“And yet the following morning, when Isaac and I went down to the basement to check on our carboy, we got pretty excited. Overnight, the big jug of honey-coloured liquid had leapt dramatically to life. A thick layer of creamy foam had formed on the surface, like a great frothy head on a beer, and through the glass walls of the carboy we could see thick currents of brown wort circulating like powerful weather systems in time-lapse. The little reservoir of water in the airlock was bubbling like crazy, releasing a damp, yeasty gas that smelled, agreeable, like an English pub. By now I knew all about yeasts and their appetite for sugars, but it was hard not to feel there was some serious magic under way down here in our basement.”

Michael Pollan on brewing beer with his son
Cooked (2014)
Penguin books