Such a glorious day

OK, so yesterday (July 4th) I woke up around 8 AM.  I was interwebzing while the lovely and sleepy Bonnie continued her day-off slumber.  I saw a couple of homebrew tweets and thought "Let's do this!"

I already had my popcorn popped for Popcorn Pale, so BINGO!

My rig wasn't really ready to go. Typically, I 'll have the water hot and the brew day is quick.  This time, I decided to brew spontaneously.  So, I had to fill my HLT's, get the water hot, etc.  No matter, as I still had to formulate my recipe, get the grain crushed, etc etc.

Also today seemed like the perfect day to bottle the Collaboration beer which Jeremy and I brewed on the 10th of June, which I dry-hopped a week ago. BTW- it tastes absolutely AWESOME.

My little neighbor buddy, Tanner, swung by and ended up spending 4 hours hanging out with me brewing.  If only my 9 year old son had the same interest as this random 8-year old... oh well. This little punkin...
A) Sanitized all my bottles
B) Filled all my bottles
C) Capped all my bottles
D) LABELED every bottle cap
E) De-labeled some random bottles I had lying around

ALL FREE CHILD LABOR!!! SCORE!!!

When his mom came over to see where he was (after 3 hours) I showed her all the science we were accomplishing , and her reply was "If he gets to be a pest, just send him home"

Do you have any idea how much popcorn, 3 and a hlaf punds is?  It's 3 paper grocery bags full. Yes.  3.  That's a LOT of popcorn.  When I pour it into my 5 gallon mash tun, it melts of course, and it all fits with no problem.  Very interesting process though.

My hope is that this batch wil have more of the popcorn flavor in it.  The last couple of batches really didn't, so I increased the popcorn ratio on this one.  Also used some different hops.  I should have looked at some liquid yeasts which potentially highlight "malt" flavors.  Maybe next time.

The brew day went smooth as silk.

I really feel fortunate that my "rig" makes brewing so simple.  I can decide that I want to brew, and it takes less than 5 minutes to have the brew stand completely assembled and the water heating up.  I mean, that's just awesome.

Today I am working on my homebrew class syllabus.  I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to teach new brewers.