Man Cannot Make Wine Alone

Much can be said for making wine, but instant gratification isn't at the top of the upside list. You're looking at a minimum of four to six months from fermentation bottle, then another six months, if not a year, to be able to drink the stuff. Sure, it's rewarding just making something, but it's also rewarding to have a drink.  

Beer offers both the chance to make something yourself and a relatively short gestation process. I started my Riwaka Red from Austin Homebrew on September 12th. I'll bottle this weekend, and it'll be as ready as it ever will be in three weeks. 

The process of making beer up front is marginally more complicated than making wine. It requires boiling the ingredients and babysitting the whole operation...all in all, it took about four and a half hours from when I started up the process to the time I put the wort (the must of the beer world) in the primary fermentor and added the yeast. 

Despite the fermentation taking almost 36 hours to start up, the process has been a good one. At first racking, the beer threw off a good inch of really smelly sludge, and its currently sitting on half an inch more. I'm very interested to see how it tastes...hopefully you'll all be enjoying the ale at my birthday next month, at least to my face.

Like wines, beer needs a good label. I found a site with a lot of really nicely designed pre-made labels, and decided to pony up. At myownlabels.com, you customize what you want the template to say, they print and send,  and wham, nice custom labels. 

Naming the beer was just as important. Huevos Caballos is the name of the wine making operation, so I wouldn't feel right naming the beer the same thing. I wanted something that said "Horse Balls" without being too "on-the-nose," and from thence Bullock's was born. Named equally after Seth Bullock from Deadwood and "Bollocks," I think we hit the sweet spot. 

More to come on Bullock's Red Ale and whatever beer I make next...leaning toward an IPA or lager.

"If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose."

-Jack Handy