Learn to Homebrew Day

November 3, 2012

Learn to Homebrew Day at Aaron's House

On November 3rd, to support the American Homebrewers Association Learn to Homebrew Day, Big Nut Brewing hosted a Learn to Homebrew event.  We had a good turnout with three non-brewers joining three brewers from the Big Nut crew and fellow brewer Sanjay Shah.  

We brewed three different beers:

10 gallon all-grain Lagunitas Brown Shugga clone (brewed on Sanjay 15 gallon Blichmann setup)

10 gallon all-grain QuinteCentiAle IPA (brewed on Aaron's 15 gallon keggle setup)

5 gallon extract Black IPA (brewed on turkey fryer setup)

The brew day went quite well with all three beers hitting their target OG within 2 points.  It was certainly hectic, but hopefully educational for those trying to learn the different brewing methods (extract and all-grain).  Another event will be planned, so stay tuned and let us know if you're interested. It's safe to say we won't be brewing 3 beers for the next one...by the end of the brew day (start at 7:30am, ended at 3:00pm) everyone was beat!!

Rough timeline for these beers:

Fermentation will be 1-2 weeks.

Another (at least) 1 week of dry hoping (all three beers are dry hopped!!).  

After that, they'll be transferred to corny kegs and carbonated (about a week).  

The QuinteCentiAle and Black IPA should be ready right away.  

The Brown Shugga will probably age for a bit.  Hopefully ready for Christmas time.

Sanjay going through the Brown Shugga mashing steps with Kerry and Dane.

Andy measuring out sparge water for the Brown Shugga...at least I hope that's what he was doing!

On the left, the Brown Shugga in the middle of the 90 minute boil.  On the turkey fryer, the Black IPA finishes steeping.  On the right, Mike stirs the QuinteCentiAle mash while Kerry, Dane and Andy look on.

Steve and Sanjay check the OG of the Brown Shugga.

The Black IPA bubbling away in the bath tub ~18 hours after pitching.

The QuinteCentiAle (left) and Brown Shugga (right) start their fermentation in the temperature controller freezer (set to 68F/20C).

The Black IPA is REALLY kicking out the krausen less than 24 hours after pitching.  Note, the use of the blow off tube...yes, we HAVE learned from our mistakes!!  This is in our basement bathroom, as I type this watching football in my living room, I can hear the thump, thump, thump of the Black IPA!!