Collabrewation

It was a damp, foggy winter morning in Oak Park when a portion of the UnderGround BrewSquad (my homebrew club) met for a demonstration brew day at Brew Ferment Distill.  On any ordinary group brew day, one can expect to find a melange of brewers brewing a variety of recipes on differing brew systems; this was no ordinary brew day.  This day we would collaborate.


I have only ever brewed alone, so it was a little strange, but also refreshing to share the duties.  I paired with my brewther Calvin.  Last year both of us placed in a homebrew competition called Go For The Glory.  With that in mind, we decided to use our award winning recipes as a base for our collabrewation Pale Ale.  We have dubbed it "Went For The Glory".  The other pairing was Calvin's usual co-brewer Peter, AKA Hobbs, and Mike, AKA Professor Vorlauf.  They brewed a Dusseldorf Altbier that they have named "Oh Meine Leber", which translates to, "Oh My Liver"

Calvin, The Prof., Hobbs and Me.  I'm stirring water that I allowed to get hotter
than I wanted.  I seem to do that nearly every time I brew.  Maybe I should install
a thermometer in my kettle, or I can just plan on extra stirring; either way.

Cal & I doughing in.  Doughing in is the process of  adding hot water to the
grain in stages.  Some grain, some hot water, then some more grain and then
some more hot water, etc... until all of the grain and the calculated water
volume has been added to the mash tun (that would be the cooler)

Kelfie (kettle selfie).  This was taken after
the collection of the first runnings which went
much faster than the second, but not as fast
as Cool Runnings

Hobbs is very excited about this hop addition.
That mesh is there to keep ash from the pallet
fire, err I mean fire pit out of the kettle

The brew day lasted a bit longer than I had anticipated, but it went well.  We were a little low in the temperature of our mash due to my guesstimations, but that was simple to correct with a small amount of boiling water. We hit the targeted original gravity and have a lovely active fermentation going as I type.  In a few weeks Cal and I will bottle our batch of beer and then after a few weeks of bottle conditioning, we get to say that we "Went For The Glory".



Cheers!