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I was super excited about this beer. I love ESBs. I’ve been learning a lot working at a local brewery every Monday. I incorporated some of what I’ve been learning into my brew day. I created my own recipe from scratch. And did I mention how much I love ESBs?

Before I get to the reason this brew turned out to be extra sad let’s go through the exciting new stuff.

I finally created a recipe from scratch. I looked through common grains and hops used in ESBs, decided on a flavor profile that I would like, and calculated out grain and hop quantities based on what I was going for.

During one of the Mondays I was at the brewery the head brewer expressed complete bewilderment at the fact that another local brewery didn’t keep notes of their brew days. Since I’ve never kept notes either, my immediate response was “what should they be keeping notes on?” to which the entire brewing team responded in unison “EVERYTHING!”

Long story short, I kept notes of everything during my brew day too.

My brew day seemed to go amazingly well. I hit my gravities, monitored temperatures closely, was more efficient than expected, and there were no big disasters. I was done faster than anticipated and I had a vigorous fermentation going in less than 4 hours.

Bottling day is where things went off the rails...I got frustrated with the aroma of my beer, decided it was infected. Threw a temper tantrum and dumped everything but my gravity reading out. True story.

On a side note...the small quantity I saved for the final gravity reading tasted and smelled fine. Needless to say, I regret my decision.

What was notable about this brew session?
* I created my own recipe with targets for efficiency and gravity readings.
* I monitored temperatures of my mash and sparge very closely. We’ve talked a lot about short chain and long chain sugars at the brewery and I’ve tried to incorporate that knowledge into my brews.
* I was more efficient than I expected to be and came very close to my desired gravity readings.
* The wort smelled and tasted great going into the fermenter.
* My yeast starter looked fucking bad ass before pitching it. Look at this shit.

What pleasantly surprised me?
* Did I mention I exceeded my anticipated efficiency?

Why can’t I officially call this my first good batch of beer?
* I dumped it out in a frenzy of disappointment and rage.

So, what caused my moment of insanity? It’s safe to say that I’ve been feeling some pressure to figure out my “plan” for the rest of my life. I recently quit my career to be a stay at home dad, and most of my friends seem to think I’ve full on lost my mind. Conversations about it tend to go into a spiral of me not having any satisfactory answers, facial expressions of condescending sympathy, and internal feelings of frustrating inadequacy.

Anyway, it’s gotten to me and I’ve definitely felt a need to be using my time to work towards the “next thing” -- and have been a little comically obsessive about getting good at brewing quickly. Stupid right?

Worrying about the “next thing” is taking the joy out of a hobby for me and so I’m officially declaring that I’m a former regimented and ambitious tech startup dude. I had a son and didn’t like barely seeing him. I blew everything up and became a stay at home dad with no further plan. And all of that is ok exactly as is.

I like brewing. I like getting better at brewing. And I like writing about getting better at brewing. This is supposed to be fun and I’m going to keep it that way. I’ll make the ESB again soon and report back to you.