Homebrew Rivalry
My identical twin brother, Jay, and I have been rivals since we were young; from sports to school to girlfriends, and even barbecue’n. There was this one time when we were both into grilling ribs and each of us thought that we had the best ribs on the planet. After a long night of “sampling” we got on the subject of bbq’n and the argument got heated. So we decided to have a “rib off” that our entire family would judge to decide once and for all who was the grill master. Because this argument almost erupted into a fistfight we decided that the loser of the competition would be banned from cooking anything on the grill for the rest of their life. This bet has not taken place yet, but I have to admit that I might have bitten off more than I can chew.
As you can see, my brother and I have always been very competitive, but when we both got into homebrewing the competition really picked up a notch and sometimes things could boil over.
It all started seven years ago when I was surfing the Internet. Back then I was notorious for having a few cheap, American lagers and then buying crap I didn’t need like the Perfect Pancake® maker and the Slap Chop. I even bought a Cherokee tomahawk (I watched the movie The Patriot so many times that I decided I needed one). The tomahawk is currently collecting dust in my man cave where it has sat, unused, since its purchase. Anyway, one night I was in the mood to buy something and I stumbled upon a Mr. Beer kit. It made my computer screen glow and not just an ordinary glow but a mesmerizing, “buy me, you will never regret it” kind of glow. So I did.
I got the kit and tried a couple of batches that tasted like bacteria-infested pond water. However, my brother, who I was living with at the time, saw what I was trying to do and decided he wanted to take a stab at it. We brewed a few batches together that turned out much better but heads collided too many times and we decided to go our separate brewing ways. And so, the homebrew competition among us began.
After a short time brewing extract batches Jay went to a 3-gallon (12-L) all-grain system, I topped that with a 5-gallon (19-L) all-grain system. He would brew beers that were between 5-7% ABV, I would make my beers well above 11%. He went from bottles to kegs and I did the same.
For a long time we brewed separately and when we met up would discuss how each of our own beers were better then the other person’s.
Eventually the time came to reunite as brewing partners once again as we planned to brew a collaborative Easter beer for our family. When we came together to brew this beer, the brew day was angry and got heated on many occasions.
We brewed “He who has Risen Rye Lager,” brewed with Holy Water but the day almost turned out like Cain and Abel. As we brewed we sampled many different brews and voices were raised and pushing and shoving took place. However, by the end of the brew we realized something. We realized that we were both very passionate about brewing beer and demanded perfection. When Easter came around we tried our collaboration creation and it tasted heavenly! I believe this is because of the secret ingredient that we added (besides Holy Water) . . . Rivalry!
