Yuma Brewers

J’s 10 lb Honey Nut Oatmeal Brown

Well, we’ve finished our first full grain, and we’re calling it the Ten Pound Brown. There was a lot to get done. We all recovered from Kazapalooza the night before and finally got into swing of things for round two of the Birthday festival around 3. Jason and Chuck did a quick equipment check to see what we still needed to get the Keg Kettles up and running then jetted to the Hardware store to get it taken care of. Matt got cranking on the Brats, and I started up a the Rasberry wheat kit as a warmup. With the newly completed (and ass kicking) kettles, we built up the three tiered tower of brew, got the counterflow chiller working, and were ready to go.

Things started off a bit rocky. It’s important to note that you need to heat the water up BEFORE you add it to the grains, but we expected mistakes the first time through, and it was an easy fix. We’ll need to stir the grains more often in the future. The brewmometer picks up pockets and won’t change, and we ran into a lot of uneven heating. I think it worked to our advantage, though, because the unevenness made up for a lot of me not having locked down temp control yet, and we ended up with sweet tasting wort that should turn into a damn fine beer. Check out the rest below… (more…)

House O Beer, By Roxanne

To kick the evening off, DJ dropped by to discuss his latest business venture, Meals in Minutes. Or, maybe Seven-Minute Meals - I’m not sure, I wandered away before the conversation was finished. (Matt says it’s still Meals in Minutes).

Then, Hitesman came over, and the brewing began. Tonight, we, or more accurately, they, made an extra pale ale, which happens to be my personal favorite. Rock on, boys!

They also cleaned some stuff, finished off the Irish Draught and kegged Nick’s Cream Ale (which sounds a little dirty). They decided to not keg the dunkle (uncle? I’m not really sure) since Bart wasn’t here and there were no kegs available anyway.

After much debate, and vows to keep brewing into the summer, they ordered a raspberry wheat, for which they only plan to use half the raspberry extract. Maybe they should call it rasp whe. At any rate, I seem to think this was my sister’s favorite. She should come visit to help us drink it…

Participants included Chuck, Samantha, DJ, Jason, Matt and Rox.

Jason, have fun at David Gilmore!

Oops! No one remembered to order a new batch for this week! It was supposed to be a pale ale but with no ingredients we just did some racking and a bit of work on freeing up keg space! (more…)

After the 2AM finsih on the Chcolate porter we were up for a quick easy kit the next week. And with new guy Bart wanting to get in on this we let him choose. He’s got a taste for Wheat beers and so the Northern Brewer Dunkelweizen recipie was chosen.

This week was a split however. The County fair was in town and it was Demo Derby night. So half the group (Matt, DJ, J, Rox) went to the derby while I stayed behind with Tommy, and Nick to get the brew started. (more…)