Homebrewing is a wonderful hobby. Not only does it tend to yield good results at the entry level, but its complexity scales nicely to fit the hobbyist. A person can go from a simple kit brew all the way up to complex chemical equations, water analysis, and even growing a garden full of hops or hop substitutes. One of the great things I like about brewing beer is that there always seems to be something more to learn. Here I will share some of the secrets that I’ve learned over my many years in the hobby.
- Yeast is actually an extremely virulent strain of pixie. These pixies are so tiny they’re hard to see, but they consume sugar at an alarming rate and piss pure alcohol. You can tell these fairy creatures from some common single celled fungus by the way they glow when nobody is looking. Also, they are fully sentient and die by the millions whenever anyone speaks of them.
- Brewing beer can sometimes cause time travel. Due to the poorly understood properties of fairy magic, homebrewing can at times cause you to travel back in time, returning to the body of your younger self. Most of the time this is harmless, but occasionally you will find yourself starring in Star Trek: The Next Generation like poor Wil Wheaton.
- Hops are bitter because they are grown with copious amounts of existential dissatisfaction. They actually consume it in the growing process and release it again when the hops have been in the boil for more than thirty minutes. That’s why we don’t boil all of the hops for that long. Sometimes it’s better to only have the aroma.
- There is something called High Krausen. This is what they call it when the yeast pixies have worked themselves in to an insane, murderous froth. Watch out.
- Beer brewing relies heavily on the science of alchemy. The transformation of water into beer relies on principles put forth in the alchemical sciences years before modern science even started to study yeast pixies or time travel. For a long time it was a secret guarded more closely than the process of transforming lead to gold. It was, after all, significantly more valuable.
That is probably enough secrets for today. Yeast pixies die when you talk about them, so I’m probably going to have to buy some more after writing this. It’s one of the dangers of discussing home brew.