What triggered your passion for home-brewing?

I knew some home-brewers growing up, but I wasnt able to start my adventure in brewing until I moved back to Illinois. I finally had some room to brew, plus room to tinker with equipment. I started with the most basic set: a large stainless-steel pot, a couple buckets, an ingredients kit (which is basically beer in a box), miscellaneous other pieces, and most important, a book.

What was the biggest challenge of home-brewing?

Definitely yeast culturing and propagation. Yeast requires the right mixture of nutrients, oxygen, and sanitation in order to perform optimally. All of which can be tricky on their own, let alone in conjunction with one another. Through friends, and a great set of circumstances, I came upon a rare strain of yeast from a lambic brewery in Belgium and decided to try to propagate it for future use, which resulted in growing approximately 0.5 milliliters of yeast into easily 200 milliliters of brewable yeast, which would be increased further before brewing.

The process first involved the creation of my Frankenstein stir plate. Commercial stir plate kits are available for around $100 to $200. I opted to make my own. Not because of the money, but because I enjoy having a hand in everything involved in my process.

It started with a plastic junction box. Add an industrial computer server fan, powerful magnets that I harvested from a couple of old hard drives, a variable resistance knob with various wires and resistors, and you get a stir plate box that is able to create a whirlpool in a whopping 5000-milliliter flask. With the power of that stir plate combined with a magnet covered in food-grade plastic, I was able to gradually step up the yeast cell count by introducing a sugar solution [and gradually increase] volume over the period of about a month.

Tell us more about your equipment.

Most of my equipment I acquired from Craigslist or a hardware store and then converted into a usable piece of brewing gear.

Aside from the stir plate I mentioned, I also built my own counterflow chiller from a 50-foot length of refrigerator tubing that I coiled around a home-brew bucket to maintain a controlled diameter. I then encased that coil in a coil of high-temperature garden hose. I added appropriate fittings to the ends of both systems to allow for a household hose hookup for the cold water, and a direct transfer from my boil kettle for the hot liquid coil. This system can cool 11 gallons of near-boiling liquid to room temperature in a little over five minutes.

I also created my own brewing kettles using converted 15.5-gallon [half-barrel] beer kegs. After cutting the tops off with an angle grinder, I drilled through the kegs for the appropriate fittings. Each kettle was completed for around $50.

Has your passion for experimenting had an impact on your recipes?

Definitely! My favorite recipe to-date has been a Belgian lambic. It is a rare style to find, let alone get correct when attempting to make on a small scale.

Lambic beers are, at their cores, sugar solutions that are allowed to spoil with natural yeast. A lambic beer from one area might be completely different than a lambic beer from another area due to the yeast. The beer I made using yeast I got from Belgium has been my favorite recipe because I never expected it to work, and it tasted so close to the real thing that it has become a staple of my portfolio.

What advice would you give new or less-experienced brewers?

Read, read, and read. There are amazing resources out there for you to expand your knowledge.

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