November will mark two years since I began hanging around with the CRAZE (Cedar River Association of Zymurgy Enthusiasts) homebrew club, attending brewing days, drinking their beer, nodding sagely but cluelessly, at first, when conversation turned to wort, secondary fermentations and yeast pitching.

Through osmosis, I began to understand the terminology, but true knowledge comes only through direct experience. A full appreciation of beer could never come - nor could I feel good wearing my club T-shirt - without at least once, brewing beer myself. The time had come to put up or shut up and, based on my previous do-it-yourself experiences (never, EVER, drill a ¼ inch hole in a cold water pipe at 9 p.m. on a Saturday night, no matter how much you want an ice-maker), there was a real chance I'd have to pour 5 gallons of undrinkable sludge down the drain.

My resolve to join the homebrewer ranks coincided with a bumper crop of black raspberries. I'm not a great fan of fruit-flavored wheat beers, the usual platform, but an off-hand suggestion of a raspberry porter by friend and fellow club member Ben Schafer intrigued me. The flavor would be robust enough to hide my inevitable rookie mistakes, yet light enough, hopefully, to allow the subtle flavor of raspberries to shine through.

So it was that I found myself sitting outside my garage, late on a sunny July afternoon, stirring spoon in one hand, good-luck-gift-homebrew in the other, waiting for 3 gallons of water to reach 155 F. This was the easy, fun part: steep the grains, bring to boil, add malt extract, watch for messy boil-overs, add hops, boil, add more hops, cool, add yeast, pour the whole works in a 5- gallon glass carboy (jug) and let it ferment for a week.

The hard part, the part every homebrewing book stresses, was sanitizing equipment. It isn't enough to be free of obvious, visible dirt; near surgical sterility seemed to be called for. In a house using well water, with two teenagers working muddy detassling jobs, four cats that shed fur higher than I can reach, and a dog who licks his way through life, sterility was out of the question. Recalling Charlie Papazian's advice from his classic book, "The Home Brewers Companion," to "relax, don't worry, have a home brew," I had a beer and lowered my goal to "reasonably sanitary."

With help from my wife, the brewing is done and the fermentation wait has begun. When you read this, the brew will be into a secondary fermentation with the raspberries. The effort may yet produce 5 gallons of undrinkable sludge, but I'm hoping for something that will at least let me stand a bit taller at club meetings.

Prost!