Brewtherville Labs March 2011 First Meeting

There was much anticipation leading up to the first meeting of the Brewtherville Labs Brew club.  Even some members of Book Club were getting jumpy.  We hadn't even had a meeting yet and I get a request for a mixer from Lady K (leader of Book Club).  Damn baby, let the boys brew first.  Shiite.

The boys came over and we called the meeting to order.  I began describing the process and the first Brew Club law revealed itself.  At the mention of wort (pron. wert) all members must take a drink of beer.  Sooooo I talked about how we make the wort, what goes into the wort, how to flavor the wort, how long the wort cooks, how to time the hops that go into the wort, wort, wort, wort...and so on.  Next beer.  We get the water to a boil and add the sack-o-grains.  The club let loose many jokes about Stewie's warm grainy sack. Insert your own in the comments section below.  Stewie's grainy sack boils for 45 min.  We can see the nice golden brown color and aroma coming from the Crystal 80L grains.  Now we're brewin'.  Next comes the hop schedule.  If you ever brew beer, open the bag of hops and smell them before you add them to your wort (drink).  And again, insert your favorite joke in the comments section about smelling Stewie's hops.  In the middle of the hop sequence, Scott thinks he's freakin Justin Wilson and decides to stick his head in the pot.  More on this pic later.  So we go through the whole hop schedule and it's smelling really good.

Next, we need to transfer the wort (drink) to the glass carboy (thanks John C.!).  This was a little tricky even though we had a funnel that looked like Darth Vader's helmet.  We had a little spillage.  No biggy, easy clean-up.  Then the wort (drink) gets cooled down in an ice bath.  So for 30 min we do like any club would, we and talk about Mormons.  Nothing bad, just about what it's like in Salt Lake...beer wise of course.  Once the wort (drink) cooled down we added the yeast (Note: do not do a search for "yeast" on Google images.  Nasty.).  I forgot to take the Original Gravity (OG).  The OG is 1.06.  We were shooting for 1.062.  Close enough.  Now we're on to the fermenting stage.  The yeast will now eat the sugar from the wort (drink) and shit out ethanol.  OK, yeast don't have asses, but that's essentially what they do.
I checked the beer the next morning, and nothing happening yet.  But, when I get home from work, there's a bunch of foam on the top of the fermenter.  There's a little air trap at the top that is supposed to let out gas, and another outlet that is for foam.  But foam is coming out of both.  Minor spill, not a disaster.  So I rig it so only one tube coming out for the gas and foam.  Duh, winning.  We go out to a rocking happy hour at Jill C's house.  Jill C. is a member of book club, but we don't hold it against her.  When I come home from the HH, more foam, more rigging, not too much fermenting.  I give the fermenter a few swirls.  I'll give it a day or two and see if it starts up.  We did add quite a bit of yeast so I wouldn't be too surprised if it's done fermenting already.  If nothing happens, I'll take another gravity reading and see where we are. We made a label for the Gary and Wyatt's Weird IPA, but you'll have to wait till the beer is ready to see it.
There's a theory that Jason might be a spy for that other club.  He posted the above pic on Facebook and mentioned that I was looking at Scott's butt.  Then, at Jill's HH he was caught fraternizing with the other club members.  Brew Club is so winning, that we could easily find a replacement.  But I'll leave it up to the loyal readers (all 5 of you) of this blog.  See the poll on the right and vote.

That's it for now.  Go drink a beer or join a book club.

Update:  In the AM, more foam.  I'm not liking the carboy (sorry John C.) though it's probably something I'm doing wrong.  Never had a foamover with the bucket.

Update#2:  Still fermenting.  This is going to be some strong shit.  I think I finally got the foam under control with a wider tube coming out of the top of the fermenter cap.