Backyard Brewers: Assemble!
This weekend marks the beginning of Dayton Beer Week. This third annual local celebration of all things craft beer includes 80 plus tastings, events, and outings before culminating with AleFest next Saturday afternoon. For beer lovers, it is an amazing itinerary and quite the week. To start things off right, we organized a Brew Night to kick off the celebration a little early.
As with any brew day, or in this case, brew night, two things are required: great beer and great food. The food started early, as I placed a brisket on the Saffire in the morning before I left for work. The rest, including some beer can chicken, came together as the night went on.
Four of us brewed and as tradition/habit dictates, we settled into our routines and places.
Zach and Dave worked the grain crusher and Drew, with his fierce look of determination, started his mash.
Greg cranked out a new burner and was by far the most expeditious. This is less notable, and more expected, since he's the engineer of the society.
As is normal for me, I ran around, snapped pictures, and generally lagged behind everyone else.
As we look back through the years of getting together, it's been fun to watch what what constitutes BYOB. Whereas six packs where common place in the beginning, they have almost been entirely replaced by bombers, growlers and most importantly, kegs. If you aren't grunting as you carry 5 gallons of beer into the backyard, you really aren't following proper BYOB guidelines.
It's fair to say that when we get together, we break some sort of rule or practice of common sense. For instance, operating a hot propane burner on a wood deck. It's not every day you watch sap sucked out of wood.
At this rate, Brew Days may permanently segue into Brew Nights, which almost makes them Man Nights. The only difference between the two is with Brew Nights there isn't a costume theme and we are actually doing something productive, like brewing. The differences end there.
Oh, there is one more difference from other Brew Days: a peanut gallery.
Yes, a few of the wives decided to enjoy the evening from the sidelines…mostly filling their time watching our ensemble and shouting out the occasional wisecrack.
As the brewing continued on, dinner was finally served.
Although the brisket was not one of my best, that didn't stop it from being devoured. Dave also added a beer can chicken into the mix. It turned out great.
The only downside was having to use a can of Budweiser to prop it up.
Speaking of beer, I set out to brew something for Christmas, but ended up brewing a pale ale. I'm running super low on the homebrew front, so I have the feeling I will be adding in some solo brews in the near future. This batch necessitated a new 50 pound bag of 2-row, so between my bulk base grain purchase and the never ending mix of left over grains in the basement, I've got the makings of something. Now just to figure out what.
Eventually the boils subsided and the fermenters were filled. As our "summer of brewing" turned into a summer of "not brewing", the early sunset and cool evening provided the perfect ending to our gathering.
There is no doubt fall is around the corner. Hopefully it will yield more opportunities to brew, for whenever our schedules allow, if there is time to brew, the Society will assemble.
