Teach a Friend to Homebrew review

Well, Saturday was Teach a Friend to Homebrew day. I think it went really good. We had the Josh and Audra, Ty and Linds, Dirty Steve and Ann, Kai and Janelle, Paddy, and Thad over for the day.

We started out brewing around 3:30, and first went with the IPA, which we named Fun Bags. We took the base kit for the IPA, then added some additional ingredients (it came with 3 oz of Cascade). Friar Tucks had a very limited selection of Hops, so Thad and I picked up an ounce of Spalt, and a tube of high gravity yeast. On Saturday, Thad went to the Champaign pet and hobby store, and picked up two more ounces of hops, (I'll list what they were later, after I go check on the fermentation).

We started out cleaning, then got to the boiling. Our kits both had crushed grains, so we steeped them for the recommended 20 mintues, along with an explanation of why we were doing it. Then we added our LME and first set of hops. Every 15 minutes we added another ounce of hops, and we boiled for about an hour and 15 minutes. At the final addition, we threw in the wort chiller to sterilize that.

We encountered an issue, when I noticed the wort chiller wouldn't attach to Kriddy's faucet, so we found the garden hose and hooked that up. At the end of the boil, we rushed outside and hooked up the chiller. The temperature of the wort dropped from around 212 to 72 degrees after running 6 gallons of water through the chiller. We rushed it inside and filtered out the 6 ounces of hops and then topped off our water to five gallons. Threw in the liquid yeast, along with the dry packet that comes with it. Took our OG, and it came out about 1.052. We covered it, filled up the air lock, and set it in Kriddy's laundry room.

Then, we got to clean everything, again.

At this point, everyone who was at the football game showed up, and we pretty much repeated the process, this time making a brown ale.

Everything went the same, except we got our temperature dropped with only 5 gallons of water through the wort chiller, as the outside temperature had dropped significantly.

As we were brewing the brown, everyone was trying to think of names for it. The IPA got named "Fun Bags" earlier, due to one of the unique health benefits of a compound in hops that makes breasts grow larger. Sticking with the "bag" theme, the brown was almost named colostomy bag brown, but it was decided no one would want to drink that. Eventually it became known as the "Brown Note".

It's OG was 1.040 (I believe).

We cleaned up, and that was it.

During the day, we all sampled some of mine and Thad's previous brews, including the Punkin Pumpkin Ale (which everyone really seemed to like), In My Country Chocolate Stouts YOU!, regular Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Stout, and a bottle of Oatmizzle Stoutizzle.

The chocolate foamed up again, and the oatmeal also had significant foamage.

Everyone seemed to be interested in how to brew... well, except for Kai, as he would rather run to the store and get bud light; but that's just Kai...

Everyone got to taste LME, and sniff several varieties of hops. Most people took turns stirring, and cleaning.

Hopefully, it leads a couple to brewing their own, I think Ty seemed the most interested... brew kits, they make a great Christmas present!!!