Water, water everywhere and not a drop to....brew with?

It’s worth pointing out at this very early stage that what you have stumbled upon is not a comprehensive guide to home brewing, but rather a rambling, disjointed account of two novice home brewers. What you will find here is atrocious grammar, private jokes and drunken literary one-upmanship.

But take heart. The content of this blog is catered just for you. I can say with a high degree of certainty that you are more than likely 1 of 3 people:

1. One of our mothers (Hi Mam!)
2. Someone looking for this Dog on the Road
3. Me in 15 years

In all instances, this blog will provide, at the very least, a documented record of our brewing triumphs and failures, our diminishing hairlines and our undying commitment to getting blasted on something potentially toxic that we made in our own kitchens.

With this half-assed approach to documentation in mind, I’d like to take you on a whistle stop tour of our first brew day.

Brewing Lesson Number 1: Turning up at an emergency water relief centre with 2x20L carboys is bound to attract media attention.

I learned very quickly that you need a hell of a lot of water to brew beer. What luck then that the day we decide to brew is the day that the Dublin water works has a shit fit and leaves all of the north side without water for most of the day.

Queue media frenzy and national coverage of me struggling with a carboy.

Dear man in the queue behind me who didn’t get water because I took the last 40 litres to wash brewing utensils; I’m sorry. At least you got your picture in the paper. I hope you didn’t need the water for a sick relative.

Brewing Lesson Number 2: Dress for success
Much like our brewing name “Dog on the Road”, these hats will mean nothing to you and to explain it would take too much time and not yield much comedy payoff.

Just accept that they are awesome and are dearer to me than my future first born.

Brewing Lesson Number 3: Brew beer with Beer
One of the main things that I took away from our first brew day was that at some point on every brew, you’re bound to make a mistake. For us these ranged from not putting the pot on the hob properly to potentially poisoning ourselves by using the wrong sanitizer on all our equipment. At each of these moments it pays to have a beer on hand. Now, it goes without saying that the more beer on hand greater the potential for making mistakes, but you’re not at work in a commercial brewery, you’re pursuing a hobby. Brewing should be as enjoyable and relaxing as possible, and what better way to do this than by having a beer (ideally from a needlessly fiddly glass).

Brewing Lesson Number 4: Get your shit together.
We made two basic errors early on. Firstly we went to Ikea and bought a 10L pot for brewing. We really should have gotten a larger capacity pot as we had to fiddle with the recipe to ensure we could brew in one pot. While in Ikea we bought a €3 breakfast which I can still feel in my lower intestine – mistake number 1 : cheap scrambled eggs are always a bad idea, even if they are served to you in an incredibly efficient way.

Second, we used the chlorine based sanitizer for the brew pot on all of our equipment. This would have been fine if we thoroughly rinsed the equipment afterwards, but as we thought this was no rinse, we probably have some level of chlorine in the beer – mistake number 2 : spending too much time on the internet, reading snippets of information, gradually reducing my attention span resulting in neither of us READING THE FECKING LABEL.

So all in all it was quite a good first attempt. We both tried the beer before moving it to the primary fermenter and it was simply delicious. A very hoppy, sweet taste.

So there you have it. A completely non-technical, broad brush overview of our first brew day, and what follows is a random assortment of some snaps from the day that cover the various elements of the boil.