There is a farmer’s market in town that has a vendor who sells locally made Mead, a.k.a honey wine. I’ve sampled it a few times and was always tempted to purchase a bottle. Well I finally did and I just loved the stuff.

Mead is widely considered to be the world’s oldest fermented drink, and through archaeological evidence we can estimate that it was being created and enjoyed as far back as 7000 BC in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). It’s a very simple drink in it’s basic format: honey mixed with water, and fermented. Given that it is such an old drink there have been a huge amount of variants of mead, including a mixture of honey and maple syrup, mead with spices, mead with fruits, sack mead (more highly concentrated, stronger and sweeter mead), and a bunch more.

It was commonly referred to as the drink of Kings in the old days. Unfortunately from what I can find, it carries that sentiment in it’s price as well, as I cannot find a bottle cheaper than $20. For now this will remain an occasional treat although you can probably guess at this point that I am investigating the possibilities of making mead myself.

The day is almost here. The day I will be getting my hands on one of the most elusive and coveted beers in existence, Westvleteren 12.

Widely considered the best beer in the world (which I admit is a kind of ridiculous concept given how subjective that is), you can usually only get this beer directly from the Trappist abbey in Belgium. By law, the Abbey had dictated that their beer was not to be sold outside of the abbey.

Recently, the brewery has decided to build a new brewery for larger brewing capacity and as such, has made a one-time offer to various overseas markets to purchase their beer. I jumped on this of course, as it will be the one and only time that I will be able to purchase this legally in Canada!

A friend and I will be splitting the gift pack, which comes with 6 beers and 2 glasses. It costs $80, which may seem kind of crazy, but most beer nerds will not bat an eye at that price. I have seen Westy 12 at charity auctions before, and it is not unusual for a 4-pack to surpass $150.00. That’s 4 beer, no glassware.

I will get the beer on Friday. I plan on drinking one fairly quickly and posting a review. If the beer is as good as I hope, the review may be expletive. I don’t know how long I will save the other 2…

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.