Microbrewed Adventures - Charles Papazian [17]
I knew I could make good homebrew, but I silently gasped nevertheless. I drew out the first word of my reply, trying to buy time. “Welllllllll,” lingering a moment, “yes I can…”
Before I could continue, George raised his voice in excitement. “This is wonderful! You will have to tell me what you might brew after you have had time to think about it.”
“George, who will be at this meeting?”
“Professional brewers and production engineers and scientists from Anheuser-Busch; Falstaff, which is across the river; other professionals from the Midwest and manufacturers from Europe. We have a lot of fun and there’s always plenty of beer.”
I did not get a good night’s sleep that evening, as I wondered, “Where is all this going? Am I going to be able to make a beer that is up to their standards? Will they like my homebrew? Am I crazy?” Evidently I was.
Two weeks later George called again. There was excitement in his voice exceeding the pitch of the previous conversation by leaps and bounds. “Charlie, I have wonderful news…”
“Uh ohhhhh,” I thought to myself as I fumbled for the imaginary seat belt on my office chair.
“Charlie I have talked to Ball Metal Container Corporation; you know, they make aluminum cans for us and they have agreed to supply us with cans to put your homebrew in. We will have the two logos of our professional associations as well as the logo of your American Homebrewers Association and your names as president of each organization. This will be great, Charlie.”
Now came the hard part. “George, how will you get the beer into cans?” I meekly asked.
“We will send you empty kegs, and after you have filled them we will ship them to St. Louis.”
I wondered if George realized that I was a homebrewer, making beer in 61/2-gallon carboys fermenting under my kitchen table. “How…much…will you…uhhh…ahhh…need, George?”
“Charlie, can you make two barrels?”
My brain quickly calculated: Thirty-one gallons in a barrel. Two barrels. Sixty-two gallons. About ten 6½-gallon carboys worth of beer. In other words, over a hundred pounds of malt! I’ve never had that much malt in my house at one time.
Adrenaline was coursing through my veins. But I remained calm, because brewers who say “yes” simply breathe deeply and repeat three times, “Relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew.” It works every time.
“Okay George, I’ll do it.”
“We’ll send you eight quarter-barrels in time for you to use.”
That was the beginning of that!
YOU’VE GOT to take into perspective that this was 1983. The best commercially available homebrewing yeast was dried yeast and came in small envelopes. Ale yeasts were often not of the best quality, and “dried lager yeast” was not lager yeast at all, but simply ale yeast called lager yeast on the package. Therein lay my dilemma. If I could gain access to a quality culture of ale and lager yeast, I might have a chance at brewing beers that would be acceptable to the people of the “King.” The challenge was to avoid compromise. The beers had to be good.
I called in a favor to friends at a brewing laboratory. One week later I had two small test tubes, one each of anonymous ale yeast and anonymous lager yeast. I was assured that they were of very good brewing quality and had been removed from a frozen yeast bank and cultured back to activity inside these tubes. I looked disbelievingly at the tiny drops of liquid and the small, almost imperceptible, amount of sediment that dusted the bottom. From these two drops of liquid sprang forth hundreds of beers, the first two emerging as lagers, Masterbrewers Doppelbock and Masterbrewers Celebration Light Lager. Juggling carboys and available space, I brewed several 12-gallon batches to top out at 31 gallons of final beer. Brewed on a stove top in a 5-gallon brewpot, fermented in 6½-gallon glass carboys at room temperature and “lagered” for three weeks at the same room temperature under my