Saturday, August 13, 2005

The Return of the Brewmeister

Well, we got home last night and Vicki wanted to go to CJ's. We called the Williams' (neighbors) to see if they wanted to go -- and we hopped in the car and went. The wings, as always, were good -- they're not as hot as they used to be, but they're still the best wings in town.

We came home and hung out on their deck until dark drinking wine & beer. Kristie wanted to go to the 63 Diner for breakfast. They have great food and a neat little novelty "doo-wop" nostalgia niche.

We went at 8, so we could be back by 10 when the brew session was to start. I started packing stuff across to Ryan's place.

As I started to get the ingredients out, it was immediately clear I didn't have enough two-row malt for two recipies. Then... it was also clear that I didn't have enough Munich for one recipe.

There are no real brew shops in town for grain brewers. It was either St. Louis, or Kansas City. Vicki and Kristie were in Jefferson City, and I found a web page for a brew shop there -- so we called them up to do a fly-by since the phone number yielded an answering machine for a different business (often homebrew supply shops are side rackets). But then we noticed the web page was last updated in 2001. So we called the girls back and said "ah, forget it".

We went with the Munich Helles recipe, scaled down to 1 recipe, and used the Munich malt in place of the Vienna, and added a bit of black malt for color and a little "roastiness".

So it's Phrysco beer, after Phil, Ryan, and Scott (a co-worker of Ryan's) -- the three brewers.

I still have a yeast culture for some Oktoberfest.... tempting.

So all in all it went pretty well after that, and I had everything cleaned up by about 6:00. I'm beat. The carboy of fermenting beer is in Ryan's beer fridge, where it will stay for about 4 weeks. We'll rack it into a soda keg after that and carbonate. The debut date will be October 1, before the Mizzou football game -- and we'll still call it Oktoberfest.

No comments:

Post a Comment