Many of my old posts concerned my homebrew hobby. I think I was always pretty clear I was practicing the “extract” method in which you use dehydrated or dried malt to create the foundation of flavors and fermentable sugars for your beer. It’s a pretty simple method in which you’re basically making soup (add ingredients to water, boil for a hour, cool and ferment) but you’re limited in what you can make and your base base ingredients have already been processed so your quality is compromised to a certain degree. The advantages to extract, however, is that the brewing process is quicker, requires less equipment and it’s easier to make higher-alcohol beers like double IPAs.

But there’s a snotty attitude in the homebrew world for those limited to just extract. I remember when I worked at Starmont and was talking about homebrewing with my colleagues in the lab when a winemaker, who was a home brewer, came in and someone mentioned I also made homebrew. He asked me about my setup and when I said it’s a five-gallon extract system, he wasn’t too impressed. “That sucks,” was all he said and our homebrew conversation was over.

Undeterred I stuck with extract making regular batches and steadily improving my methods and sanitation until I was pretty locked in to making my own beers that conformed to BJCP standards. People generally said my homebrew tasted like “real beer” and there were a few instances when people tried my beer without knowing I had made it at home and wanted to know what the name of the brewery was.

I’d basically met the challenge of making quality beer with extract and needed to upgrade to making beer in the “all-grain” process. This involves more equipment to make beer from simply malted and milled grain, water and hops. But a few years ago I got distracted with making wine, and didn’t have much cash after buying a new house so the brewing hobby fell to the wayside.

Matt Noble checking on his boil kettle during the all-grain class in St. Helena.

That changed about two months ago when my mom bought me an “expert brewing” class through the Napa Community College culinary facility in St. Helena. Taught by Matt Noble, a brewer at the excellent Trumer Brauerei in Berkeley. Noble proved to be a relaxed, friendly guy who took us through the all-grain process from start to finish answering detailed questions from folks like me who have fermentation experience and other folks who didn’t seem to know what hops are. The class also featured a delicious lunch of Trumer and Anchor Steam beers served by Alsatian choucroute and sausage cooked by the culinary students.

Based on the class and Noble’s advice on a good start-up kit I visited the guys at J&M Brewing Supplies in Novato, which is just a short trip up 101 from my office in San Rafael. I had learned about these guys by doing a profile on them freelance for a special Marin County publication by the San Francisco Chronicle. It was pretty chill to see the cover of that publication framed on the wall behind their register and one of the owners Marty Wall was real helpful in getting me set up.

I opted for a system based on two 10-gallon insulated water coolers and upgraded my 10-gallon boil kettle with a weld-less thermometer and ball valve. I’ve brewed two IPAs with the set-up so far and am very satisfied. I’ll go into the brewing in more detail in a subsequent post.

I felt a little bad letting my brew kettle gather dust for so long, but it was important for me to invest in new equipment to take on new challenges. When you pursue a hobby to create something, one needs to ensure your tools are balanced with your skill to make the investment in time and money worth it. Everybody knows someone with the means who has dumped a bunch of money into a hobby only to produce something mediocre. In fact, I know a few winery owners whose equipment and tasting rooms are more impressive than their products.