Homebrew 'n Fry Sunday

Well, after getting the "important" things out of the way, we took time today to play. Of course after "playing" all day, I wish my idea of "playing" was doing nothing...I'm tired. Anyways, I have been wanting to brew for, oh I don't know...a year! So much for great plans. With my keg conversion complete and my new valve installed, I figured it was high time.

The first good, actually the only good omen of the day, was finding a bottle of marzen that I brewed a year ago for ManNight. It was hidden with a bunch of empties. Oh joy. It was good then, it was great today. Of course since my note taking is horrible when it comes to brewing, there is no chance of really replicating it.

I went total kit and extract today. It is an Irish Stout. I have low hopes. I keep wanting to do a full boil, but when dealing with steeping crushed grains, you have to step up to 5 gallons and I did not do that.

The best part of the brew was being able to use my valve to move the wort out of the kettle, through the wort chiller and into the fermenter. As my friends with calloused and burned fingers can attest to, the old method of using a copper gooseneck siphon was abysmal. Not anymore. This process was painless.

Unfortunately, my pick up tube in the keg, which I soldered today, was a little high. Well not just a little high....very high. I probably left a gallon of wort behind. I will fix that before I brew again.

Well, three to fours weeks from now, we will see what happens. This will be a batch that I keg, because it will not be worth the time to bottle.

Since I had the burner stand setup, we ended up frying fish. Cod and catfish in a beer batter. Not bad, not bad at all.