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Two Dozen Reasons To
Brew Beer Oneself.
"If you have a friend,
then give him a beer.
If you really love him,
then teach him to brew."
1.
Try it out! Brewing beer is simply fun! Beer is a
happy drink. Brewing is an expression of optimism
and joie de vivre. Beer is always associated with
strength and activity. The same is true of
brewing.
2.
Brewing beer brings peace of mind and
acknowledgement of one's achievements. Brewing is
not commensurate with a hectic life. Brewers are
at peace with themselves. Enjoy stirring the
mash, listening to the wort bubble, experience
that exciting aroma of the hops, and smelling the
young beer. Brewing demands concentration and
therefore leads one to shut out the daily hum
drum, and brings recovery from stress. Beer is
not just good against thirst. It represents an
excellent means of separating oneself from the
one's daily troubles. Brewing offers an excellent
opportunity to peacefully withdraw, alone or with
friends. One says, "he who drinks (or brews)
beer once a week, in a circle of friends, will
never need a psychiatrist".
3.
The enjoyment of beer is associated with good
company. Friends will come round especially for
Homebrewed beer and will want to talk shop with
you. Many will want to try out brewing for
themselves. Brewing takes time and this time can
be used for discussions among your friends.
Whether House- or Homebrewer, you will find
people with the same interest, throughout the
world, and, as we know from our own experience,
Contacts will germinate into friendships. Brewing
is also a hobby for groups, for friends, for
teams, for clubs, and for regulars at your table
in your favourite bar. It's good to brew as a
small team and this team need not only be made up
of men! From the very
beginning of beer production, brewing was women's
work, and a woman, who could brew good beer, was
acknowledged and respected.
4.
If you enjoy working with your hands, you'll
enjoy the demands brewing makes of you. Dealing
with natural materials, weighing and measuring,
trying things out, transferring liquid from one
vessel to another and filling it into bottles or
kegs, setting your brewing parameters and testing
the conditions, designing and producing labels
and using your elegant BRAXONIA, demands skill
and the proof will be in your product. If you
like developing your own ideas, then brewing
offers you enormous scope.
5.
Brewing beer is exciting. It takes at least two
weeks to turn the thick hot mash into a beautiful
cool beer. Waiting for the first taste is
difficult. But only that first sip can reveal if
all the things that the recipe promised, have
actually come to pass. Is the taste right? Have
those tiny microbiological mates in the mash tun
and fermentation vat been correctly
motivated? Have we been able to move another step
forward on the path to becoming a complete
brewer?
6.
Homebrewing is a hobby with a visible and usable
result. If the beer tastes good, then the brewer
feels his craft to have been acknowledged and
tries to do even better. If it doesn't reach his
expectations then he automatically has
a new aim. He who brews stays active. Brewing
sharpens the senses and beer is no longer just
beer to a brewer. Nose, taste buds and eyes are
trained and schooled in the Homebrewer. Part of
the learning process is the discovery that beer
has no apology to make to wine. Brewers are soon
trying to brew the best beer ever. To what extent
this aim has been achieved can be measured in
contests with other Homebrewers. A prize in an
international contest is one of
the dreamt of great moments in the life of an
experienced hobby-brewer. Brewing is actually
quite simple, but to brew the best of beers
demands learning and knowledge. The spiritual
demands on the brewer, who wants the highest
quality beer, are by no means small, but although
the brewer who is dedicated to his studies will
never know everything there is to know, his brain
will stay active and he will stay eternally young
at heart.
7.
Beer is not only a historically, but also a
biologically most interesting material. The long
history of beer is full of adventure, anecdotes
and stories. The local history of beers has often
never been investigated. Beer history is cultural
history, a huge topic, there for us to discover
and to improve our knowledge and understanding.
8.
Brewing beer is a hobby without an end, an
eternal story. In Germany alone 4000 different
beers are made from the four raw materials
allowed by law (Reinheitsgebot). Having the
courage to stray from the legal definition in
order to brew international specialities or
historical beers, leaves the
brewer filled with awe and wonder at the taste of
such beers.
9.
Homebrewing is developing. National and
international assemblies are forming, which
produce magazines and disseminate information,
organize meetings and training days, as well as
international congresses and competitions. Such
meetings can be used to just bring similarly
minded people together for a relaxed chat,
usually about beer. All this carries Homebrewing
ever forward. The American Homebrewer's
Association has over 25000 members, the Verein
der Haus- und Hobbybrauer (VHD) is not yet that
far but is growing, just as others are too, in
Sweden, and the Netherlands where there are
strong Homebrew movements, and in Australia, New
Zealand and the UK where huge
amounts are home-brewed.
10.
Homebrewers are now on the Internet and well
represented in Online Services. If you enjoy such
connections then you can join one of the many
international Homebrew forums by using e-mail. A
question will elicit responses and tips from all
over the world. The Homebrewer will soon be able
to send his own news, take part in discussions,
pass on his recipes online or leave tips on the
pinboard. This is an international hobby which
will broaden horizons and begin to make the beer
drinker look far beyond his own beer mat.
