The Aftermath

After getting properly crunked on good homebies and Sparks in 'wrence's driveway on Saturday night, we ventured off in good cheer to the LHBS for some brewing essentials. To our dismay, the place was a complete fucking junk show when we got there. Many of your typical stereotypes were in attendance. First we had your typical clueless older couple complete with the wife who waddles around the fucking store in a daze with a homebrew recipe book open in her hands repeating a word or phrase whose meaning completely evades her. This is her penance for last week's trip to Nordstrom's. We had another middle-aged dude, who I guess seemed like he knew what he was doing, but unfortunately due to his age and proximity gets lumped in with the douchey older couple. We also ran across a couple of moderately attractive younger girls who would have been even more attractive if they weren't wearing those stupid fucking socks that all these idiots wear now to make themselves ugly. They are trying to brew beer both because it is cheap and they think that somehow it is alternative enough to get them some street cred with some dudes or something. They are tackling a lager out of the gate...my heart goes out to them. Working the crowd were the larger, rather socially inept dude, the creepy shirt-half-unbuttoned drunk dude who loves talking about his DUI, and behind the counter we had heart-breakingly normal by comparison dude who probably dreads Saturday mornings more than his annual prostate exam.

Amidst all the hullabaloo, I somehow switched the tops on the Vienna and German Pilsener malts and 'wrence proceeded to dump three pounds of it in with the rest of his grain bill. After much waffling, he decided to alert the Fat Guy who decided to only charge half price...minor catastrophe averted. Aside from this, the trip was a relatively calm 45 minutes of scooping, weighing, and milling. We both got what we wanted and capped it off with a stop at Anna's in Porter Square for breakfast. And I wonder why I have such a hard time believing that I have had the explosive runs for the better part of a week now.

The rest of the weekend was spent playing numerous games of cornhole, drinking beers, frequenting certain Beverly/Salem drinking and eating establishments and getting my brew on. The second annual Heffe, brewed at Angie's request will be called Don't Hassle the Heffe. The brew sesh went smoothly, despite the fact that I essentially wound up with a stuck mash at one point as I wated for more sparge water to come to temp and the gravity suffered as a result. The recipe was simple: 5 pounds wheat & 4 pounds pilsener mashed at 153 for an hour...3/4 ounce Liberty hops for the full boil, and WLP 380 Hefeweizen IV Ale yeast. The shit took off like a shot out of a cannon and blew a hole in the foil I had atop the carby. Gotta love a nice vigorous yeast chowdown. My nachos are done now, see ya later.

&Ry