While I was out cavorting and visiting with my friends over the weekend, Keith was hard at work with his brother Aaron helping him brew his first batch of beer on the new equipment at the brewery.

Now before you feel too sorry for him, you probably should know what happens during the brewing process.  Sure there is a lot of hard work involved in the commercial size batches they are brewing but they also beer while they brew it, so it isn't really all that bad!

By the time I arrived, at 10:00 p.m., they were still laboring over the brewing beer.  I'll give them credit, they looked pretty worn out and ready to be finished with the task at hand but they still had a lot left to do, like shoveling the boiled wheat/mash out of the boiler.





I ordered them up a pizza for delivery and then watched them work for a while trying to figure out what exactly they were doing.



The beer that they were making was being pumped over to a tank for it to sit and let the yeast take over before it would be ready to be bottled.



They seemed to have some concern over the fact that the beer wasn't quite doing what it was supposed to be doing but they went ahead and pumped it over to the tank and then started cleaning up the mess they had made while brewing.



Aaron tried to make sure everything was REALLY clean and took a first-hand look at the inside of his tank.  Keith thought it was pretty humorous but both of them were wearing near delirious so they were pretty funny to watch.



We finally left after midnight, with the highest of hopes that they had a successful batch.  Aaron has some really good recipes, which I have personally tasted, so I know Bootleggers Beer will do really well once he gets the product actually made!

(UPDATE - The beer that Keith and Aaron brewed didn't quite make it into beer.  Unfortunately they used the wrong type of wheat and made a huge batch of yeast.  The good news is that it wasn't a complete waste because yeast is a necessary part of the beer making process and it can be saved and used in future batches.  All in all it was a good learning experience of the equipemnt and I can guarantee that the next time they will have the wheat right!)

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