A few times now I have made my own pizza, crust and all. It’s actually a pretty easy process but needs to be well planned out.

You’ll need to mix the ingredients for the dough along with some yeast, let it rise for at least an hour, shape into balls and let it rest for yet another 20 minutes. After that you shape the dough into your pizza crust and get to work.

Using a pizza stone seems to have the best results, unless you have a real pizza oven of course. You need to preheat the stone for an hour in the oven and ideally make your pizza on some parchment paper so you can throw the whole thing easily on to the stone when ready.

I originally made a pizza with artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, goat cheese, pine nuts and a balsamic glaze. It was pretty tasty. Then my wife got an idea from a blog she reads to make a breakfast pizza with our leftover dough. Pesto, onion and eggs on top, as pictured above. It was damn good!

There seems to be few beer styles that are as difficult to pin down as the Saison. Also known as a Farmhouse Ale, it’s traditions go back hundreds of years to Wallonia (french-speaking Belgium) and was originally brewed to be enjoyed by the farmer’s during harvest time. In historical terms, this beer could not be defined by specific flavours, or even colour. It was simply a beer made with random available ingredients to keep the farmers healthy and hydrated.

In recent years, the Saison has experienced a major influx in the craft beer world and has stylistically been defined along the lines of the classic example, Saison Dupont.

The Saison should have fruity and spicy aroma and flavors, brought out by the Belgian yeast. It is not uncommon for a Saison to have mild spice additions to bring out the peppery character of the yeast as well. There is generally a citrus/lemon component and should be an overall ‘fresh’ and satisfying beer due to it’s dryness. It’s also common for their to be a slight level of sourness brought out by the yeast and high fermenting temperature.

This can be a difficult beer to brew, since it should be fermented at high temperatures. Fermenting hot can create off-flavours and a solvent-like alcohol characteristics, so this needs to be done carefully and watched closely.  My personal favourite example of the style is the Brooklyn Sorachi Ace Saison.

I will be brewing a Saison tomorrow, using a recipe that I created myself based on some other award winning recipes online. I even specially ordered the Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast. My recipe called for Belgian Pilsen malt, but I saved $12 by using Canadian Pilsen malt.

Since it will benefit from a little ageing, it should be ready to drink in the hot summer months.

You can see my recipe after the bump:

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The other day an acquaintance of mine told me he really wanted to talk to me about home brewing, and wanted to know everything there is on how to get started. When people say this I usually don’t take them very seriously and just tell them the basics. But he wanted more… we talked for almost an hour and he said he has $1000 aside to start up all grain brewing.

I was pretty excited to get someone else into this hobby that I have come to love, but I am a little jealous of him that he has someone to teach him all these things and tell him exactly what equipment to buy and how to make a great first beer. I spent hundreds of hours reading books, forums, listening to beer podcasts, reading brewing magazines, etc etc.

I am also jealous that he has $1000 to get started. Most home brewers like myself spend hours of their own time hacking together cheap alternatives to save a few bucks.

I’m not saying all this to sound all “ooh, look at me, I worked soo much harder and am therefore way cooler”. I’m just saying, most people aren’t obsessive nerds on steroids like me. I can definitely see why a lot of people would try home brewing with a kit or something, have a shitty beer as the result, and then just discount home brewing from there. There really is a lot to know and a lot of work has to go into it before you can make something half decent. Home brewing has a bad reputation because people think it’s easy and therefore make crappy beer. Even when you work your ass off and study up on it you can still make crappy beer. It’s frustrating and it’s not for everyone. But what will certainly make it easier is to have someone show you the steps and the most important things to know right out the gate.

One thing I have learned when cruising around on all the home brewing forums is that a lot of people are dicks about it. They tell people “dude, you brew with a kit? that’s so gay lolol”, or “your yeast was underpitched so your beer is going to have diacetyl compounds haha NOOB”. Whatever dude. I hate that people are trying to make it out like brewing is this super technical hobby that only a handful of science geeks can do. Anyone can do it. Like anyone can play guitar or anyone can learn to snowboard. You just have to actually try. What you can’t do is walk by a beer kit in a store, buy it on a whim, and expect to make good beer.

I guess this is just turning more into a rant about dicks on the internet. If someone asks you questions about your hobby, whether it be brewing, playing chess or styling hair… don’t be a dick about it. Encourage them to get into it if they seem interested, and even offer to help. Are you worried they are going to get better than you or they will make your hobby less elite? If they surpass you, they will just bring you along for the ride and you will get better too. If you are into it because it’s elite than you are in it for the wrong reasons anyway. Go back to listening to Bjork or something.

Regardless of my envy, I am pretty excited to share my knowledge with someone and be able to just truly nerd out. He wants me to help him brew his first batch with him, and give him a list of what to buy ahead of time so he is prepared. My goal is to keep things as simple as possible, while still stressing the importance of yeast preparation and fermentation control. The rest is easy stuff.

A couple weeks ago I picked up my Les Paul and started playing some of my usual metal on it. I hadn’t really picked up my Les Paul in months but I noticed that it just felt better than my ESP. I could move around more quickly and cleanly, the bridge just felt more natural and everything just really came together.

I knew all this, that’s why I bought the guitar.

But it surprised me how I liked it more (for even metal) than the ESP which is a more expensive guitar, and more designed specifically for metal. I knew then and there what I didn’t want to admit to myself before. The ESP had to go. I sold it pretty quickly and went on a search for a new guitar. I found myself not really interested in a metal guitar, even though I still play that style quite a bit. I wanted something classic, that I could play blues, rock or even folk music on.

Enter the Epiphone Casino. The guitar pictured above is the exact one I ended up with. It has it’s limitations. It produces some pretty brutal feedback when using a lot of distortion. And good luck comfortably playing up on the 20th – 22nd frets. But it sounds bad ass with some blues or rock tone, and the clears are leaps and bounds above the Les Paul and of course the ESP.

I can keep playing metal on the Les Paul for a bit but I think I might start playing more blues, funk, rock and stuff.

That is my story.

My favorite beer right now is Central City’s Red Racer IPA. This beer is just the perfect IPA. It has a perfectly balanced malty body with fruity hop aromas and flavors, sans any lingering hop bitterness. At 6.5% and with more subdued hop aromas this is not a double IPA, and it keeps to the West Coast style. I also love that it comes in cans! A 6 pack for $16.50 is a pretty good price considering it’s a top level craft brew. I highly recommend this beer. 9/10.

In other beer news, I have recently received/created a “fermentation chamber”, which is really just an old deep freeze with a temperature controller on it. I purchased the temperature controller from ebay, and had to wire it up myself. In simple terms, you set the desired temperature, which a temperature probe monitors, and it will turn on and off your freezer as well as a heating source inside the freezer to maintain that exact temperature. I might make a post later on how I did this. Huge props go to my friend Mat for hooking me up with his old freezer, which will soon be blanketed with magnetized bottle caps.

To test my new ‘fermentation chamber’ I am going to be brewing a classic American Pale Ale this weekend. This is a really basic beer, with one hop and 2 grains. Since it’s such a basic beer with subdued flavours, it’s actually one of the harder styles to brew well. I’d say it’s my own recipe, but that would be like saying you cooked a steak from your own recipe. It’s pretty much the same ingredients for everyone, although people might switch up the spices (aka hops). The more important part of cooking the steak is the process.

Over and Out.