledonia Lounge. I just so happened to be in Athens while they were playing through on their east coast tour. It was very nice catching up with some other Gainesville locals, and they played a great show.

I came home from Athens the next day with too much money invested in beer and three records; Bob Marley-Legend, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs-It’s Blitz!, and Lady Gaga-The Fame (for the boyfriend). It was a good trip–now I gotta go back and visit Terrapin.

Next time, I’ll tell you about the six gallons of beer brewing in my kitchen.

Well, let's see if it actually gets to this point. I mean, no one wears monocles anymore, am I right?

Now, I find out that Alabama is hosting a craft beer week. Very exciting. They just recently (like, last year) lifted their ridiculous old laws restricting alcohol content in beer, and they’re already having a state-wide beer week. If I had known a little more in advance, I would have tried to get the Cannon involved, even though it looks like we might be on the wrong side of the ‘Hooch.

P.S.–Matt and I had the Rogue John John Juniper last night, and it was pretty awesome. Basically, it’s Rogue Juniper aged in spruce gin barrels (I guess Rogue has gotten into distilling too?). It was zingy. It was cool to have had the Rogue Juniper before (I think we had it on draft at Stubbie’s under the Yellow Snow name for like, two years), because the aging really did some cool things to it, like the aforementioned zingy-ness. Now I gotta find the John John Dead Guy.

Not to be too geeky, but beer is actually pretty exciting. It’s one of humankind’s oldest beverages. There’s record of beer going all the way back to 9000 BC. There are some who credit it (along with bread) with bringing on the agricultural age and the rise of humans gathering in cities–it’s hard to grow the grains for your beer when you’re a nomad. Remember all those ancient cultures you learned about in grade school–the ancient Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, the Sumerians, the ancient Chinese? Well, they all made some form of a beverage made with fermented grains–beer.

Makes me wonder what kind of hangover cures the ancient Egyptians had.

The Man destroys our beer and shatters our happiness during the Prohibition. Boo.

Gradually, the beer dark ages got a little brighter. Americans started noticing that the Europeans were making fun of their lack of beer choices and started taking matters into their own hands and homebrewing (even though for a long time it was illegal to nationally, and still is in a few states today). A few micros left over from before the dark ages continued to make craft beer, even though only a few people knew how awesome it was and there wasn’t much of a market. Anchor Brewing was (and still is) one such brewery. They somehow managed to make it through Prohibition and saved a whole beer style (steam beer!) in the process. Thanks to the old micros that survived and the legions of crazy homebrewers, local breweries started popping up again–started by those crazy homebrewers. Nowadays, I can’t pick up Southern Brew News or click on Beer Advocate without learning about a new baby brewery just one town over makin’ crazy new beers. Makes me proud.

So that was a rough intro on beer. There’s a lot more interesting points to make, but to risk boring you (are you bored already?), I’ll save those for another post. I’ll maybe throw in some beer reviews, maybe I’ll just brag to you about what I’m drinking, maybe I’ll just tell you “Hey, stop reading this right now! Go to your nearest good beer store this very moment and buy a bottle of _________!” I might even talk about music a lil bit, or I might let Matt post a thing or two.

Wanna read a funnier version of what I just wrote? Check this out.