Join us for brewing, because America is awesome

Hey America, happy birthday. In honor of you, we’d like to brew tonight at 8pm at Jeff’s house. And we’d like to invite other people in and around Atlanta to join us. So join us, Americans. Join us as we brew for America. It is Monday Night, after all.

Image source: Making Happy

Monday Night recap: “The most glorious tour” edition

We had quite the crowd last night. Atlanta Beer Week, anyone? Jeff was even able to pull out his alter ego, Mr. Tour Guide. Walking backwards, yelling, answering questions… the whole enchilada. In the picture above Jeff appears to be giving a tour of the size of the fish he just caught. Which is most assuredly a lie.

Thanks to everyone who came and witnessed us hitting our target gravity of the Eye Patch Ale on the nose. While not a rare occurrence, it always feels great. You’ll be glad to know that despite Joel‘s complete uselessness, we were also able to knock out some transfers and kegging.

And that, my friends, is what hop buds look like. Go Cascade, go! Make us some tasty beer ingredients!

Monday Night recap: “First wit of the year” edition

And so it begins. Belgian wit season. A summertime favorite, we brew our Belgian wit with just a hint of fresh ginger and a big helping of love. We’re thinking about backing down the amount of love we add in the next batch, because it has a tendency to overpower the ginger. Here we are pouring in the ginger at the end of the boil:

Even though Joel was in attendance, we accomplished quite a lot last night. We kegged our Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale, dry hopped our Eye Patch Ale, and cleaned 8 kegs. Turns out we hadn’t cleaned kegs in awhile.

We at Monday Night pride ourselves on being light on rules and heavy on fun. That said, we may have to start instituting some rules on BYOB nights. For instance, Coors Light? Unacceptable. Next time just bring some skunked apple juice. Mikkeller 1000 IBU? Acceptable. And not as hoppy as you might assume. But still hoppy.

Monday Night recap: “Hops and Basketball” edition

We called an audible last night. We were going to brew our Belgian wit with some fresh ginger, but at the last second we decided to brew another Eye Patch Ale instead. Our reasons were many. You are most likely not interested in them. But for the sake of making this post longer, here they are:

• Our yeast for the Eye Patch Ale finally showed signs of life yesterday around lunchtime
• They were out of our preferred yeast for the wit
• We’ll have many uses for the Eye Patch Ale in coming months, as it is one of our two launch beers
• No one stepped up and volunteered to grate ginger. Seriously guys. WTF.
• Turns out we DID have the right hops for our Eye Patch Ale

Oh yes. We had the Duke/Butler game going in the background. Joel spent about an hour setting it up instead of helping me brew. He only broke two glasses in the process, which is some kind of Joel record.

We also had a shmeency bit of Laissez-Faire Barleywine on tap, which we brew once a year with cinnamon, cloves, Jamaican allspice and candied ginger. A delicious rarity.

I thought I’d include one picture of me stirring since I didn’t really stir the entire night. We put Anthony on stir-duty (Prince of Stir, a prestigious title) and he performed admirably. Look at that beautiful wort, just asking for more hops. And we aim to please. But now we’re out of Simcoe hops. Anthony, get on that please. Thanks to everyone who came last night!

Monday Night recap: “Peanut Butter Lady Time” edition

Well, folks. Peanut Butter Lady Time, our version of Ladies’ Night, was a huge success. A larger success than your mom.

Speaking of your mom, we brewed a batch of our Blind Pirate Double IPA. This beer always goes quickly, and we’re already excited about tasting it. Jeff was burning the midnight oil at work last night (I don’t know why they don’t have electricity in Midtown yet), but fortunately Scott stepped up. In honor of Scott’s contributions last night, I put forth the following haiku:

The wood was too wet.
They said it couldn’t be lit.
Scott said, “Gasoline.”

Scott also gave some tours, such as the one below. We have no way of verifying that he knew what he was talking about.

We had Eye Patch Ale, Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale, and some of our capitalist barleywine, Laissez-Faire, on tap. Thanks to all who came! Except for Joel.

Monday Night recap: “To boil or not to boil” edition

Greetings, fair ones. Last night we brewed up what could possibly be the final recipe for our Eye Patch Ale. We’ve been tweaking this recipe for over 3 years. It’s very close to where we want it, but we added just a skosh of wheat to give that little bit of mouthfeel we want to take it to the next level. For those keeping track, yes we DID use “skosh” and “mouthfeel” in the same sentence. The Pretentious Police will be knocking down our doors soon.

Overall things went very smoothly last night. Not surprising, considering Joel wasn’t in attendance. He gave us some excuse about “bathing his pet fish.” We did have an unusual amount of boilovers, so we kept ice handy. We also had some mysterious burner problems. Half of them were caused by Jeff not realizing that we were out of propane. But still… weird stuff. Here’s Jeff attempting to fix the empty propane tank by adjusting the regulator. Totally LOL.

In other news, Jeanine brought some delicious foreign cookies which tasted pretty American to me. I’m on board with this recent trend of people bringing dessert to brewing. Let’s keep it up, folks! Jonathan needs to keep his blood sugar elevated!

Monday Night recap: “Nothing more exciting than a new hose” edition

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There is literally nothing more exciting than a new garden hose. The ice debacle of last week broke one of our old hoses, so we amped up the party with our new rubber baby from Ace Hardware. Fortunately last night was relatively warm. We brewed up a new porter recipe which we’ll be experimenting with a little bit in secondary fermentation.

Needless to say, we hit our target gravity on the nose. Which probably has something to do with the fact that Joel didn’t help at all.

Despite Joel’s insolence, it was good to get back in the swing of things. Last night was the first Monday we’ve met since 2009. Frankly, we’re still a little disappointed that the world didn’t end when we brewed on a Saturday.

We also had a bunch of homebrewers bring their wares last night. It’s always great to try new beers. And someone brought some amaaaaazing chocolate cookies. I don’t know who you were, but I ate one. It was like a thousand chocolate fairies were dancing on my tongue. I hope they didn’t have any roofies or razor blades in them.

No, seriously. Did those cookies have roofies in them? I don’t remember falling asleep last night.