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.