June 3, 2007
New Brewery Setup
Brew day went well yesterday… I rolled into the brother-in-law’s place to find a new shelving unit for our brewery… And one new piece of equipment: a 10-gallon rubbermaid cooler. So now we’ve got a second mash/lauter tun, meaning we can be working on two different batches at the same time.
This means two things:
1) We can start brewing high-gravity 5 gallon batches. Normally trying to brew anything over about 7-8% was impossible on my system. With this, we can brew as big as we want.
2) When we get a new brew kettle, we can just start doing 10-gallon batches. I think I’ll be buying a keg from Craigslist within the next few days, and have a few leads on reasonably-priced 20+ gallon stock pots, so that should be on the agenda in the VERY near future.
As for the brew day, my brother-in-law wasn’t able to brew, because he had several other household-related things to take care of. But we did do his brother-in-law’s batch (a dark amber), and my agave wheat… We now have 20 gallons of beer in his guest bathroom, which I’m sure is not making his wife very happy 
Below is the new brewery… Expect a bunch of changes in the near future as well.
June 1, 2007
Brewing Update
So, as I pointed out, I’m recovering from a wonderful brewing injury… My hand still looks horrendous. I’ve got a scar on my shoulder from the motorcycle crash, and the injury to my hand looks rather similar to that one in the early days. Which means the scar is going to be as gnarly as the wound… Ugh.
But hey, it’s in the service of great beer, so I’ll deal. On Monday, we brewed my first California batch, and my brother-in-law’s first batch ever. Mine was a raspberry wheat, and he brewed an IPA. Both brews appear to be turning out as well as we can tell from this point, although I feel a bit out of the loop since they’re both at his place. I can’t go look at my fermenter each morning to see what my beer is doing…
Saturday I’ve got another and so does he, and we’re both doing things I’ve never done before, so it should be interesting. I’m going to be doing another wheat beer, but fermented with agave syrup (an extract from the agave plant, used to make tequila). I have no clue what’s going to happen. He’s making a Belgian Wit, which is a bit new as we’ll need to mash the grain at several different temperatures. This means we will let it sit at temperature in the brew kettle for a while, fire the burner for a while, let it sit longer, etc. Then we need to transfer it from the kettle to the cooler to drain… Once we complete this, we boil as usual, but a wit has some strange added ingredients, like coriander and orange peel.
In addition his other brother-in-law is going to be stopping by as well. This is the guy we’re hoping to rope into the hobby with us, and I’m still waiting on the verdict whether he’s planning on brewing, or just planning on hanging out. I’m sure if we get him out to the homebrew store with us, by the end of the car ride I’ll have him ready to brew a batch
I’m planning on entering the raspberry wheat and the agave wheat into the Orange County Fair’s Homebrewing Competition. We may or may not add the belgian wit, but the IPA was a pretty basic extract recipe, so I don’t know if it’s worth trying to enter it…
Overall, though, I’m happy to be back on the horse. In a few weeks, I’ll have my brewing pipeline full again, and eventually I can start increasing my beer supply back to normal levels…
« Previous Page
So, when can I expect my sixer of Tequila flavored beer?
Comment by Nick M. — June 4, 2007 @ 12:01 am
When are you going to come pick it up, Nick?
Oh, and bear in mind, I have no idea whether it will actually taste like tequila…
Comment by Brad Warbiany — June 4, 2007 @ 9:59 am