June 12th, 2006 | 
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Summer’s here (sorta) and it occured to me yesterday that I didn’t have any beer brewing! Horrors! How will we celebrate a good day of concrete pouring and nail banging without beer? A summer construction project without beer is … a union job! AUGH!
Off to Homecraft I went tonight and picked up a Brew House premium Red Ale kit. $28 and in three weeks, I’ll have about 60 bottles carbonating in my cellar. It’s the first time I’ve made the jump to a premium kit, so it will be interesting to see how much a difference it makes. Right away, you notice one difference whem making it: no sticky malt syrup concentrate, no boiling water, no adding dextrose. It’s 15 litres of pre-mixed wort in one of those bag-in-box deals. Just one packet into the primary, add 8 litres of water, add the wort, stir, sprinkle the yeast, cover and come back in 3-5 days and rack it.
I’ve been making wine from various levels of kits (and some from grapes grown in my backyard for five years) and the process is very similar: liquid in the bucket, pitch the yeast, watch the bubbles, rack it, bottle it, drink it. Later on I’m toying with the idea of making a batch of Free Beer 3.0 We’ll see. I’m not sure about beer with guarana.
The drawback? The stuff won’t be approaching drinkable until mid-july and won’t peak until the first week of August when we’re roofing. Although, I suppose that’s just when we’ll need to kick back. That and the pouring carefully so you don’t get a mouthful of yeast lees. 
At 46¢ for a bottle of flavourful beer with no preservatives and no tax, I can put up with a lot.
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Don’t do it. That would be one awful beer, Gordo – any beer getting Boing Boing approval based on a wrongheaded copyright should not be your first introduction to mash brewing. I am a lapsed part-mash homebrewer so when we get settled in the homestead mid-summer maybe we can set up a brewing group if you would be interested.
You legal-beagles are so threatened by copyleft and offended by BoingBoing that you’d dismiss a beer recipe based on where I found out about it?
Sheesh, Alan. Give me a break. Next thing you’re going to tell me is that you agree with that Wikipedia thief Captain Copyright. Double sheesh.
Listen, I’ve made sherry, so there’s nothing in the full-mash brew process that intimidates me. The only thing that’s stopping me from malting my own grains is my wife and her bionic sniffer.
No – there is no copyright in instructions at all. Boing and the others just have it dead wrong. You can’t have a open source license to something that can’t be licensed: http://beerblog.genx40.com/archives/2005/january/freebeer
I would like to point out that I was actually quoted in the New York Times on this very point exactly a year ago so I am my own authority: http://www.genx40.com/archives/2005/june/notthecoverof
Boing is so utterly wrong on its understanding of intellectual property law as to be an embarrassment. No wonder Doctorow specializes in science fiction. Notice that he constantly misquotes even Michael Geist. I do, though, think Captain Copyright is both lame and a waste of public money.
Real ale from mash is like fresh home baked bread. Grainy. I am interested in brewing some strong styles (Belgians) but do not want the volume of ale in the house so would welcome an accomplice.
Works for me, establishment-man. Grainy is good. Just leave OSS out of it.
Beer is all OSS. That is the beauty.