Brewing. Who Needs a Gym Membership?

First off, a warning/apology:  we know it's Colorado Craft Beer Week and we know we should be posting about that.  Sadly, we've no public beer to offer up quite yet.  However, so-far-beerless life is trundling along here at the H&D, so for those of you who have a minute and the interest to read about the road to opening, here's an update.  Whether or not you read it, please head to your nearest craft brewery or craft beer bar and raise a glass in celebration of all the amazing Colorado craft beers you have at hand!

I thought I'd take a minute to point out that brewing, at least the way most small craft brewers do it, involves a lot of heave-ho-ing. Last week, when Linsey put the first three batches of potential Horse & Dragon brews in the tanks, I got to do about 1/30th of the lifting involved.  Larger breweries may have all their standard and specialty malts at the push of button, but at least at H&D, Linsey is (with an occasional bit of help from us) hauling around these:

They weigh 55# a piece.  Or 50#, just to keep brewer's recipe math interesting.  Apparently malts from one continent are packaged 5# more at a time than those from another.  Either way, if you're lifting 25+ of the bags to the top of the mill chute, you're getting a decent weight workout.

Especially if you're not 6' tall:

A word to the wise:  don't mess with this woman in an arm-wrestling contest.

Of course, once a bag is tossed in there, you get to see (and smell) this view, which is pretty awesome:

For H&D's inaugural brew Tim & Linsey lifted all of this grain, post-milling, up to the grist hopper manually.  By Brew #2, they had rigged up the auger.  Though it's still needing a tweak or two to run more efficiently, I can't tell you how happy we were to see this bugger in place.

It was not easily wrangled.  In editorializing on the weight and build of the motor and the auger while trying to tug and coax it into place standing atop a ladder I might have uttered a few choice words with increasing vehemence.  In the end, Linsey managed it from one end while Tim took directions from afar at the other and I retreated in defeat to find the camera.

When you visit, you'll see it's not that long an auger.  However, it felt like The World's Longest  last Wednesday.  But look!  It functions! That milled grain falling out there started about 14 feet down and 40 feet over.

We filled that puppy almost to the brim for one particular brew, and it ended up bringing the mash tun about to capacity:

If you brew, you also apparently have no problem hauling about great lengths of brewing hose.

A few other pictures from brew days --

One day, if you haven't yet, you've got to take a whiff of this:

Once our hopback got all steamed up, it seemed to be channeling Equinox's logo, plus a few branches.

There was this yumminess swirling around for a while in the kettle:

Linsey found all kinds of signs of healthy yeast in this Toy-Story-like extensive lab equipment:

Best of all there was this soothing sound greeting us each morning:

[I think there's a market for the Craft Brew Spa -- can't we pipe this into a hot tub?]

Someone who stopped by FINALLY caught us in the Brewers' Lounge (currently doubling as a plant hospital) doing what everyone thinks we're doing all day -- sitting around sampling beer and discussing its finer points.  So far, so tasty!

Here's TLC, putting a little TLC into each brew in a fermenter.

On décor (no, the following photo is not too pixelated):

Linsey's slowly populating the brewery office with LegoFolk.

And our Christmas lights are still up at home (but I now blame that on the ladder being here with its ladder brethren).

That's where we are.  Happy Colorado Craft Beer Week to you all.  We hope you're celebrating in style!