What is up my people, how is it brewing? Hope ya’ll are doing great and brewing great beers easily while keeping the joys of home brewing with a kit alive and well.
Today I wanted to share with y’all about how learning to brew with a kit was and is like learning (or in my case) relearning to ride a skate board.
Skating
When I was younger, in my pre-teen and teenager years I loved to skate board. There was only one problem, I lived out in the country. This was not a problem in general because I loved where I grew up (at least until my emotional and rebellious late teen-age years where I swore I hated everything in my life (praise God that is over)) but living out in the country is a problem for someone who wanted to skate board all the time.
When you skate board you need concrete or pavement and out in the country all I had was a drive way. My drive way was flat with a little hill at the top. I could practice kick tricks ok but anything that had to do with grinding or stairs I had to wait to get a ride to a skate park (which never happened) or until the summer when I would go on vacation to the beach.
Ocean City Maryland is just as it sounds, it is a city on the Atlantic Ocean. It was and still is awesome!!!! This was the highlight of my skate boarding year. There was a bus I could take to the skate park, lots of street skating opportunity’s and just great and fun place to progress as a skateboarder in general. It didn’t matter how hot it was I was usually out there thrashing something somewhere. I can still remember those… cue the Boss, “talking bout the Glory days!” I can hear Bruce Springsteen now.
Brewing
Fast forward 15 years and here I was living out of the U.S. in a beach town. Now unlike Ocean City or really mostly any city in the U.S. the streets in the region and city of the country where I currently am living aren’t paved. They are more or less cobble stone brick type streets laid down on top of sand and inter connected. To say the least this place was not suitable for skating.
Not only was this not the best town for skateboarding (though up until recently I hadn’t been skating in a long time) but the beer here was not good. We love home-brewed, craft, imported, but most importantly GOOD beer here at Brew with Kits. The native beers here are not good by any stretch of the imagination. On top of the quality issue beer can be expensive (especially for the kind of beer you are buying) due to a ton of taxes placed upon it. I needed a solution, I … cue The Black Crowes “I need a REMEDY”.
Home brewing beer using kits was the answer to my problem. I thought why not try my hand at making my own beer to see how it compares to the crap beer here. Boy was I surprised!
Brewing is like skating in a way
I bought my first beer kit and with the help of a close friend who told me that it was possible to brew beer here at home using a kit in our muslim country I started my brewing journey. I was off to my proverbial drive way to learn how to make great beer at home using beer kit.
Home brewing beer is like any other hobby or past time. With any thing the more experience you gain by doing that hobby the better you will become at that hobby. In this way progression in that skill is made. Both Skate boarding and brewing your own beer by using a kit takes practice and repetition for you to progress in your ability to have a better end result.
Older and slower
Living in a foreign country in a city next to the Mediterranean Sea is awesome and it does reminds me in a lot of was of Ocean City. We are a tourist city on the water that is fun. We have a good bus system, and now a skate park. Since this new skate park has opened I have been going there and trying to re-learn how to skate.
Trying to relearn a lot of stuff that I once could do is incredible hard when you have aged a good 10 years since there last time you were consistently involved with that activity. While some of it has come right back other things I am trying to learn/ relearn with a much older, and slower body, haven’t come so easy. Don’t get me wrong I am not that out of shape its just skating is hard work and I have been feeling it.
Learning to ride my skate board on the half pipe has reminded me of learning to brew great beer. Falling and getting back up is the key to learning from your mistakes.
Mistakes
Unfortunately the more I skate the more I fall, and the more I fall the more I learn. It is the same with brewing. The more beer I brew the more I make mistakes. The more mistakes that I make the more I learn. These are not always massive mistakes that ruin my beer or anything but they do give me good data for the next time I brew.
I have been compiling this data in my BREW JOURNAL to use for a reference while brewing to produce a better beer. It is simple progression. Taking what I have learned and applying it to progress my skill level. Trying to learn something else every time I brew, is the same concept as trying to learn a new variant or trick every time I skate. This is the engine for progression.
Progression
As I have been relearning some moves at the skate park (and when i come home sore, battered and bruised) it has made me think of how skating and brewing are not that different. They both rely on the participants progression to learn and try new things. Yes I can brew good beer, just as I can skate and do some tricks, but I know that I can progress.
There are so many ways to become better at brewing beer. Learning more about and then experimenting with simple ingredients like hops, sugar, different yeasts can and will change the finial product of your beer (hopefully for the better). This is a super simple and practical way for me to progress my brewing skills just like practicing different grinds, slides, kick tricks, and vert tricks helps me to progress as a better skater. They both rely on progression to advance ones skills.
Start Small
As I age I have learn more and more that I need to start small. When you take a small piece at ta time and move on from there and repeat. After a whole you will have come a long way once you look back. I can remember when I started skating, I couldn’t do anything but I just kept working on an ollie and when from there. Soon after that I was jumping down steps and riding vert ramps.
I experienced the same sort of progression from humble beginnings with brewing. I had never brewed beer before but once I bought all my equipment and gave it a try I started tweaking small things to make my brewing process smoother and progress my brewing journey.
I can honestly say the same with how I started this blog. I would have never thought I could have created this, and sometimes I still feel super incompetent. I knew nothing when I started so I just took it piece by piece. Today I will learn this and after I learned it I would move on. When I get stuck I would just take it one small step at a time until I figure it out. Pro-gres-shi-yon baby!
you can skate it
Look brewing beer with a kit is like skate boarding in the sense it is not that hard but it takes time and practice to progress and that is super rewarding. If you are a skater you can relate it to this, drinking your own home-brewed beer is like landing a new trick or having a sweet run on the ramps. There is such a joy in tasting your progression and sharing it with other people. You can brew it, trust me. If you enjoy good tasting beer then give it a try. Check out this post on my brewing routine and remember that my brewing journey has been and still is progressing.