As the days grow progressively shorter, so does my list of activities that suit the Northwest's dark and rainy winters.

I'm a die-hard outside kind of guy, but even I grow tired of suiting up for rain (or snow) to frolic around in the few hours of daylight.

With a couple of days of steady wet downpours following a few days of snow-covered roads, it occurred to me-somewhere between pacing the hallway and browsing every outdoor-oriented website in my list of bookmarks-that I desperately needed a new hobby, one to make my obligatory time indoors more bearable.

Thumbing through an old album of college photographs, I stumbled upon a solution that just might help me survive the winter.

Behind the plastic cover, I found a 4x6 print of two young men-both a bit thinner than today-standing next to a giant stockpot. One of them was me, the other, my friend Whitney.

They looked happy. They sported significantly oversized grins. For what, you ask?

The two men knew that their stockpot contained five gallons of home-brewed beer, and that the following semester was going to be a lot more fun.

I closed the album and thought about what a good time Whitney and I had turning a boil of grains, malt and hops into two-and-a-half cases of good beer.

Nearly 10 years has passed since someone snapped that photo, and I haven't brewed a batch of beer since.

My memory of the brewing process seemed as hazy as a hefeweizen, and my old home-brewing kit (as my mother continually reminds me when I talk to her) is taking up space in my parents' garage 2,000 miles away.

But with a little refresher course, a couple of plastic buckets and ten pounds of ingredients, I resolved that home-brewing beer would become the perfect indoor winter activity to help cure a stout case of the shack nasties. Or, at the very least, make the dark months a bit more humorous.

With the help of the Internet, I located a reasonably priced beer brewing kit and settled on a recipe for a first batch of suds.

One of the hallmarks of Pacific Northwest microbrewery scene, strong Holiday ales-those with slightly more alcohol as well as hints of Christmas spices-rank high on my list of favorite types of beer. Certainly not native to the Northwest, the holiday ale tradition dates back to Old England, and like most things we've adopted from across the Atlantic, American breweries have put their own spin on a traditional recipe.

I decided to purchase a kit from Homebrew Heaven in Everett. The staff of exceptionally knowledgeable brewmeisters had concocted a recipe for their own Holiday ale-and given it the fitting name Nose Nipper.

The kit included pre-measured ingredients and step-by-step instructions to bring a batch of good beer to fruition. I thrive on creativity and innovation, but for a first attempt in almost 10 years, I figured I needed a chip shot. If this went well, I thought, the next time I would branch out on my own.

The box contained almost two pounds of milled barley and a large bag of dried malt extract. The former gives beer some of its grain or bread-like flavors, while the malt provides a strong sugary food source to feed the yeast, added later.

The similarity of these beer ingredients to those found in hearty bread is remarkable. I've never been a proponent of the Atkins diet, but a quick mental count of the potential carbohydrates found in the box of beer ingredients gave me a clearer explanation of the "belly" in "beer belly."

It occurred to me, as I looked down at a waistline slightly fuller from a month of cold weather-induced inactivity, that I was essentially brewing a five-gallon bucket of liquid cinnamon roll.

Benjamin Franklin noted this similarity as well, and documented it in his autobiography. As an apprentice, Franklin worked with men who consumed beer throughout the day, particularly during lunch, claiming that they needed the extra calories to maintain energy for their labor. Franklin argued, correctly, that the men might increase their productivity by consuming an equal amount of bread in place of the beer, noting the nearly equal number of calories found in a loaf, without the alcohol.

His assessment no doubt earned Franklin the title of "Office Party Pooper," and his bread-instead-of-beer philosophy likely led to a steady decline in the jovial atmosphere of the workplace that has continued since.

The directions called for me to steep the gains in a mesh sack like a giant tea bag for 45 minutes as I heated three of the eventual five gallons to 170 degrees.

Once I reached the 170-degree mark, I removed the sack and brought liquid to a boil, adding the malt and an initial round of hops once the brew started to bubble.

I boiled the concoction, now called "wort" (pronounced "wert") for an hour, adding hops and holiday spices (including a small candy cane) at set intervals.

When the timer buzzed, I removed the pot from the heat and quickly cooled the wort from a near boil to 80 degrees, adding enough cold water to re-hydrate a five-gallon batch.

The directions instructed me to take a gravity reading with the hydrometer, a device that measures the amount of dissolved solids in a liquid. In essence, the process gives a measurement of the potential alcohol by volume by indicating the amount of sugars that the yeast can consume.

I gave the glass tool a spin in the liquid and glanced at the markings. 15 percent ABV, it read.

Skeptical of such a high reading, I spun it again. Once more, 15 percent.

Either I'm poor at following directions (likely), or the folks at Homebrew Heaven want its customers to sport a beer buzz that will last well into spring.

I threw in the yeast and sealed the container, hoping that somewhere between my hydrometer reading and the day I pop the top on my first bottle, the Nose Nipper would miraculously transform from malty moonshine into a tasty holiday ale.

According to my instructions, the beer should be ready to consume on Christmas Eve, and I've already reverted to pacing the hallway again in anticipation.

The only solution? Back to the kitchen!

Because, as the rain continues to blow sideways outside my window, the only thing better than five gallons of homemade beer...is ten.