Snow Day Brew Day

It’s been a busy week followed by a lazy weekend – my favorite kind!
AMWe’ve had quite a range of weather as the temperature slowly begins to drop.
AM12I spent the first part of the week walking around downtown Denver with a hot cup of Bhakti chai and snowflakes slowly drifting down around me, melting right before they hit the ground.
AM13I’ve found the best way to recover from long cold walks outside (which I’ve been doing almost every single day in this beautiful state) is with hot apple cider, hot pumpkin chai, hot coffee… basically anything hot to help defrost my numb fingers.
AM11That includes a fresh slice of vegan pumpkin banana chocolate chip bread. Oooooh, yes.
AM14You guys remember that “Guys Night Out” ticket pack I got? We cashed in on it Thursday night.
AM15I totally blended in with my ‘stache. No one was the wiser.
AM16We suffered a painful end to that game. Bexter was a sad panda to see the Avs lose to the awful, terrible Red Wings – the one team with whom we have the biggest rivalry. Le sigh.
AM17Even with the loss, the Coors Original and the nosebleed seats, it was awesome to be able to go watch in person! And I’ve got a few more games on the schedule to go see! WOOOOOT!
AM18My brother and I had plans to homebrew the next day. I woke up to a good inch of snow blanketing the ground.
AM1Absolutely beautiful – until you realize that the brew system is located in his garage and not in a steamy brewery. I scraped snow off of my windshield (for the first time in my life!) and headed over to his house.
AM2We put together the official recipe and headed out for the important things: grain. And burritos from Matador. Very important to start a brew day with a solid base.
AM6I happen to have some amazing tea that I first tried in Ojai that inspired me to make a warm, holiday brew with. We started with an experimental brown ale base recipe and will be adding the tea extract into secondary.
AM19Of course you must “relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew” when you’re homebrewing. Lucky for me, my brother has Citra Smash Lager that he made last month. This is absolutely my favorite Citra beer of all time. Clean and crisp with flavors of honey, lemon and a candy-like fruitiness.
AM7My bro’s control panel. Intense.
AM10His entire system is awesomely intense, and surprisingly easy to use thanks to his SOP he’s been working on. I didn’t break anything following the instructions! Hooray!
AM20Mashing in.
AM8Mash paddle from the homebrew store – Hops and Berries. This is also where I got my first recipe ever for Dos Beckis!
AM5Recirculating the mash.
AM21SCIENCE! My bro and sis-in-law got a new pH meter they wanted to calibrate and try out.

Remember all that snow on the ground? The garage was getting pretty freaking cold. Dave came by and brought my new best friend.
AM9Glorious heat! This heater doesn’t emit carbon monoxide, but it definitely eats up the oxygen pretty quick. We kept the back window open so we didn’t suffocate. More people started filtering in once that heater arrived.
AM22Hop additions!
AM23Pre-pitched wort! Looks like this will be coming in around 5%-ish ABV. Since it was so cold out we didn’t hit many (or any) of our temperatures, but I still have high hopes! The rest of the day was spent drinking more homebrew, making more vegan pumpkin banana chocolate chip bread, eating said bread, drinking more homebrew and listening to “Thrift Shop” and Weird Al. Cuz we’re cool like that.

Have you ever homebrewed before? Any success or horror stories?

6 Comments

Filed under beer, brewing

6 Responses to Snow Day Brew Day

  1. Federico

    I’ve never seen so many malts in an homebrewer house as in the photo of the garage of your brother. I like also his control panel. I brew every month but I don’t have such a setting… but I have a fermentation chamber to control temperatures during fermentation.

    • The malts were actually at Hops and Berries! He brews quite often, but not THAT much. I’d love to see your setup!

      • Federico

        That’s a pity: I was already wondering how to have such a storage in my house… 🙂 This weekend I’ll insert some photos in Facebook

  2. Wow! That is quite the homebrew set-up! I wish we were neighbors 🙂

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