Kerstin Egenhofer & Steve Hoeschele: Homemade Homebrewers
A figure walked down Railroad Street at 8:15 p.m., hunched over from the weight of an industrial-strength backpacking pack. Kerstin Egenhofer, a petite graduate student, carried 55 pounds of grain in the pack that made her look even smaller. Kerstin, 24, and her boyfriend Steve Hoeschele, 32, live together in a West Roxbury apartment where they spend their nights brewing and bottling their own beer.
In the last year and a half, Kerstin and Steve have studied, experimented, practiced and competed in the art of homebrewing. Their first brewing trials took them six hours, but they’ve perfected the process to about four hours and now find their beers winning awards and prizes—like the two 55-pound packs of the grain from the Boston Wort Processors homebrewing competition.
stakes than cooking dinner,” she said.
And no, they’re not just a pair of souses. Both attended UMass Amherst and had friends who brewed their own beer. At one point, Steve said, they decided, “we could do this.”
Homebrewing, minus the approximately $100 for a start-up kit of buckets, siphon hoses and bottling tools, saved money over time, Steve and Kerstin found.
“I’m cheap, if you haven’t figured it out,” Steve said while sanitizing a 5-gallon bucket. “At first it was kind of about the money, then I realized I can make beer that I can’t buy. Now it’s more about learning the craft,” he said.
The pair mostly brews ales, since lagers take longer to brew and require colder temperatures to ferment properly.
“It’s a very different experience than buying a twelve-pack,” Steve said. “But it’s not always more enjoyable,” he added with a laugh.
Kerstin and Steve experimented with some weird ingredients in the past.
“We got a little cocky with our fourth or fifth batch,” Kerstin said.
“We made granola bar ale with oats, nutty malts, raisins, honey, maple syrup, cocoa,” Steve said. But none of those flavors dominated the beer, it turned out, and the batch was flat.
They’ve found a way to deal with the weird batches, though.
“With beers we’re not happy with, we’ll mix one with the other,” Kerstin said, and added that the result was usually pleasing.
They bustled around the kitchen, sanitizing bottles and preparing malted sugar to add to the batch of beer they would bottle.
Steve transferred the beer from the fermenting drum to the 5-gallon bucket and hooked up a hose to the bucket tap. Kerstin added the sugar and Steve stirred.
“The yeast eats the sugar and converts it to CO2,” Steve said.
And using the malt sugar instead of regular sugar impacts the beer differently.
“It adds a little color and flavor,” Kerstin said. “You add it if you don’t just use the grain. It’s like a short cut,” she said.
The hose used for filling bottles had a spring-loaded end, so when it hit the bottom of the bottles, beer would run through the hose. Kerstin filled bottle after bottle and Steve used a clamp tool to secure crimped caps on their freshly bottled beer.
“Steve designs and does text for labels,” said Kerstin. “We would do every bottle for the first ones we did,” she added, while noting that the process grew tedious after a while. Now, Steve still makes a unique label for each brew, which they formally call “Cheeky Moniker Brewing,” but they don’t go through the process of labeling each bottle.
Whenever they bottle a batch, they fill a 64-ounce growler and set it aside. This comes in handy for visits with friends and makes for good gifts—provided it’s a good batch of beer, Steve said.
Through their homebrewing endeavors, Steve and Kerstin have tuned into the beer culture in Boston.
“The folks who make beer here are really interesting,” Kerstin said. “It’s a very creative scene and the big brewers are trying to tap into the creativity. I like this whole brewing escapade because it’s a creative outlet and it’s more high stakes than cooking dinner,” she said.
Video: Homemade Homebrewers | The Bottling Process