We got down to the brewery a little earlier than our 11am
start time, which gave us ample time to get everything set up. We got pretty lucky and managed to snag a
spot right next to New Main Brewing, which came in pretty handy later in the
day (more on that in a bit). After
getting everything unloaded and setup, I went and got my base 2-row grains from
inside the brewery. The only ingredients
you can use that aren’t provided are any base grains other than 2-row, and any
specialty grains you want to use. Hops
and yeast are provided by the brewery.
They do this so that the winning recipe is as close as possible to how
it was brewed by the homebrewer when they scale it up to brew on their system
for the Pro-Am beer.
Dad and I lugged the brew kettle over to the hot water
spigot and got just under what I needed for mash water. Since the water was around 180F, we used ice
to cool it down to where I wanted it, which also helped get me up to the
correct volume. I added my specialty
grains to the 2-row and dumped everything into the water to start the
mash. Meanwhile, David had started a
little earlier than me, so he was getting ready to start his boil.
It was a very windy day on Sunday, and David had some
problems getting his wort up to boiling.
It took him a good hour and a half to get it going, which allowed me to
catch up. Since I was using quite a bit
of pilsner malt, though, my boil was an hour and a half compared to just an
hour for him. Boiling went fine for both
of us, with the exception of having more boil-off than we normally do. That was probably due to having to keep
adjusting the flame to compensate for the variable winds.
Once David’s boil finished, we used my wort chiller as a
pre-chiller. I had a big tub that we
filled with ice, then used my chiller in that, and connected it to David’s
chiller which was in his boil kettle.
This got the cooling water very cold, which helped immensely in cooling
his wort. This is where being set up
next to each other really came in handy.
The timing was also perfect, as just as his wort was done cooling, my
boil ended. It was a simple matter to
transfer the (sanitized, from being in his boil) chiller from his kettle to
mine. Once mine was cooled, it went into
the carboy, and we all packed up and re-loaded our stuff into our respective
vehicles, then headed home. Oh, and in
there somewhere David grabbed the yeast for both of us. I pitched when I got home and got the carboy
into the chest freezer. It took off
pretty quickly; I had a good 2-inch krausen the next morning.
I'll get the recipe up on the Recipes page here soon.
Speaking of David, he’s part of a podcast called AtypicalDFW. They talk about beer mostly, but
all kinds of other random topics as well, and they asked me to come on this week and
talk about homebrewing. I’ve listened to
their shows in the past, and it sounded like a good time, so I agreed. I headed down to their Arlington studios (one
of the guys’ apartment) and took some beer with me. This was my first podcast to be a part of,
and I had a blast. You can check out the
episode here if you’re interested. (NSFW) It’s
just under an hour and a half long (it seemed like about half that recording
it, though).
That’s all for now.
Future brewing planning is taking place as we speak…gotta get ready for
the fall competitions!
