I have brewed again.

I wanted to start with a simple ale, a lawnmower beer for the early spring weather, so I googled spring ale and clicked through the results until I found a recipe that was meant to be a clone of Anchor Steam beer.

I didn’t follow the recipe exactly. Why would I?

The recipe called for seven pounds of John Bull plain light malt extract. My local supplier doesn’t sell John Bull, so I ended up with nine pounds of Moulton’s plain light malt, a minor deviation as far as I’m concerned.

There were several diffrerent kinds of light crystal malt. I don’t have enough experience to know what the difference between them might be, so I grabbed the first one I saw and threw it in my shopping basket.

I found Northern Brewer hop pellets the recipe called for. They were a wimpy 8.6% alpha acid instead of the 11% that the recipe assumed I’d be able to get. Oh, well. The Cascade finishing hops were 6.2% instead of the 5.6% in the recipe, so I figured that would make up for it.

And then there was the yeast. The recipe said I should used a lager yeast. Thanks, that’s real specific. The eye-level shelf of the fridge had a box full of Wyeast 1056 American ale, so I grabbed that. Not the first time. The second time. I had to go back for it. “Back so soon?” the guy behind the counter asked, as I walked in the door. I answered, “If I buy a pile of malt, and I don’t get any yeast, you will not hurt my feelings if you suggest that I take some yeast home with me, too.” He smiled. “Fair enough.”

I brewed up the batch on the patio, throwing a fresh bag of hops into the mix every twenty minutes, then hauling the whole thing into the basement to rack it. The blow-off tube started blooping almost right away, so I must have done something right.

We bottle in about a week and a half. Watch this space.