I have an urge to “waffle in type” or “type waffle”. It’s the readers prerogative to decide their view so read on with that in mind.
This is about my relationship with beer. First thing to note is that it’s a different thing to my relationship with alcohol, but inevitably those paths will cross.
A lot of friends would probably say “oh yeah, he’s a big drinker”. I have never smoked, vaped, or ‘done’ any drugs and I know I won’t ever, I don’t often drink spirits and I do drink lots of coffee and am on Lisinopril for blood pressure. And whether right or wrong, I do know I drink more beer by units than I’m supposed to.
The reason why I differentiate between alcohol and beer is that they “do” different things for me.
So let’s clear the first and the one that is easier to chat about. My relationship with alcohol is quite one dimensional and basically I wholeheartedly, and without any pressure, confess that I use alcohol to help me sleep because for much of my last years I’ve struggled to turn my head off at night and so my sleep has been terrible.
I have used a mindfulness app (Headspace) for the last 11 or 12 years and it makes a big difference, of course it does, but sometimes especially when I was working in a more corporate environment it wasn’t enough.
Since changing my career “and working more casual roles” rather than a corporate role, my mental health regarding sleep has been improved significantly. But my head still races with thoughts and ideas and enthusiasm long after I really wanted to when I’m tired. So I still “self medicate”, apparently the term of choice.
It’s actually about that simple but it’s not a distinction that some people would make because I do love almost everything* about beer!
Just to be clear (and this is something that most people that know me would acknowledge is) it’s about the only thing I do drink so it’s a volume product. And by the way, when I can be bothered, I might decide to have a night off, maybe even two or three, but that will depend on how I’m sleeping.
*I dont like the way non-macro breweries are restricted, not encouraged, when the multinational corporations duck taxes and duty.
Here’s a bit after all that boring contextual intro that I really want to talk about and it’s my relationship with beer.
Beer is a fermented product that is generally considered to contain only four ingredients – water, malt, hops & yeast.
I grew up drinking exactly what you expect in terms of beer which was crap lager interspersed with the odd macro produced cream flow Boddies, which I eventually got sick of drinking. I tried drinking wine and I now definitely know what wine I like (and it’s massive Tuscan “smash-you-around-the-head”, bold juicy knockout wines).
That is definitely not something that’s sustainable so I started to move back to drinking the same old crap that I was used to drinking.
Then there was an epiphany in so much as myself, my mate Gary and Ian went to a local beer and wine festival where I tried a beer from a brewery called Thornbridge called Jaipur which was a at the time classically brewed East India Pale Ale. I bloody loved it! I had some other beers that night, some of which were more well known & accepted tastes, like Guinness. I didn’t enjoy them as much as I enjoyed Jaipur.
I remember that I was amazed that you could make such different beers using four basic ingredients. So here’s the wormhole moment.
I openly describe myself as a compulsively obsessive obsessive compulsive and I think my parents would have agreed to that description as I was growing up.
Because of this I needed to know more about how those things could be made to be so different with such simple ingredients. Then one evening, coming home from a Manchester City home game I bumped into an old school friend, Noz, who I’ve known since I was four years old who was with his mates.
They were very welcoming and we ended up going to visit a few brewery tap rooms that had set up under the arches in Manchester along Sheffield Street. My mind was blown! I enjoyed the company, the environment, the product and the fact it made me question even more. How on earth you could make so many different beers from so few ingredients.
From that point on it was inevitable that I was going to have a go at home brewing a beer because I’m one of those people we’re doing something is the best way I learn.
I did a small bit of research and bought a very very simple bucket brew kit that came with a kit of beer and some basic instructions and I gave it a go. It was a kit and the beer was a kit as well. I put a bag of something into some hot water and then put that syrup into some more hot water. The beer wasn’t very good and I learned nothing about what made be different from the four ingredients.
And that’s when, me being me, I moved up and began what is known as “all grain” brewing where you pick the specific varieties of grain, you choose the specific hops for that beer, and you decide on a yeast that fits that type of beer. And that’s put in simple terms, as I now know!
With the help of many people, some of whom are from the Chiverton Tap Homebrew Club, some of whom are professional breweries who I have had the absolute honour of brewing with, such as Andrew from The Mounting Stone in Bramhall, Toby from Redwillow in Macclesfield, all the folks at Torrside up in New Mills, and latterly Mark and his team at Runaway Brewery in Stockport, I have learned a lot!
Whilst I am no expert, I now have a good grasp on why you can make a Guinness or a Grisette from the same four basic ingredients: water, malt, hops and yeast.
I sort of apologise for the long intro. But then again.
If you’ve got this far, then the next blog or two might be of interest because I then went to the best beer festival in the world, and the next bits aren’t about the beer as much as you might think…