If you’re a fan of good beer, made with care and flavor, we’re awful glad to meet you.  I hope this site piques your interest and you give homebrewing a shot.  It’s not difficult, humans were brewing long before the wheel.  The flavor will make you kick yourself for the years you’ve wasted drinking watery swill from the big American breweries.  Homebrewing really separates the beer connoisseur from the beer consumer.

If you’re among the quality beer uninitiated, It’s not your fault.  As a Mississippian the cards are truly stacked against you.  Mississippi is the only state in the country that restricts the amount of alcohol by volume percentage in beer to 5.9%.  This restriction is supported with childish glee by the big breweries because it gives them a stranglehold on distribution in the state. The ABV cap keeps 90% of their beer competition out of Mississippi.  For more on this ongoing wrong please check out RaiseYourPints…they’re fighting to give you the liberty enjoyed by the rest of our nation.

Welcome to StarkvilleHomebrew!  Let’s make some beer.

A wort chiller is essential for successful homebrewing.  My chiller is an immersion design that is dropped right into the steaming hot wort.  It’s made of copper and has as connector at each end for water supply and drainage.  A chiller does a good job of taking the temperature of your wort down close to groundwater temps.  On it’s own it just isn’t fast enough.

My first batch of homebrew took and hour and a half to drop from over 200 degrees Fahrenheit at a full boil to a pitchable temp of 75 degrees Fahrenheit.  That was the most apprehensive ninety minutes I’ve had in a while.  With the drainage from my chiller just running into the yard I wasted a huge amount of water too.  That process had to be revamped.

After some research on the net I put together a system that uses a cooler full of ice water and an immersable sump pump to push freezing cold water through my chiller.  I run the drainage line back into the cooler and don’t waste any water either.  With this setup I can get my wort down to 75 degrees Fahrenheit in 24 minutes…result!  I highly recommend a cooling system like this to any homebrewer.

I had to buy this in Tennessee and smuggle it back across the state line.  The antiquated restrictions on beer in Mississippi are truly ridiculous.  You can find out more on the beers you’re missing and what you can do to change that at RaiseYourPints.

I’ve always wanted to make some but I never seemed to have the extra corn sugar or yeast on hand.  An order to Austin Homebrew remedied that and I mixed up my first jug of Apfelwein last week.  After working through four batches of homebrew mixing up a bottle of Apfelwein is just too easy.  Here’s the recipe:

What you’ll need

5 Gallons of preservative free Apple Juice – Preservatives will hamper the fermentation.
2 pounds of Dextrose (corn sugar) in 1 lb bags – An online homebrew shop like Austin Homebrew is your best bet.
1 packet Dry Montrachet Wine yeast – Again at Austin Homebrew.

Here are steps

1. Sanitize your jug or carboy (I use 6 gallon plastic Better Bottles) and big funnel.
2. Pour half of one gallon of juice in the carboy. Then add 1 pound of Dextrose to the half empty bottle of juice. Put the cap on and shake it up to dissolve the sugar.
3. Repeat step 2 with another gallon of apple juice and the other pound of Dextrose
4. Pour the half bottles of juice/dextrose into carboy
5. Pour the rest of the juice into the carboy saving about a quart
6. Sprinkle the yeast into the funnel then rinse with the rest of the juice so all the yeast is now in the carboy.
7. Attach your airlock and put the carboy in a dark place to ferment.

It’s best to let the Apfelwein stay in the carboy for three months before you bottle it.  After bottling the flavor will continue to develop as the months pass.  I’m aiming for opening my first bottle six months from now.  I’m sure one or two will be sampled long before that though.

I sit at the bar in the The Grill in the heart of Starkville’s Cotton District .  The Cotton District is positively aglow with shiny red open signs.  To find so many restaurants to choose from open on a Sunday seems odd.  What is earth shatteringly different is that I have a refreshing Tanqueray and Tonic in my hand.

This is Sunday…this town should be in full Baptist enforced lockdown.  Starkville has been a town governed by prohibition era “Blue Laws” for the better part of a century.  Recently those old laws have started to change though. 

In a move that has been attributed to both the poor economy and the steady passing of the older political guard Starkville recently legalized the sale of beer, liquor, and wine on Sundays.  There are quite a few folks out testing the waters on this first “wet” Sunday since the incorporation of the town.  Like many others I was slightly apprehensive about flaunting my progressive nature by sipping the Devil’s nectar on a Sunday.  I expected rows of protestors fresh from the pulpit and dressed in there Sunday finest ready to call me out as a heathen and threatening to make my act of immorality known about town.

The mood around Starkville’s downtown is actually quite sunny for such a rainy day.  The various restaurants could even be described as bustling with new Sunday business.  Every once and awhile I take a look around this town and smile when it gets something right…I’m wearing a big toothy grin today.

I purchased my brewkit two weeks ago from Williams Brewing.  As I complete my second boil and prepare it for the fermentor I think I made a pretty good choice.

It seems like every online brewing supply outfit has put together an all in one brewkit.  Some kits are more complete than others.  The Complete Home Brewery from Williams had everything I needed to get going. 

One of the main items missing from most kits is the brew pot.  The pot is the heart of the brewing process and if you’re going to attempt to boil wort in your spaghetti pot on an electric stove you might as well forget it.  Recipe kits are usually designed to produce 5 gallons of beer.  You need hardware that can accommodate that volume with room to spare to prevent boil-over.  The Williams kit comes with a big 7 gallon pot.  This pot even comes with a spigot to help move the wort to your fermentor.

Another great part of this kit is the included copper immersible wort chiller.  Cooling the wort from a full boil to an acceptable temperature for pitching your yeast is the most hazardous part of the brewing process.  The longer your beer sits exposed to the environment once it’s temperature starts to fall the more danger of the wort picking up an infection.  Running water through your garden hose and into the copper coils of the chiller can cut your cooling time from an hour or more to less than 30 minutes.

Also included in the kit are all the testing equipment and accessories you’ll need.  A long steel thermometer, hydrometer, spoon, airlock, and racking lines are all in the box.  All the ingredients for a 5 gallon batch are there as well.  I chose the India Pale Ale kit.

I can already see where some slight upgrades could improve my brewing process, but all the basics are there and I can see most of the kit getting years worth of use.

Beer brewed with love, care, and quality ingredients is tough for the average Mississippian to find. Thankfully home brewing is a legal option for beer connoisseurs in our state. I’ve just taken up this hobby and I’m discovering how easy it can be to create my own truly incredible homebrew. I know there are others in the Starkville area who appreciate good beer. My hope is that we can find each other and build a local culture of home brewing together.

I’ve got my brew gear all set up and I’m ready to brew.  Here we go!