I got called out by Shockley yesterday
I am going to attempt to get caught up on blogging and there is no better motivation than being called out by another blogger. Especially one that is behind on blogging as well, (throat clearing noise). So here is the first in a series. This one covers a fantastic day of brewing. Grab a cold homebrew and enjoy.
6-Strain Brewday
or How I spent my summer, by: Cloudy Fly
It all started with a trip out West to the Craft Brewers Conference. This year it was held in San Diego. This is the home of my favorite Yeast Lab - White Labs. Chris White literally wrote the book on working with yeast or at least a book. It just so happened that this year they opened a tasting room and they had a fantastic idea flowing through their taps. They had brewed the same batch of beer and finished it with a myriad of different yeast strains. The malt bill was simple and light and the hops were there only for balance. I learned more drinking 15 beers there than I have in the last two years. It really opened my eyes to the dominance of yeast in beer style. Hops and malt are definitely passengers in my most favorite beverage. I had to find a way to bring this back to my homebrew community. I knew it was going to be a daunting task.
The glorious wall of yeast strains
One of 4 flights we tried
Cloudy and Chris White
Fast forward to June 16th. I spent weeks working with local homebrew supplier 5 Points West ensuring that we would have everything that we need and bought six identical carboys at the last minute to keep all variables exactly the same. Sometimes Tourettes pays dividends, especially when it comes to OCD behavior. The yeast arrived from White Labs on Friday June 15th. Thanks to Alex and to the folks at White LAbs for pulling that off. We now had the freshest yeast you could get on the East Coast. I pre-staged all the equipment the night before knowing that we had to fire the HLT no later than 6:30am.
Shockley and Ian came walking around the corner just shorlty before 6:30. It's bad when people driving to your house almost beat you to your brew deck. Shockley was surviving on fumes. He had had one hell of a week up North in the Carolinas and had just gotten back. I believe that he had maybe 4-5 hours worth of sleep. That's a dedicated brewer! We wasted no time getting everything in order and fired up. Much to my surprise my RIMS pump had started working again and never gave us an issue the entire day. I must say, our entire day went smoothly. This was due in large part to the wisdom of Shock. We designated a person to each vessel and gave them their duties. It ran like a well oiled machine. I don't think that we have ever hit targets so efficiently. I had a minor fudge factor to play within and we never came close to either end. We ran the Daytona 500 and won without rubbing another car or the wall. It seems impossible looking back.
Denver and Matt arrived shortly after Ian and Shockley. I have to credit Ian with getting the whole day started. We finally met face to face at Terrapin a few weeks before and he was interested in getting a brew day going but needed it to be on a weekend. I had been mulling over the 6-Strain concept and thought it would be good to knock that day out before the heat set in. Little did we know two weeks later it was going to be 109 degrees! we wanted to keep everything as consistent as possible so if you did something on the first batch you were stuck all the way through the third doing the exact same task. You also had to attempt to do it the exact same way. Shockley milled all the Grains, Caleb doughed in every mash while Matt poured the grains, Matt watched regulated the HLT, I regulated the mash, Shockley regulated the boil, Denver handled stripping equipment down and got it ready to re-brew, and Hinson pitched each yeast strain. We made sure that pitched at the appropriate temp and time. I am proud to say, as I did already, it went flawlessly. I have never been that satisfied after a brew session. We're getting pretty good.
We ended the night drinking some fabulous craft beers that I brought back from San Diego. We also broke a few out of the private reserve. It made for an awesome and relaxing evening. Shockley was exhausted and had to drive to Atlanta with Sarah for fathers day. He was barely awake as the left the yard and I know he was sad to miss a few of the bottles that we broke out later on. We tried to break all the great beers out while everyone was together. It was a collaboration of a fantastic group of brewers and I can't wait to try the results. Friendship and fellowship are what we strive for at Gratis and we have made some incredible friends over the years. I appreciate the hard work and dedication of each of these great brewers and value their friendship above all else. It's a great country we live in! Here's the video: http://youtu.be/QTfW8JPy9u0 , Cheers!