11.
Brewing is a biological and completely natural
process. Technology merely offers biology the
optimum conditions for development and by
controlling the parameters, these living systems
are steered in the right direction. Brewers
concern themselves with life and they realise
that living systems can be influenced but not
controlled. Despite the perfection of our
technological control systems, every decoction
remains a little different. Brewing means
understanding living processes.
12.
Brewing does need technology. The BRAXONIA is a
small but complex piece of equipment, a
micro-factory. You don't need to understand it
from the inside and you will have fun brewing
good beer. If you were the sort of child whose
steam engine was his favourite toy, or if you can
still marvel at a steam locomotive, then you will
come to know and understand the technology that
sits inside BRAXONIA and it will become a
cherished toy for adults, just as your
steam engine used to be when you were a child.
13.
Your computer can help you brew if that is what
you want. If you like working with a computer
then connecting your PC to the BRAXONIA will open
up a whole new field of applications for the
power of your computer. Whether it is
as a recipe store, which with time, will become
an instruction manual for the system, or as an
aid to help regulate the brewing conditions, or
accessing world wide online discussions with
other Homebrewers, or maybe designing
bottle labels and prospectuses and printing
invitations to social gatherings to taste the
last extract, your PC will find applications.
Software freaks among Homebrewers can use
BRAXONIA as a complex technical piece of kit with
which they can test their skills. Measuring,
controlling and regulating a live reactive system
is a motivation to write the best program, use it
and swap it with others.
14.
Brewers have one problem fewer than others. They
will no longer have to crack their brains to find
a suitable present. A bottle of self-brewed beer
with a specially designed label for the recipient
and the occasion, whether a birthday, wedding or
christening, will always be fitting. For example,
a start can be made in making good a faux pas
with a "Penitence Beer". The birthday
of a friend of firm political persuasion can be
celebrated with a politically correctly coloured
red beer or maybe even a blue or green one! The
variety of the beer served can be governed by the
occasion and a special beer, just like its
brewer, will always be welcome.
15.
The brewer is never short of conversation.
Everyone likes talking about beer. If you don't
want to just boast about your heroic deeds at the
last booze-up, you'll be in demand to talk shop
as a Homebrewer. The Homebrewer has
a very special hobby. If he wants to he can put
on a show, if not, he can quietly enjoy himself
by holding his counsel.
16.
Beer is healthy. Brewers realise and value the
way beer supports a healthy diet. Beer contains
important vitamins and minerals. Beer doesn't
make one fat. Unfortunately it does improve the
appetite, and then... Cooking with beer
opens a broad spectrum of culinary opportunities
and the brewer who enjoys experimenting can use
the draff from the brewing process to cook with
or experiment with the exces yeast to start his
breakfast rolls.
17.
Jewellery is beautiful and the owner of a
BRAXONIA has another jewel at home which he will
admire with pride and delight and which he will
want to show off.
18.
If you concern yourself with beer and are also a
collector then a whole new sphere of activity
will open up before you. Old bottles, labels,
enamel advertising slogans, beautiful glasses,
mugs, recipes, beer mats... there are
no end of things. There are also such
specialities as collecting the yeast strain from
the beer you drank.
19.
Brewers save themselves tax. Even in Germany one
can brew 200 litres per worker in your
micro-brewery tax free. In many other countries
the state is happy to leave the Homebrewer
completely alone (and why not?)
20.
Pubs who want to offer their customers something
completely different should consider starting
their own micro-brewery. Hotels can offer brewing
courses to their guests, especially out of
season, in the same way as ever
more adult education institutes already do.
Brewshops will display the elegant BRAXONIA
Brew-Machine and hire it out. New business
opportunities will open up to the Homebrewer.
21.
Brewing is a hobby for men, men and women and
especially for women. Tea and cakes in the
afternoon is supposed to have its origins in the
need for brewesses to swap experiences. The first
ever women's Homebrew get-together
has yet to be realised. Brewing is a hobby for
women and men from ripe youth to active old age.
22.
It isn't just the solitary Homebrewer who can
experience the joy of brewing. All the pub
regulars can open up their own micro-brewery and
elect their master brewer from their number, who
will then take responsibility for
the next decoction. There can hardly be a way of
tasting beer that will be more fun, or elicit
greater discussion, than sampling self-brewed
beer.
23.
Sooner or later every active professional life
ends in retirement. The sudden reduction in
mental exertion, the loss of so many personal
connections, (maybe it will all be replaced by an
absence of intellectual activity), leave
many active people at a loss once they've enjoyed
those first few weeks of relaxation. They soon
start to seek a replacement. Brewing can fill the
vacuum. Brewing is an ideal hobby for the over
fifties and for the Limbos (as
the Americans refer their senior citizens who,
after a successful professional life, look
forward to an extended period of activity). And
if you are still abusy manager who hasn't yet
enough time to brew, then you can already make
your wife a gift of a BRAXONIA.
24.
Summary:
Homebrewers get more out of life.
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