Big Sunday – Brewday with Gold Medalist Homebrewer!

I’ve mentioned his name a few times, but my friend and coworker Neal is a gold medal (and other medal) winning home brewer. He has certainly passed off a bunch of knowledge to me in regards to brewing, and for no other reason than just loving the hobby. When I brew with Neal I realize how little I actually know about the process, and I always learn a great deal. Every year, he and I put our heads together and brew a batch of beer for our company picnic. It usually is a beer that uses hops from Neal’s hop garden, and whatever grains we can scrape together from our collections, to balance. Here is a collection of photos I took throughout the day, with some explanations- enjoy!

First, we’ll start with the grains – !  This was probably one of the more complex grain bills I’ve worked with – 7 total grains on the list – pretty cool to work with someone that could tell me what each ingredient would add- usually I just shoot from the hip and cross my fingers!!

Our mash went perfectly, and things seemed to be flowing just fine, for our Vorlauf –

We decided to do a ‘first wort’ hop addition –

It was awesome seeing our preboil wort dribble out onto a luscious bed of whole leaf hops – The aromas were great.

6.5 gallons were collected, and we were ready to roll!

Ounces of fresh leaf hops were on standby!

Here we are, getting into trouble:

And at the end of the brew, we had managed to hit our target gravity within .001 – which is astounding.. and again, only something I’ve been able predict and hit with Neal’s help. He’s got skills – it’s crazy.

Our final post boil wort was exactly the color we were aiming for too –

So – No brew day would be complete without food and home brew samples – and Neal certainly didn’t come without a medley of home brewed amazingness. Luckily, I had some to share as well! Let’s see if I can remember everything we tried:

I brought up a growler of the ‘Orange American Ale’ (as I’m calling it now) that I brewed a few weeks ago – Neal offered his criticism, but said it was a success – which is good enough for me!

Then he brought out some big guns: a ‘Raspberry Cider’ – which was amazing.

I didn’t know we were going with the big guns first, so I broke out my Blackberry Malomel Mead, which is just shy of 2 years old. Foggy, but delicious.

Neal had a mead as well which we tried, which was much lighter and clearer than mine – (I didn’t get pictures of everything)

Then he broke out a bottle of his house beer – the ‘Extra Special Bitter’ which I’ve had on tap at his house, and it’s a super drinkable session beer – low 5% in ABV and can be drank all day – he asked me if I noticed anything different..  I took another sip – ‘an infection?’ I asked timidly. Sure enough I was actually right! My palette is more refined than I thought!

What else did we drink?

How about 2012 Pear wine?  holy shit that stuff was great:

Then someone thought it would be a good idea to drink some of this stuff:

That was probably our first mistake.

I brought up some of my own home-made liquor: ‘Sink – Root Whiskey’ from a year ago –

Of course we kept going..   I broke out a bottle of Flander’s Red from Community Beer Works that I picked up during their 5 year anniversary party.

Then we drank a bottle of Riesling that Erica and I had made – wasn’t bad, wasn’t great. That was probably also a mistake.

After that, Neal broke out a bottle of his ‘Old Peculiar’ which was a brown ale he and a friend made, but accidentally used infected yeast. It ended up being a terrible beer that they just let sit in the basement, trying every once in a while. Sure enough, 4 years later – the gross flavor mellowed out, yielding a delicious smooth beer with a very unique flavor.

That’s when I decided to crack a beer I made about 3 years ago –

It was a double IPA that had fermented too quickly, resulting in a solventy, nasty taste that made it rather undrinkable. I could drink it, but it just tasted crappy. It appeared that it also had begun to turn around – the nasty flavor giving away to aged sherry notes that we both agreed were very good!

Then Neal dropped the hammer, pulling out his Gold Medal winner for 2017 in the ‘Barleywine’ category – the Imperial Nut Brown made with black walnuts from his yard – SO GOOD.

The day was supposed to be rainy the entire day, but the sun actually came out –

Snaps (the cat) didn’t know what to make of everything that was going on that day .

And of course, a brew day wouldn’t be complete without some food –

I made some pulled pork with some South Carolina Tangy Mustard sauce:

Oh and I accidentally made Ice Mushrooms – when cooling off wort to take gravity readings..  pretty cool:

After hanging outside and listening to tunes and laughing a bunch, we went in and both ended up taking naps while we watched some TV – (lol…)

I ended the day by sharing a leftover porterhouse steak:

pretty yummy!

Well,  that’s one action packed day!  I was exhausted!

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