[ja]cobdavis

First, let’s get a small detail out-of-the-way: All of my brew equipment is about an hour and half west from where I live. The long and short of it is my Father-in-law houses it all and watches my son while I do my thing. It works great.

With that said, making the trek out and forgoing a brew is odd. Driving that far with a toddler in tow forces unorthodox kettle fire times (8am) and ‘forced’ do-everything kind of brew days. Kegging has made transferring easy, but now that I’m ushering it off to my brother-in-law, things will likely change some. As it stands now, I will nearly never set a brew day solo; doing just a brew would be fine but because everything is bookended with a commute, I squeeze every single possible activity in so I’m not feeling as though I could have done more.

Which makes the past couple of visits even more strange. Friday, I spent a day bottling 10 gallons (2x 4gal Amber, 2x 1gal House variants). Then came Tuesday, where we spent just the early afternoon and I bottled 4 gallons and prepped. Of course, I wanted to brew, but forgot to stop for the rice hulls in making a 100% wheat beer, which helps not make one want to pull our hair during the sparge (rinsing of the grain).

So that means the brew-off, impending from the arrival of summer and the group buy is getting stacked: 100% wheat is marrying with two other styles I wanted to make – a session saison and a grapefruit wheat (featuring rind and juice of 4-5 massive family grown fruits), so there is one. Summer Stout is in the mind-cooker, a summer-solstice inspired number, the first of the solara, the… well you get the idea.

Time stops for no man. It’s time to get cooking.