Hanszen Brews for Beer Bike

Beer Bike has pretty much everything a drinking Rice student could want: lots of free beer, lots of free food, a drunken water balloon fight, and a whole day to sleep off your hangover. For Hanszen senior Steve Rooke, freshman Sam Major, our RA Chris Revell, and me, this was not enough. We wanted to make our own stamp of Beer Bike 2008. We wanted to brew our own beer.

The two beers we will present on Saturday started as Stephen’s and my dream last semester. Our first batch, a Brown Ale dubbed the “Don’t Taze Me Brew!”, was brewed in the South Servery early on a Saturday morning at the beginning of the semester. And the second batch, an Irish Stout tentatively named “George Bush Doesn’t Like Dark Beers”, was brewed in Chris’ apartment with Sam’s help.

For you Owls out there who would also like to try your hand at brewing your own libation, it is not difficult as long as you follow the instructions. You can get all the ingredients and materials you need at DeFalco’s Home Wine & Beer Supplies (www.defalcos.com), along with a simple recipe to use for your first batch.

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From the editors:

Texas law generally allows for the production of up to 200 gallons of beer for personal consumption with no licensing requirements. Sounds like a good use for all that extra space in your quad. If you want to make more than that, you should probably contact the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Wouldn’t that make an awesome convenience store?

For more adventurous beer-lovers, here is an “open source” recipe, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license by the FREE BEER project.  You can find more information and recipes on their web site: www.freebeer.org

FREE BEER version 1.5

(codename: “Samvirke”)

Approximately 6% alcohol
Note: This recipe is better suited for home brewing

Recipe for 25 liters.

Ingredients:

3 kg pale malt extract

18 g Tettnanger bitter hops

15 g Hallertauer aroma hops

90g ground guaraná beans

One unit Safbrew T-58 yeast

1.2 kg brown sugar

Procedure:

Mix the malt extract, hops, sugar, and guaraná with approximately 20 L of water and simmer 60 min at boiling point.

After a cooling period, filter the mixture and pour into a sealed container.

Add yeast and leave sealed in the container at room temperature for approx. 2 weeks.

Once primary fermentation is over, transfer the mixture to a clean container.

When bottling, add 4g of sugar (dissolved in water) per liter beer and a bit of yeast from the bottom of the primary fermentation container.

Leave the beer in the bottle for secondary fermentation and carbonation another 8-10 days. You will then be able to enjoy a refreshing,  home-brewed FREE BEER.