DIY Beer

The boys bottling and capping.

It's never too early in the week to turn your thoughts back to beer. Stephanie thoroughly covered mass-produced cheap beer, and my intention was to counterpoint with some quality local microbrews. Unfortunately, quality local microbrews are in short supply around here. There are a handful of big steaky restaurants that sell their own beers, and those beers may be good, but those places are not. At least, they aren't my idea of small, local, comfortable, fun, delicious, or alterna-anything. And call me a snob (really, go ahead) but I'd just rather not hang with Spy Museum overflow tourists, or the army of scrubbed professionals at Gordon Biersch, Cap City the ChopHouse, or Rock Bottom. I've heard some good things about Convention Center-area Old Dominion Brewhouse, (20 plasma screens?) but have never been. Franklin's is a neat and quirky place, but it's up in Hyattsville, and I'm not married with a toddler yet. There's always the good old Brickskeller for the armchair-traveling beer aficionado. But as far as walking into a sweet little brewpub, or a corner store that carries local small batch or handcrafted beers, we're strangely bereft here in DC.

Happily, where there's a will there's a way, and even here in the shallow South you can find some Yankee ingenuity. And do you know what's ingenious? Making your own damn beer.

Northern Brewer basic starter kit

Last year one of my housemates decided to take the plunge, and since then a few of us have followed along, purchasing beginner's kits from Northern Brewer. Unless you screw up, the finished product tastes like an actual good beer, the process is fun, and reusing bottles means your drinking problem has an eco-component. The basic equipment you need — fermenting and bottling buckets, tubing, bottle filler, brush and capper, caps, sanitizer, hydrometer and instructions — sets you back $75. Another $20-$30 gets you your beer kit, which you choose from a variety of styles including ales, lagers, porters, stouts, wheat beers, IPAs, Belgian, nut browns, and just about anything you can ever remember drinking. You and your friends provide the bottles, muscles, water and brains. Brew it up, and after a short two-month gestation, you get to birth your first-born beer. Name it wisely!

Two cases should be enough to share.