BREWIN'!

March 18, 2014:   an enormous day for Horse & Dragon Brewing Company!  Not just the day after St. Patrick's Day, but The Day of First Beer.  20 years in the dreaming (and rigorous market researching), 9 months in the planning, 6 months in the (re)building.  And finally:

Beer.

Here's how today began:

There's a lot more to this than I experienced in the infamous Day of Homebrewing.  For e.g.:

[Yeah, this is kinda' like homebrewing....]

Valve-o-rama.

And all sorts of temperature- and pressure-gauge-reading and subsequent adjusting of flows of hot & cold water and glycol and whatnot.

Who knew that the temperature at each different stage was so critical?  (I know, I know.  A lot of you knew.  It was just Tatum and I who didn't.  Isn't boiling boiling?)

When "we" were done with the crushed grains (crushing and heating and mashing with agua to get all the good sugars and deliciousness out)

"we" dumped all this stuff ("grained out", as we in the know like to say) into tubs for Jodar Farms.  I missed photos of Aaron picking up the grains to be used at his farm -- I think for winner winner chicken dinner, or part of such.  Next time, a photo.

Look, we have our own mailing label from Wyeast!

So we added yeast.  Pitched it, I mean.  Linsey let Tim surgeon up:

and pitch:

[Supervised!]

Here's a look at the Cone of Gunk in the whirlpool.  [Linsey tells me it's the hops & coagulated proteins, so for all you scientists out there who are into precision, there you go, not the Cone of Gunk.  You are probably also knocking out at exactly 75.86237°**  or whatever it is and didn't just leave your homebrew on the cold cement garage floor until it felt sort of like it wouldn't burn yeast to smithereens, too.  **Don't quote me on that figure and use it at home -- remember I'm the non-precise one reporting here.]  The camera didn't really want to see this through the steam so you're going to have to come view it in person some brew day at the Horse & Dragon.

[Whirlpool, Baby!]

Meanwhile,

[Drawing a sample.]

And then, the cleaning:

In other exciting news of today (and yesterday), there was dirt delivered:

and quite incredible stout cupcakes with whiskey icing from Morgan, who we've long suspected walked on water and we're glad to have it confirmed:

Yesterday, our neighbors from Feisty Spirits came and picked up the initial run of grain-only wort to play with -- looking forward to tasting this when they've done their magic:

I'll leave you with this picture, because it says a lot about what's going on here.  If only there were sanitizer and a scrub brush next to these you'd have 90% of brewing in one photo.