Beer guys brew up fun on campus

March 12, 2009 by Jesse Dabney 

UNLV became home to more than just budget cuts and a tragically mediocre basketball team Saturday as the Banfi Kitchen in the Beam Hall was transformed into a brewery for the Southern Nevada Ale Fermenters Union’s Home-Brewing Beer Expo.

SNAFU is an organization of approximately 40 local home brewers who gather to share their love of making and drinking beer.

“We promote the techniques, requirements and art of brewing to those who want to brew,” SNAFU treasurer Jon Antonson said.

Beer brewing involves the conversion of starch into sugar and the subsequent utilization of those sugars in the yeast fermentation pathway. Fortunately, the process is not as intimidating as it sounds.
“If you can boil water, you can brew beer,” Antonson said.

SNAFU members demonstrated Saturday the idea that anybody who can boil water, pour malt and read a thermometer can, indeed, brew beer.

The process begins with the heating of water to a temperature between 133 and 165 degrees  fahrenheit.
The malt must be milled (cracked) to allow access to important starches and enzymes. The malt is then added to the water and steeped for usually an hour. This marks an important step in brewing; the conversion of starch to fermentable sugars by hard working enzymes.

What do you do while this is going on? Drink beer of course! The hour-long steeping time offers a perfect opportunity for the home brewers to showcase their latest batches.

Justin Reisetter works for a local electrical contractor. In his spare time, he brews beer.

“I just really like beer,” he said about getting into brewing.

He now brews six to seven batches a year.

Saturday, he had something quite novel to offer – Bourbon Barrel Porter. For the beer lover, it tastes delicious. For the bourbon lover, it tastes deliciously like bourbon.

“It has about 16 ounces of Maker’s Mark per five gallons,” said Reisetter. He also brought a bottle of his Cherry Stout, which he apologized for unnecessarily in advance.

“I just experiment around, see what I come up with,” he said. Reisetter is considering entering his Bourbon Barrel Porter in an upcoming beer-tasting event.

Once the malt has been steeped for an hour, it must be separated from the now sugar-infused water, called the wort. The wort will eventually become what the industry calls beer. First, though, the separated wort must be boiled, at which point the hops can be added.

Hops, it turns out, are closely related to cannabis, which explains beer’s muscle relaxing characteristic. Once the hops have been removed, the wort must be cooled so that the yeast can be added.

Yeast is responsible for fermentation–the conversion of sugar into ethanol and carbon dioxide.
After a week or two of fermentation, the brewing process is complete and your beer is ready for consumption.

What is it about beer that attracts such a devoted following?

It is more complex than wine, and it is far more accessible. It seems that the more devoted you become to beer, the further you delve into its intellectual aspects.

“You don’t need to go to school,” said Jon Griffen, SNAFU member, former brew master and current UNLV instructor.

“You can brew and learn physics, math, chemistry and biology.”

Indeed, brewing is the perfect utilization of scientific knowledge.

ON THE WEB:
SNAFU: nevadabrew.com