Started at the end of 2011, The HBK (Home Brew Kimener) Beer Co-op is nothing more than an excuse for founder/brewer Tim Kimener to show off his affinity for making beer, and to get the people around him as excited about the process as he clearly is (just ask him a question about malted barley or IBU ratings and you'll see what I mean). His passion for brewing seems - at least to me, a largely uninitiated nonbrewer - to exceed that of a typical beer nerd or hobbyist DIY-guy...I have it on good authority that he harbors hopes of some day brewing beer professionally, and this wouldn't surprise anyone who has ever shared a pitcher of a good IPA with him.
"The whole idea is to get people into it," he says. "My Yoda passed knowledge on to me, and I want to pass what I know onto the HBK." (He's always saying shit like this.) "But it's fun, it's not too hard, and you get beer at the end of it. Why wouldn't people want to do it?" Plus, he says, the beer co-op will encourage him to research methods of making beer styles that he's never attempted before, and force him to innovate new techniques and broaden his horizons. "Then I can become a BEER MASTER!" (See what I mean? Always.)
"If people want to be a part of it, they have to help out with the batch." One of the requirements of membership in the co-op is that you help him out with some step of the weeks-long brewing process: help bottle the beer (save your bottles so he can re-use them!), provide ingredients (one member volunteered a pound of chocolate after suggesting that Tim brew a chocolate stout), or write a blog about the whole HBK concept (cough, cough). This plus a small membership fee to offset the cost of production makes you a bona fide HBK member. Your reward? A growler full of the finished product. Not to mention each member's right to choose a beer for the group (i.e. Tim) to brew.
The membership fee, for the time being at least, should not be viewed as a purchase price for beer. It's more a product of Tim's altruism and his lack of attention to mathematical detail where money is concerned. "It would be awesome if I were breaking even. I'm pretty sure I'm in the negative. But I don't care too much for now. I just want to get people into it." And that's why helping out with the brewing is the crucial part of membership: HBK is not a brewery, or a liquor store, or anything along those lines. It's a collective of people who are interested in making and sharing a product. If it ultimately ends up serving as a platform for a future brewery, then we'll all have had the pleasure of being a part of it from the beginning.
In the process of helping him make a beer, Tim hopes members will become inspired to take up the hobby for themselves, and use his counsel and advice to establish a strong start. And trust me, there's a lot of advice. Even asking him a three-word question (e.g., "What is 'sparging?'") will result in twenty minutes of unsolicited pointers on minutiae like heating temperatures, pouring techniques, and specific gravities.
So, that's sort of where I come in...with the three-word questions. Tim said he wanted to start a blog to follow the HBK Co-op, and I thought it would be a good chance for me to throw myself head-first into a new hobby...and not a fruitless hobby, either, but one that results in alcohol! Taking up the responsibility of the blog would mean that I would need to learn all the ins and outs of the process, to take detailed notes on his rambling about wort boil-overs and glass sterilization, and would therefore know my way around a...brewing...set-up...place. (See? I don't even know enough yet to finish that sentence smoothly.)
So, the goal of this blog is to follow each beer that Home Brew Kimener produces from its inception. With half-assed photography, and as much information about each step of the process as I'm able to retain from Tim's ramblings, I hope to post enough updates to guide people (myself included) in the brewing process. Conveniently, the next beer to be brewed, and the first to be blogged, is my pick. (Smoked porter? Alt? Scotch ale? Or maybe something with a weird ingredient...pistachios? Cardamom? Avocado?) So I'll get to see how Tim decides to go about meeting my weird demands. And my only contribution is to write about it. And photograph it. And be there for every step of the production of every beer so I can keep up with all of the important details. You know, easy stuff.
So, if you care, keep checking in here. Barring disaster (or disastrous laziness), we'll have plenty to talk about. And, provided I understand this blog platform as well as I think I do, we can all have an open discussion in the comment threads. (First suggestion for a comment topic: "Why the hell would Justin want an avocado beer?")
