I took Neal up on an opportunity to help with a brew day at his place down in Springville. Like I said, I always manage to learn a lot when I brew with Neal – hints, tips, history, science – all sorts of good stuff.
Here’s a collection of images from the brew day with some captions to help:
We got there around 10am – Neal was rocking out on his tractor cleaning up the trails behind his house – he’s got some acreage down there!
He has a handful of barn cats that he cares for – they always come hang out to see what’s happening.
How’s the hopyard looking:
All trimmed up and ready to start training! looking good Neal!
Now lets get down to business – Brewing his ‘Newcastle’ clone recipe, very exciting. 10 gallon batch! Thats a lot of grain!
Neal’s mill setup is no joke:
Ginding is something I’m good at!
Look at that grind!
Inside with his amazing fireplace:
Look at that cat! Tony!
Everything is all set up and ready to go:
Sparging:
pretty dope flywheel style sparging device that he built:
Always fun to see what else he has in the works:
yes, that one carboy says ‘2013 Cider’ – that’s been going for 4 years! pretty amazing that he has the patience to wait that long. What about the name on this one:
Converted keg makes great boil kettle!
Sampled a bunch of different beers:
Check out this bottle opener – let’s you open a beer without jacking up the cap, so you can cram the cap back on or save it!
and there were more cats – kittens actually!
Adding hops!
So, Neal gets infections in his beer, but what’s interesting is that he has a naturally occurring bacteria that some breweries love to create the funky flavors, he hates that flavor, and uses aquarium pumps with 1 micron filters hooked up to keep positive air pressure flowing out of his carboys after he cleans and sanitizes – pretty awesome idea!
those hoses are going to the two carboys that he has on standby. He also uses the same apparatus to aerate his wort !
Almost done!
Time to chill – check out Neal’s home made counterflow wort chiller!
pretty effective – he can dial it in so that the temp going into the carboy is the perfect pitching temp.
Yeast was pitched – and the carboys went into his fermentation chamber –
Then it was time for dinner!
You might recognize these pepper bark ribs:
They were yummy!
Can’t wait to try the brown ale – pre ferment it was damn tasty!