Last night, My college buddy Matt (also a member here now!) came down for a visit to teach me how to make homebrew beer. I've been wanting to, but lacked the equipment and was intimidated by the extra steps and ingredients. In return, I showed him how simple making a mead is. LOL. (I got the better end of the deal on this one!)

Matt, unfortunately, forgot to bring his kilt along with him on this trip down, as well as forgetting his grain for the beer, and a couple of other things he intended to pack. LOL. At least I wore mine, and I offered him one of my other kilts, but he didn't think they would fit well enough.

Amazingly, brewing beer was alot simpler than I thought, and even with the missing ingredient and later that night a waterline break in the nieghborhood rendering the wort chiller useless, we improvised and had a great time!

So, on with the pics...

The first one is of me, adding in the dry malt to the wort.


The next is of Matt, adding in the malt extract.


Here is our boiling wort. It was a beer kit, so no yummy whole hops, just the pellets. And since our grain was missing, we used and extra pound of honey. The SG reading tells us it's going to be a light beer in Alc. content and color, but should be very honey sweet.


Adding in the yeasties to the batch. Matt used one of the smack packs, and it was certainly raring to go when we finally got to that step!


And the two finished products. The mead is in the one gallon glass jug. No pics of that, but it only took a fraction of the time the beer did! LOL. As of right now, the beer is bubbling away VERY happily, and I predict the mead will be doing just as well within the next 24 hours.


In a couple of weeks, Matt plans to make his way back down to this area for a day of bottling beer! What a great night!