Truer words have never been spoken, at least in the last week. This is the motto and mantra of my cousin's brewing group. A phrase I have the utmost respect for. Even when playing Risk. But more on that later.
Now last Friday I visited a cousin who've been brewing his own beer with friends for a few years now. This was my first foray into teamwork and large batch brewing. They were firing up two 5 gallon batches. One of a lager they came up with and found successful, and were going to tweak slightly. The second the same recipe but as a true experiment, altering the hops added, and several other factors.
By the time we even started the water on the stove we were pretty far into the beer we'd brought to drink while brewing. There was some of Kieth's Hops varieties, Lake of Bays Crosswind, and weissbeer. All went down damn fine.
Now they do it a bit differently. Where I've been doing grain mashes for malt, they've gone with malt extracts which simplifies the process a fair bit. Boil your water, toss in the extract, begin hops and boil schedule. You skip the mash/sparge process, which also kinda removed the fun for me a tiny bit, but we were drinking and telling stories too much for me to care ;-)
The space involved was considerable, both kitchen and laundry room were co-opted for it. Two large pots boiled both batches almost simultaneously. Now the pots were both 10-12 quarts no different than my own, at first I wondered at what point this boil would become the 5 gallons it's supposed to be but then as we poured the wort into the carboy we then added water from the tap until it was at the right amount. Shake that baby up a bit and take a gravity reading (something I haven't done yet, basically checks the sugar density of the brew, which is basically a measure of it's eventual alcohol content). First batch was more or less in a range where they'd expected it to be.
Now the second on the other hand.... Using almost all the same ingredients except a different type of hops I believe (I'll confirm later), the experimental batch had a much higher gravity reading, leading to some low whistles when the foam settled. High 60's, damn near 70. The yeast will be having some fun with this one.
Now I haven't played Risk since I was in grade school but the basics are easy: beat the hell out of everyone else until you rule the world. Now I've never been big on(read: terrible at) strategy, Add a long day or work, travel and drinking on top of that and what you have is a confusing giggle fest that was a lot of fun but not very conducive to effective warmongering.
Now last Friday I visited a cousin who've been brewing his own beer with friends for a few years now. This was my first foray into teamwork and large batch brewing. They were firing up two 5 gallon batches. One of a lager they came up with and found successful, and were going to tweak slightly. The second the same recipe but as a true experiment, altering the hops added, and several other factors.
By the time we even started the water on the stove we were pretty far into the beer we'd brought to drink while brewing. There was some of Kieth's Hops varieties, Lake of Bays Crosswind, and weissbeer. All went down damn fine.
Now they do it a bit differently. Where I've been doing grain mashes for malt, they've gone with malt extracts which simplifies the process a fair bit. Boil your water, toss in the extract, begin hops and boil schedule. You skip the mash/sparge process, which also kinda removed the fun for me a tiny bit, but we were drinking and telling stories too much for me to care ;-)
The space involved was considerable, both kitchen and laundry room were co-opted for it. Two large pots boiled both batches almost simultaneously. Now the pots were both 10-12 quarts no different than my own, at first I wondered at what point this boil would become the 5 gallons it's supposed to be but then as we poured the wort into the carboy we then added water from the tap until it was at the right amount. Shake that baby up a bit and take a gravity reading (something I haven't done yet, basically checks the sugar density of the brew, which is basically a measure of it's eventual alcohol content). First batch was more or less in a range where they'd expected it to be.
Now the second on the other hand.... Using almost all the same ingredients except a different type of hops I believe (I'll confirm later), the experimental batch had a much higher gravity reading, leading to some low whistles when the foam settled. High 60's, damn near 70. The yeast will be having some fun with this one.
Now I haven't played Risk since I was in grade school but the basics are easy: beat the hell out of everyone else until you rule the world. Now I've never been big on(read: terrible at) strategy, Add a long day or work, travel and drinking on top of that and what you have is a confusing giggle fest that was a lot of fun but not very conducive to effective warmongering.
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