Beer! Beer! Beer!

That was the subject line on an email Ryan sent me a couple of weeks ago. As in, "let's brew some".

So yesterday I gathered up all my equipment for a day of brewing and headed out to Fulton. It was... hot. But there was a nice breeze until about 2:00pm.

His buddy Scott wanted to participate (I think he was actually the catalyst) and so I'd ordered ingredients for an Amber Ale that Ryan wanted to brew. From grain, for the record.

Things went rather smoothly, but the burner we had was pretty slow. So while we waited for the wort to boil we headed down to the lake with the kyaks and the canoe. My first time in a kayak.

I have got to get me one of those. They're great! So responsive. So ... personal.

Anyway, we went up just before it started boiling, and when it did we put the bittering hops in and went back down to the lake for another 45 minutes.

Ryan wanted someone in the canoe with him to make it easier to paddle around, I guess. So Scott went in with him.... and they dumped trying to push off. Sadly, beer was lost.

But it was my turn when we got out. I didn't pull far enough up and I tipped the kyak getting out. Man, that lake-shore gunk STANKS! (that's the cajun way to put it). It's STANKY stuff.

We got back in time to put the finishing hops in. But couldn't find my double-female-ended hose to hook up the wort chiller. So we improvised with....

DUCT TAPE!!!!!

Which worked just long enough to chill down the double-batch. So now there's 10 gallons of Amber Ale fermenting at Ryan's down in "the bunker".

Incidentally, while cleaning up we found the double-female-ended hose. It was 10' behind us the whole time.