Getting our brew on!

Saturday was once again Brew Day, and what a day it was.  So much went down in our 8 hours together that I am having trouble organizing my thoughts to talk about it!  First off, we had a brew day record with 4 people brewing.  Our efforts garnered us 25 gallons of homebrew. 10 gallons is courtesy of The Drew & Dave.  Dave bought all of his supplies and then “used” The Drew to make a double batch for them both to enjoy.  I have a feeling by the next brew day Dave will have his own kettle and burner.

Drew, Eric, and I all made IPAs.  Mike made a porter.  24 hours later, Eric and I have both suffered blown fermenter lids.  Eric’s sounds like a real missile launch.  Mine wasn’t too bad.  Figures the one time I don’t use a blow off tube and instead use an airlock bubbler, I get Sputnik.

Everything moved along rather well.  As is Brew day tradition, we enjoyed some of the fruit’s of our last brew get together.  The hefeweizen I brewed last time was kegged and we “floated” the corny keg in no time flat.  Homebrew come, and homebrew go…

Towards the end of brewing, it became readily apparent that my immersion wort chiller sucks.  It took forever to cool my wort.  It looks like I may try to go back to my counterflow.

Although we were stuck in the garage because of the rainy weather, it didn’t dampen our mood.  We decided to start marking brew days by writing on the brew cart.  We are pretty good about writing pithy comments that we still find funny years later and the wife’s don’t find funny now or later.

It would not be brew day without fried food.  Besides the obligatory pork shoulder, Mike worked his magic on chicken wings and an onion loaf.  You cannot have all of these gas burners around and not fry something.  The wings were down and dirty.  Mike breaded them in some Hooter’s breading and then fried them in oil.  He only deviated from the recipe by not donning the orange shorts that came in the package.

The wings were tossed in wing sauce and were great.  The onion loaf…ahhh the onion loaf.  Always a crowd pleaser and there is never enough.

Well the basement smells like a brewery right now with all of the airlocks bubbling away.  Hell, Drew’s was already showing activity before he left last night!  I seriously can’t wait to see how they all turned out.  Now, time to plan our next brew day…