Fat Boy Deluxe

Saturday morning found Kristin and I waking up early to get the house ready.  We needed to clean the house from top to bottom, rake a 1/2 acre of leaves, get started on the cooking, and finally mill the grain.  Kristin started on the leaves, while I started in on the vacuuming.  After the house was clean, I headed out to help with the raking to find Kristin had already finished putting the front yard into piles and was already starting on the backyard.  We switched it up and she went on to getting the mac & cheese and caramel cupcakes together…diabetics beware!  Later in the afternoon, Mike, Chris, and Jeff popped by the house to help out.  We put Chris and Jeff on grain milling duty while Mike and I finished off the leaves just a little after o’dark 30.  Then we finished up the grain milling, before grabbing some pizza and a Wii Kart break, which Ron conveniently showed up for just in time.  After everybody left, it was just a quick basement check and barrel prep, which needed a splash more rum – you know, to sanitize it a little more.  Physical exhaustion had me in bed by midnight.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!  Woke up early to grab some coffee and do a few last minute things.  Sloan and Albert show up around 8:15 AM, just as I’m finishing up some small details like putting fresh house numbers on the mailbox to make it easier for people to find.  And it begins…

Brewers Brewing

From then until around 11:00 AM brewers arrived, setup, and started up their rigs.  Everybody brewed all grain (some for their first time), but the equipment ranged from 5 gallon buckets/aluminum foil/tongs to computerized 15 gallon keggles on rolling brew carts.  We had a dozen or so brewers and all completed their batches and pushed through any issues there might have been.  I was scheduled to brew, but keeping things organized became a full time job.  Thankfully Jeff took over measuring out three additions of hops for every batch.

First addition of hops measured out

Throughout the day people showed up at the house.  Some brought homebrew, some brought commercial brew, and still others brought much needed food to supply the troops.  Kristin whipped up a big batch of mac & cheese and some caramel cupcakes.  Kevin put together a spicy batch of jambalaya.  There was homebrewed port and tons of cookies.  A smoker was put to good use to churn out some ribs and we even had homemade bbq sauce that was super tasty!

As we wrapped things up, Allan setup his peristaltic pumps and counterflow chiller to directly chill the beer as it ran from the brew kettles into the barrel.

This chiller pretty much rocked and made the end of the brew day go really smooth.  We filled the barrel with about 40 gallons of wort and put an extra 20 gallons in carboys.  This way when the barrel reaches peak fermentation it doesn’t explode onto the walls of my basement (Kristin should be happy about that).  The carboys were set to the side to ferment on their own and we should be racking those back into the barrel to bulk age with the rest of the batch.

Chilling beer into barrel

It was a phenomal day!  The weather cooperated bringing sunny skies and warm temperatures.  Everybody did their part and more to make the day a smashing success.  We were shooting for a 1089 gravity and hit 1085 – not bad for how many batches we had to combine.  I’d try to name everybody who took part, but I’m sure I’d screw it up.  The Wort Processors homebrew club really out did themselves.  When it was all said and done, Kristin and I were able to clean the house one more time and sit down for good right around 6:30 PM…can’t ask for more than that.  Oh, and the beer…I’ll let you know how it turns out…in a year.

For additional stuff, check out Kristin’s photos here, David Bond’s photos here, Ron’s video here, and Ann Cortissoz’s article in the globe here.