My friends Dave and Kent have been homebrewing for years, but I have only been talking about it and enjoying their tasty brews.  Last weekend, Ethan and Rick finally kicked my butt into gear and we actually acted on one of the many crazy schemes we’ve concocted.

The Supplies

Saturday was shopping day.  We went to Fort Worth Homebrew, on the east side of Fort Worth.  It’s a fun, family-run establishment, and the folks there are very helpful.  We even got to sample some of their homebrews (the smoked beer was delicious!).  After stocking up on a mid-sized brewing kit, we selected a recipe for Belgium Pale Ale.  We opted for the malt extract since it’s our first time.  After this, we patted ourselves on the backs and capped the afternoon off by watching District 9 – an excellent film full of most of the Half-life 2 weapons.

Brew Day

We met up Monday night to start brewing.  Suffice it to say, it was a very easy process.  After hearing lots of warnings, we decided to overly sterilize everything.  Since I was with Ethan and Rick, but bio-sciences guys, we stuck to the protocol, erm.. recipe to the very last detail.  In fact, our specific gravity was only 1/1000th off from the baseline.

Below are the images from the brewing.  You can see the full gallery here.

The supplies

The fermentation bucket

Boiling the wort

Cooling it back down

Adding the yeast

The Result?

We aren’t sure yet!  We’re transferring over to the carboy next Monday for the 2nd fermentation, and then over to bottles a week after that.  Finally, we’ll let it age for three weeks before we get to see how we did.

However, we at least know it’s bubbling away in the bucket right now!

On Thursday night, Erin dropped by on her trek to KC.  This led to some good Isis/Jabber time and also let Erin and I catch up over some tasty BBQ.  She also introduced me to a fun new game called Alhambra.  Good times, although I must say that I enjoy Settlers better.

On Friday, Angela treated me to baseball, beer, brats, and blowing things up, all in the same event!  We went to a Fort Worth Cats minor league game.  Their logo, no kidding, is FTW, and boy did they, 9-3.  We even made friends with a completely wasted old man with a net loss of teeth.  It’s always fun to carry on conversations with people who might as well have a mouthful of marbles.  I like it because I can invent in my head whatever I want them to say and the conversation carries on just about the same.

I was really surprised on Saturday.  Angela took me out to get a massage which nearly put me to sleep the rest of the afternoon.  Thankfully I came to, because after that we went to Truluck for an amazing dinner.  I had the sesame tuna this time and Angela tried the mahi-mahi.  Both were fantastic.  We finished the night watching Wall*E.  I found it very cute and incredibly human, which is funny considering it’s a movie about two robots on Earth with only a couple lines of dialog between them.

Today, my actual birthday, I largely spent in bed being lazy.  This evening, after some grocery shopping (and cake-buying!!) we met up with Griff and Courtney to watch Wanted at Movie Tavern.  I really enjoyed the film, and it was a great end to the weekend.  

Sadly we all head back to work tomorrow.  Thankfully, Angela and I will be meeting up with my folks in two weeks to spend a short 3 day vacation on the coast.  Time to start looking forward to that.