Cartoons are great.

Especially when you should be doing something else.









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Notes from the first gathering/Lessons learned

Ah, so Saturday has come and gone, and with it the first all-grain batch performed by The Brewer's Rite. Josh and Justin made the trek to Scott's house and we knocked out a 10 gal. all grain batch on the rig that Scott is putting together and a 5 gal partial mash batch for comparison that Justin took home.

Here are a few nuggets of wisdom retained from Saturday's 10 or so hours of brewing madness:

1. When testing for starch conversion with iodine, you don't want anything to turn black.
2. Charlie Papazian describes the starch conversion test in his first edition REALLY BADLY.
3. John Palmer's website does a good job of describing the starch conversion test.
4. It takes a long-ass time to bring 13 gallons of wort to a boil when there are 30 mile an hour winds in February.
5. Scott has a really nice massaging chair thing.
6. Motorizing a malt mill is a really good idea.
7. Jager and whiskey shots are not the most effective component to the brewing process.
8. Josh is apparently not supposed to drink Jager.
9. There are good ways and bad ways to waking your wife up from a nap.
10. Hearing "honey, your beer is making a mess all over the kitchen" on Sunday morning means that the Rogue Pacman yeast is fermenting quite nicely.

All in all it was successful. We ended up with 18 or so gallons of Road Dog Scottish Porter clone fermenting with Rogue Pacman Yeast, Scott's house is still in one piece, Scott and Justin are still married, and Josh is still engaged. So all-in-all, a hat-trick of sorts. Oh, and I might add that the Rogue Pacman strain that Wyeast put out is the Chuck Norris of yeast strains.

Gentlemen Start Your Fermenters

I received an email from Empyrean today with respect to a request I had made to be included in the mailing for their next "Beer Quest" competition. This email also indicated that the next competition was likely to start in March. I have attempted to attach the link to Empyrean's page to this posting, we'll see how that works... This might be a great opportunity to get some notoriety for the club! The contests have limited availability (21 spots), so I'd advise going to the link and registering for an email when spots open up.

The innaugural meeting

While I know that I am the only person reading this page, the innaugural meeting of The Brewer's Rite will take place on Saturday, February 17th. It will be a day of firsts, as there will be a first attempt at all-grain (10 whole gallons!), and a partial mash version of an attempt to clone Flying Dog's Road Dog Scottish Porter. We didn't plan enough ahead to get the special yeast release for it from Wyeast, but a little (or a shitload :) ) of Rogue Pacman ought to do the job.

More to come, like directions and a time and stuff.

Sam Adam's Longshot Contest

If you're not aware, Sam Adam's had a homebrew competition last year, and they recently released a sampler pack of the 3 winning beers. I suggest you try it if you can find it. It's a blue box that says LONGSHOT really big on it.

They are also doing it again!, so follow the link if you want to register a profile so you can sign up.

We're legitimate!

sort of. well, the American Homebrewer's Association has recognized us. If you care, we are club # 173642. For some reason we're not listed on the site yet, but I'm sure that will be remedied soon. I hope someone besides me is reading this.

Welcome!

Hello, this is the home of The Brewer's Rite, a small collection of homebrewers in Omaha, NE. This is a work in progress, but we will soon have links to a number of resources, as well as info on TBR activities and gatherings.

In the meantime, you can email us at TheBrewersRite@gmail.com if you have any questions!