When I was a kid, that meant something other than beer.  In the past few years, though, I've been privileged to taste several top-notch (and a handful of not-quite-ready-for-primetime) home-brewed beers.  Once in Nashville, I listened to a fellow minister describe in painstaking detail his brewing process for several of the eight or so samples he had brought for us to taste.  This guy sounded like a chemist, but his beers (all of them) were awesome.  I had been thinking about getting into some home-brewing, but came away totally intimidated.  If that's what it takes to do a good beer, I thought, my ADD-type, creative-thinking, no attention-to-detail personality offers no hope!

This past weekend changed that.  A friend whose very solid brown ale I tasted a couple of years ago invited a couple of us to come over and watch as he put together a batch of blonde ale. Right off the bat he insisted we have a beer and not worry - "Worry makes for bad beer," he said, quoting the adage of many home-brewers.  To make a short story even shorter, the whole thing took a couple of hours (and without us asking so many questions, he could've gone a lot faster!).  He insisted that even if you cook a little too long, add ingredients at the wrong time or in the wrong amounts, or neglect to bottle for a few extra days, you will likely still get a good drinkable beer.

So now to compliment the inspiration I've had from watching "Brewmasters" (man, those Dogfish Head guys know what they're doing!!), I've had a great down-to-earth introduction to brewing

I'll keep you posted on how/when it goes!