It was July 20th 2007 and just for fun I brought out the camera with me to brew, although I was very preoccupied with brewing to get some real interesting pictures, at least you can get a glimpse into the way that I brew. I always enjoy seeing what others do, so maybe someone may enjoy seeing how I do it.
         
This is the first brew with a new mash tun. Based on the Denny Conn version of a mash tun, only thing different is I didn't use a SS braid, I had some copper that fin into the hose so I just drilled a bunch of holes and used a SS hose clamp to keep everything tight.
         
         
             
  Here it is filled with the grains. There is 12 pounds Pale Ale Malt, 1 pound each of home roasted Amber, Deep Amber, and Copper Malts, and 1 1/2 pounds of home roasted gold malt.        
             
         
Here I am heating my strike water in a 5 gallon pot I used to use when I did extract brews. Soon as I get my other keggles done I will be doing 10 gallon batches and this pot will be retired. Now I just use it to heat both my strike and sparge water.        
         
         
Mashing in, my target temp was 154.        
         
         
And I was off by 1.6 degrees. Not the end of the world.        
         
Here is some stuff I have waiting while the mash is on. The mash tun, the hops are from left to right, 3oz of Simcoe, 4oz of Amarillo, and 1oz of German Saphire. In the back you can see my air pump and the immersion chiller that I obviously made myself. The copper I got from work. We make ice machines and this was some copper that was bent for one of the components of the ice machine, and when they were going to toss it, I thought it would fit inside my keggle and it does. That is why it is the square shape and not coiled round. Also you can see my brew sheet and some 5.2 I used.        
         
         
Gotta make sure your stuff is clean. A nice clean keggle is very thirsty for some wort.        
         
         
Feeding the keggle with my first runnings. The only problem with home roasting is you don't always know what Lovibond you are getting, or exactly how roasted the malts are. I did these all exactly the same as my last batch but the grains seemed to be a bit darker. This may not be quite an IPA, but more an American brown. We'll see once it's all done. But the color is a bit dark, I'll have to see about the taste in a few weeks.        
         
         
Here is a picture of the boil right as the break was forming. Keep an eye on the sides of the keggle, things can get pretty hectic trying to prevent a boil over so I didn't take any pictures.        
         
         
Once things settled you can see how high high the break got. I still have not added any hops yet. I added the simcoe at 10 min left, the amarillo at 5 min left, and the saphire at flameout.        
         
         
Here is the carboy all clean and sanitized and ready to be filled. I am just minutes away from flameout and about to chill. Also I am showing the yeast. I used US-05. As you can see I used Beer Tools Pro to formulate this recipe. I usually use beersmith but I am trying to tweak beer tools to be more accurate to my system. I really like the program but it's just not as easy to use as beersmith IMO.        
         
         
OK, Chilling in progress. And yes that's a clean towel. The wort went from 214 degrees to 80 degrees in about 15 minutes. Flameout was at roughly 11:14pm and I hit 80 at 11:27pm when I looked at the time. I then ran into the house to get my aeration stone which was boiling. By time I returned the beer was at 74 (as cool as I can get it) and ready to transfer out. I attached the stone and plugged in the pump. You can see the green pre filter in the line and then after that I have the main filter for Aeration.        
         
         
Here is the beer filling, also you can see the air filter better. I place old shirts down onto the concrete to avoid breaking the carboy. Just in case I let it slip a bit, or there is a small pebble on the ground I don't see. I also use the tin foil to try to minimize the chance of wild yeast out doors or mold spores getting in while transferring and aeration.        
         
         
  Once all is done, I pitch and bring inside and let her go. As of today it's bubbling away. I don't have a large blow off hose anymore so I had to make due with a small one. I hope It doesn't get clogged.        
                 
         
Here are a few pictures I snapped of my hops plant. It's this plants second year. The hop variety is Glacier. Last year I got just under an ounce, so I hope it does better this year.