Brew Out

Just a quick note to express what a joy it is to brew in the company of other brewers.

Sunday, I hosted a get-together with some other local Phoenix brewers. This is the third time that we have gotten together with an ad-hoc group that we have been calling BATF which stands for Beer Acronym to Follow.

When you are the host of a brew out, your entire brewing routine goes out the window. You are constantly making sure your guests have what they need to get started and you are drawn to observe their methods and chat with them about brewing.

I brewed an Centennial IPA based up on a Two Hearted clone I saw on the web. Took forever to get my strike water to the right temp, still missed my desired strike, did an ad-hoc decoction, about the only thing I was able to brew by the numbers was the coffee.

Still, between the 3 of us, we cranked out 25 gallons and my OG was right on. So as the host, you take pride in the entire endeavor which overall was a success.

As an added bonus, we finally got to sample a parti-gyle beer we created during our last brew out. The beer was the result of the second runnings of a Barleywine grain bill. The wort was a combination of my runnings and those of another brewer. The host of the last event donated hops (we forget which) and was responsible for fermenting, kegging and carbing.

The beer turn out to be very good. We threw it in the pool to keep it at serving temperature. Tomorrow we plan on bringing the final 2 gallons of it to our local home brew club meeting.