Many things in this life bring me joy, but I do not count small talk among them. While I recognize that plenty of otherwise sane people enjoy the phatic speech that accompanies meet-and-greets, supermarket checkout lines, and sharing the same row in coach, these situations just make me tired. I will say, though, that small talk of the inter-human variety has become considerably easier since I started making my own beer. Almost everyone likes to talk about beer, even introverts and curmudgeons. And, when the topic arises, one of the most common questions is perhaps to be expected: “Is brewing difficult?”
There’s a lot of walking to and fro, I tell them, and you have to heave the occasional sack of grain. Sometimes there’s math. But generally, brewing is pretty simple. And backyard brewers, in particular, enjoy a huge advantage over the pros: You can afford to mess around with only minor consequences for messing up.
Take fresh hops. Hauling in the harvest on a hops farm and getting those freshies to your production brewery is hard work that requires machinery, light aircraft, and plenty of manual labor. You need a solid, predictable recipe in place for your one chance to get it right, or you’ll have to wait until next year to try again.