Sunday, March 13, 2011

Homebrew fun

  Last Friday I got to encounter real home brewing, thanks to my bowling league friend Nathan.  We met at North Corner Brewing Supply down on the Bellingham waterfront.
This is a most interesting building, with the Waterfront Artists Collective Studio on the second floor and Dairy Distributing wholesaling milk out of the back (the artists have done a fresco of a cow being milked over the front door, just past the lamppost).  Inside, the brewing supply business is very well organized, with malts, hops, and yeasts all put out for sale in scoop and weigh bins or pre-measured packets that go with recipes you can print out in the front.
  Nathan bought the fixins for a Scotch Ale and I chose the wherewithal for an Amber Ale, and we headed off to his place south of town. We spent a while rigorously cleaning his brew kettles, carboys, thermometers. hydrometer, etc. as bacteria is the great enemy of fermentation.  We stirred the cheesecloth-bagged grains and the malt extract in the simmering kettles for the specified times, with good country and western tunes to help us keep time.
If my neice-a Lisa in Rockford happens to see this, pls note that I am wearing the New Glarus hoodie from
Wisconsin she sent me at Christmas.  At any rate, we reached the point at which the last hops went in, Nathan dropped his copper coiled cooler into each batch and we strained our ready to ferment brews into the carboys.
I will let y'all know in two or three weeks how it came out.  Sure was fun makin'.
(Brewed 3/11/11)

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