Making our own beer in New Jersey: the Brewer’s Apprentice

Jim’s love of home-brewing beer is contagious (in a positive sense)! It was first transmitted to me two months ago when I joined Jim on a one day mashing course at the Home Brew shop in Aldershot, England. After the course, I began to play a much larger role in our home-brewing operation and only when I heard myself say words like wort, sparge, and carboy did I finally accept the truth that I was actually turning into a home-brewer. Recently, however, it spread even further out into the family and my father-in-law Dave now seems to have caught the home brew bug.

While we were back in the United States for a short visit and without home-brew equipment, Dave picked a great alternative way to home brew.  He booked us a Saturday appointment for us at the Brewer’s Apprentice, New Jersey’s only “brew on premises” business that lets you make your own beer, bottle it a few weeks later, and bring all that beer (approximately 6 cases) back home at the end.

Jim and I with my father-in-law at the Brewer’s Apprentice

Beer recipe books

Upon arrival, the first key activity was to select the type of beer we’d brew.

A large array of choices, the beer recipes were divided among ales, lagers, belgians, stouts, porters, hefeweizens & meads.

We decided to go all out in both alcohol content (expected 8%) and flavor when we chose the hoppiest (bitter), double IPA beer recipes we could find, a replication of Russian River’s Pliny the Elder beer.

The next step was to obtain and measure out all our ingredients. Brewer’s Apprentice uses an extract brewing process, so the first ingredients are a combination of grains and malt extracts. Our recipe called for CaraPils and Crystal grains along with some dextrose, pale malt, and 9 pounds of light DME (dry malt extract).

A home brewer’s dream; lots of hops!

The grains were placed in a basket and began to steep at 170 degrees F while we set off to measure the hops.  The atmosphere sort of reminds me of working on a chemistry experiment in a high school science lab. There are different scales to measure the hops and the grains, and equally a variety of buckets, bowls and measuring cups. One wrong scale reading could throw off your entire final product. As a teenager I remember what an intimidating experience it was for my non-science thinking brain to work the scales in those classroom labs. Luckily, at Brewer’s Apprentice there were many experts on site who confirmed we were doing everything right – we had some great help from the employees/brewers Dave and Jay.

my father-in-law and I measuring out the hops

The boil process is always fun to watch.  The strong aroma from the kettle reminds you that you actually are making a quality product and a nice sized quantity as well – 15 gallons of beer.

Jim and his dad Dave inspecting the boil

Throughout the boil we added in hops including Columbus, Centennial and Simcoe varieties to add both flavor and smell. In brewer’s terms throughout the process you add bittering hops (put in at the start of the boil), finishing hops (the last 10 minutes), flame-out hops (at the end after you turn off the heat), and dry hops (put into a bag like a teabag and added to the beer after the wort has chilled to help increase the flavor and smell of the final product).

In home-brewing, one of the worst parts of the job is the clean-up, which is usually a very time-consuming and tedious process. But at Brewer’s Apprentice, the clean-up is the responsibility of the employees. A huge bonus for the customers, which I’m sure other home brewers can fully appreciate.

All in all, we spent about three hours at the Brewer’s Apprentice facility, a perfect way to spend a rainy day in New Jersey.

In two weeks, Dave will return to bottle the beer and then get the rewards – a trunk full of beer to take home with him. Hopefully there’ll be a few bottles remaining for us to enjoy in six months time when we move back to the USA!