About The Brewer

I didn’t even like beer by the time I turned 21. On my 21st birthday, my friends wanted me to take 21 shots of liquor, but due to a burning desire to finish a paper that was due the next day as well as living through the night, I had to take 21 shots of beer as a substitute. Actually, I didn’t even have two beers to my name–I took 21 shots of Hooch, instead. That’s the alcoholic carbonated beverage I was drinking at that point in my life, and I was perfectly happy drinking malt liquor.

At some point I decided I wanted to start drinking beer. It was actually a conscious decision along the lines of “I should really do this.” My roommate and I bought a 12-pack of Rolling Rock and a Papa John’s pizza, and I had my first pizza and beer. I was underwhelmed by the Rolling Rock, but I did in fact realize just how good pizza and beer really was. Who knew? From then on, I kept stepping up the quality of beer I was drinking: first I traded up to Killians, then I traded up to Leinenkugel’s, then when I moved back to Oregon I traded up to whatever I could get my hands on. Oregon is, after all, officially the beer capital of the world.

Beers that I’d had before during my initial flirtation with beer were revisited and tasted good the second time around. It was like a spiritual awakening of some kind, the true definition of an acquired taste. One day, beer just started tasting…good. Not just tolerable. Brewpubs were tracked down and visited just to try something new and interesting. McMenamins locations were cataloged and listed for bragging rights. Grocery stores were mentally ranked in terms of beer selection.

The thought that I could brew my own beer never really occurred to me until the summer of 2005. I needed a project, I thought it might be fun. Fast-forward two years later after a lot of procrastination, and you’ll find me brewing my first batch of beer. It’s not complicated unless you want it to be. It’s not hard unless you want it to be. It’s not time-consuming unless you want it to be. It does require a lot of patience, which I find myself generally lacking, but if you do it often enough you’ll always have something new onhand to try.

I hardly consider myself an expert at homebrewing, but I’m getting the hang of it much quicker than I expected I would. If there are four levels of homebrewing skill (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and “I got a job at a brewery!”), I find myself somewhere around Intermediate. That means I have the principles down, I’m just missing equipment and experience.

I’ll gladly answer any questions I can. Please feel free to contact me at brewer (at) selfmadebrewing (dot) com.