Brew Night

To celebrate the arrival of our new equipment, we shared an evening with friends munching on Hors d'oeuvres and brewing a brown ale to kick off the event. 

We started homebrewing when we lived in Montana.  I can remember thinking, well, we'll either create something really good or potentially poison ourselves.  The book, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing had interjections of, Relax have a homebrew followed by reassuring pictures of people with their own glasses of homemade goodness.  That was then.  Not only did making our own beer taste better than the bottled stuff, it opened our eyes to microbreweries.  I tell ya, nothing can compete with homebrewed beverage, be it root beer, or a nice nut brown amber.  Yum!

Last night, we used the simple kit variety.  A can with malt and a yeast packet, some sugar and little molasses on the side to get the yeast excited.  Though the kit options are quick and easy, the process isn't as fun as using hops, malt, sugars, and other raw ingredients.  It is similar to making brownies.  There is a from scratch way or a boxed variety.  Both turn out good, but the from-scratch have that extra eyebrow perking ability.

Sushi rolls.  In them is cucumber, carrot, green onion, a smidgen of cream cheese, and salmon.  I've had sushi rolls before and thought, Eh.  These were dang good and we all ate a lot of them.

Bruschetta, jazzed up crescent roll balls on the left, and sushi rolls in the center.  In the background, homebrew is being born.  I had to improvise with the crescent rolls.  Initially, the plan was sausage and cream cheese stuffed mushrooms.  The shrooms as the store had a fuzzy mold so I opted to take sausage, canned mushrooms, onions, and garlic, fry it up then mix it with a cream cheese and stuff that into a crescent roll/ball.  They turned out pretty great.

Making the Wort (pronounced Vert). 

The wort is in a carboy here, awaiting the addition of yeast.  It had to cool overnight before the yeast could be added.

On my Sunday trip to the school to execute my planning for the week session, I noticed fall.  Don't be deceived by the largeness of the "bush" here, they hug the ground and are actually quite stout.