Categories: Brewing
Today, I learned a couple more things about the way we brew. First, it is much easier to crush 20+ lbs of grain when you hook up the crusher to a drill. Second, it is much easier to crush 20+ lbs of grain when you have your wife power the drill which crushes the grain. Isn’t she great? Not only did she crush all the grain on her own, but she did it with a smile!
Finally, I learned that nobody besides my wife like’s to smile for the camera.
*Xon is extremely camera shy. I had to use my epic MS Paint skills to edit out his face
Some more pictures were posted on our Twitter profile. Be sure to follow us for live pics as we brew.
Categories: Brewing
It was one of those days where anything that could have gone wrong, pretty much did. To begin the day, our crusher crapped out and decided it was a good time to blow an o-ring to hold the rollers together. Thankfully we were able to rig it up to finish the crush, but it looks now like we are going to have to have a talk with the folks over at Barley Crusher.
EDIT: Looks like this might be normal for our Barley Crusher. Thanks for the heads up Patrick.
After that we were cleaning out the equipment and Trav stumbled backwards and smashed the flip switch for the pump. There are a few bonuses to this, first is that it still kind of works. Second is that we get an exciting sparkling light show when it gets turned off.
Topping the night off included a battle between Travis and the kettle. The kettle scored first with some cuts to the knuckles and a pulled chest muscle. But Travis still thinks he won considering we got 10 gallons of pumpkin ale out of it.
For those heathens who aren’t following us on twitter yet, here are some pictures we posted up during the process.
“When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.” – Henny Youngman
Categories: Brewing
Finally we have everything moved over to our new brewery, AKA Xon’s backyard. After a good run over at Deano’s house, he decided it was time to join the world of home owners and bought a condo. Which we will continue to give him hell for not thinking about us brewing before buying, tsk tsk. All that aside, congrats to Dean on being a homeowner, and even more congrats to Xon for being our new forced, err I mean gracious host.
Being as we’re a bit behind schedule with the move and getting the website up and running, a double brew day is in order. First up will be our Pumpkin ale brewed with sweet pumpkins we snagged from the local San Jose flea market. Last year it was made with regular Jack-O-Lantern pumpkin that we sliced off the back of one of our carved Halloween pumpkins. It’s doubtful if that even did anything besides make a mess, but we’re going to give it a try again with some new flare. In addition, we will also be brewing up some more IPA. This one seems to go fast this time of year. Probably because we can’t charge for anything yet. Damn you government regulations for making us give away free beer!
I think it was the cat who got the knife last year, Stacy’s pumpkin appears to be happy about that
“Brewers enjoy working to make beer as much as drinking beer instead of working.” -Harold Rudolph
Posted on November 16th, 2009 by tsmith
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