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<em>This post is the first in a series here at TDT celebrating St. Patrick's Day, one of Tulsa's very favorite holidays. Erin go Bragh!</em>

In case you can't tell by the endcaps at your local big box store, which are no doubt filled with all things leprechaun and shamrocks and lucky this-and-thats by now, St. Patrick's Day is coming.

And you know what that means: Beer is about to happen. Lots and lots of beer.

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With the passing of each St. Pat's, more and more beer drinkers are opting for craft-style beers over the ol'-reliable, mass-produced varieties. Hand in hand with that has come beer lovers who are enthusiastic about learning how what is probably the world's oldest alcoholic beverage is made, and they're making beer of their own by the gallon at home.

When it comes to figuring out how to put a beer together, we Tulsans are lucky. On the southwest corner of the 71st Street and Memorial Drive intersection is <a href="http://www.highgravitybrew.com/">High Gravity</a>, a homebrewing and winemaking supply shop. The folks who own it, Dave and Desiree Knott, host a free homebrewing workshop at the store each month.

A group of friends and I went to one a couple of weeks ago, and here's what we learned: Whipping up a batch of homebrewed beer is a pretty easy process. The only tricky part? Waiting until the beer reaches drinkable perfection.

So if you can boil water, and if you can sit around and delay gratification for long periods of time, you can make beer.

Empowering, isn't it?
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The first step in making a batch of beer, then, is that whole boiling-of-the-water thing I just mentioned.
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Next comes the malt, or grain (usually barley) which has been sprouted and then halted by heating in a kiln. This is the stuff that provides the fermentable sugars and body of beer, both of which are pretty awesome things.

Steeping the malt in the boiling water for an hour or so is what converts the starch into fermentable sugars. This step is called mashing.

By the way, malt can be purchased as a liquid extract, and in powder form, too. What you see used below is the liquid malt extract; above, actual grain, because Dave is a certifiable bad ass.

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And then there are hops. Let's not forget about those.

Know what a hop looks like?

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Kinda like that. They're these beautiful little cone flowers from the hop plant that add that lovely bitter taste for which beer is so widely known. Hops can also add citric and floral flavors to a beer, as well as a variety of aromas, just depending on the hops you decide to use.

For the record, I like hops. I like hops a lot.
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Something else cool about hops is that how they're used in beer is, as Dave at High Gravity put it, like building a good spaghetti sauce. Know how garlic or basil can taste vastly different in a spaghetti sauce depending on when you add it to the pot? With hops and beer, it's the same sort of thing. So, hops are added to beer in stages to sort of build the flavor profile of the finished product.

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After you bring that mixture to a rolling boil, cool it rapidly to about room temperature. Then, transfer the whole mess to a fermenting vessel. Which is, in the case of many homebrewers, a good, old-fashioned five-gallon bucket.

At this point, you've got a big, plastic bucket full of something called wort. While that sounds pretty gross, it's just a word that means unfermented beer.

Then, add yeast. This is when the magic happens.

I'll be frank: Yeast is the freak in the family of beer ingredients. I mean, it's a living, unicellular mico-organism that eats the sugar produced during the brewing process of your beer. It metabolizes those sugars into alcohol, carbon dioxide and a huge range of flavors, depending on which type you use. Another fun yeast fact: It multiplies by a type of asexual production called budding.

Yeah. You just got scienced. Yeast will do that to you.

You can add other ingredients to your beer, too - not fried chicken or Mike &amp; Ikes or anything like that, but within reason, there are still lots of options. It all depends on the type of brew you'd like to end up with.

Then comes the hard part: Waiting. It's time to let this bucket-o-ale ferment at room temperature for 7-10 days or so.

The process would be a bit different at this point if we were making a lager (another type of beer that's fermented differently than is ale), but rather than go into how so here at TDT, you can read more <a href="http://www.dougfishback.com/">here</a>.

After that first week you might opt to transfer the beer to a secondary vessel. This can help to clear the beer of yeast sediment and avoid any off-flavors that could happen should you decide to stick with using just one bucket.

Let the beer spend another week at least in this secondary vessel. After that you can move the beer to a bottling bucket. Add priming sugar (after yeast, this is a way of naturally carbonating the beer), bottle and leave at room temperature again for 7-10 days.
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Or? Drink.
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Hi, <a href="http://havesporkwilltravel.blogspot.com/">@travelingspork</a>!
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Actually, Dave at High Gravity said that it's best to wait for another few weeks before throwing a few of these babies back. The flavors and complexity of the beer can only improve for a good while at this point.

But, yeah right. We're amateurs. We can't wait. We just learned to make our own beer, for Pete's sake.
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See that face? That's the smile of someone who doesn't usually like beer finally tasting one that she likes.

Precious, isn't it?
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Want to learn more about the art of homebrewing? It'd be a good idea to check out a meeting of FOAM, or the <a href="http://www.alemakers.com/">Fellowship of Oklahoma Ale Makers</a>. They've had a thing about teaching others about how beer is made and promoting the art of homebrewing since 1984. If you're looking for some community instruction, with these folks would be a good place to find it.

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Their next meeting is Thursday, March 10, at 7:30 p.m. Find it at the Unitarian Church Log Cabin, at 8432 S. Sheridan Road here in Tulsa. The doors open at 7pm. The next meeting after that is April 1.

If you don't have time for a meeting, check out <a href="http://www.alemakers.com/">the FOAM website</a>. It's chock full of beer and beer making information in the form of forums, recipes, news, quotes, homebrewing links and more.

If you don't want to dip your toe that far into the vast pond that is homebrewing, you can always attend the free workshop at High Gravity. The next one's on Saturday, March 19, at 11 a.m.

Either way, when St. Patrick's Day rolls around, you'll have lots to talk about after those first few green beers. Like how certain specialty malts affect head structure. Or how many HBUs (Home Bittering Units) you like in a beer. Or, you know, the asexual nature of yeast. It's all fair game.

Because thanks to the folks at High Gravity and my rudimentary research, you now have a pretty good idea of how to make beer. And knowledge, my friends, is power.
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And refreshing.

Have you ever made your own beer? How would you describe the process? Most important, did you like the outcome?