The Setup

The husbands are a bit jealous of the wives' book (i.e. wine) club.  So we're starting brew club.  And we're not even pretending that our club is anything other than a brew club.  We're not starting a golf club where we sit around and drink beer.  We're not starting a band where we sit around and drink beer.  We're starting a homebrew club where we sit around and drink beer...and brew every once in a while.  It's taken a few months to get up and going, but Thursday night, St. Patty's day, is our first meeting.

Here's how it will work.  There are 5 dudes in the group, two guys will be the beer meisters.  These guys get to decide what style of beer we are brewing, go shopping, foot the bill, come up with the name for the beer and are basically in charge of brewing.  The other three guys watch/learn and work on supplying empty bottles for the brew.  One to two weeks after we brew the beer the beer meisters will get together to bottle.  Others can join, but are not required.  Two weeks after that, we distribute the bounty and brew the next batch.  The first batch is not quite ready for another two weeks at least.  Depending on the yield, the three consumers will get at a minimum, two 22oz big boy bottles.  The beer meisters will split the rest.  Maybe we'll split it a little more even; it really depends on how much we brew.  It should be about 2 1/2 cases.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

Matt and I are taking the first shift.  We're brewing an especially hoppy IPA inspired by our ski/snowboard trip to Wisp.  It was about 34deg. and raining.  So we came inside and enjoyed a few Loose Cannon's.  We were quite taken by the grapefruit flavor of the hops.  A few weeks later when we finally got around to selecting our brew style we decided to go for the Loose Cannon.  Matt came up with the brilliant idea to call it, "Gary and Wyatt's Weird IPA" named after the infamous Weird Science characters.

I went shopping at Maryland HomeBrew and bought the ingredients.  Here's the list and hop schedule:
1lb. Crystal malt grain 80L (cracked) (30min)
8lb Xtra light Malt
2.0oz Chinook, 1.0oz. Cascade @ 60min
1.0oz Cascade and Chinook @ 15min
1.0oz Centennial @ 5min
1.0oz Cascade @ 0min
2.0oz Chinook Dry Hopped @ racking (still haven't figured out how I'm going to pull this off)
5.0oz Priming sugar
American Ale Yeast
2.5 Gal boil for 60min

All hops are pellets except for the dry hop Chinook.  We're just using the bucket brew method except for a glass carboy for fermentation (thanks John C.!).  Tomorrow night I clean all the stuff to get ready.  Then it's brew time.