Those wacky kids at Atomic Nerds have embarked upon the wondrous voyage of homebrewing. The potential punch lines for home biochemistry experiments in Los Alamos beggar the imagination. Hell, I bet just typing the words "home biochemistry experiments in Los Alamos" makes red lights blink somewhere in Al's intertubes.
Also, I feel very warm and fuzzy about the last picture in the post.
In other beer news, Clipper City Heavy Seas Loose Cannon is good stuff.
Actually, there's a TREMENDOUSLY active homebrewing club here, the Los Alamos Atom Mashers. We're not (yet) members, but between the climate, the state DIY ethos, and the collection of expertise... some have gotten good enough to start selling beer to local restaurants.
ReplyDeleteThere's also a club for ceramics hobbyists devoted to the chemistry and physics of glazes.
Oh, believe me, I just spent eight years selling guns to Oak Ridgers; I totally grok where you're coming from. :)
ReplyDeleteHe may need a steady source of good beer if Mr. "Hope & Change" is elected.
ReplyDeleteI used to homebrew. Very enjoyable hobby. I still have most of the hardware -- in fact, I think I still have enough to do a batch, except for the big brew kettle. The wait for the wort to cool down is a bit of a pain, which is why I made a wort chiller after my 2nd batch. And the wort chiller is one thing I don't still have.
ReplyDeleteOne thing about home brewing -- you can certainly get your brew as hoppy as you like it, and then some. Mmmmm, hops.
And there's no smell quite like your kitchen when you have a wort boiling away on the stove, and several bags of hops sitting on the counter. Delicious!
A handy little tip I figured out:
ReplyDeleteA 15-gallon (60 quart) stock pot costs several hundred dollars.
A keg of mass-produced swill has a deposit of (usually) $75.
The machine work required to remove a section of the top and fit it to your largest lid is of negligible cost.
(Word verification: tykou. You're welcome.)
So is the empty keg if you know somebody in college.
Hrm. That's not the order in which I typed those sentences....
ReplyDeleteDave,
ReplyDeleteSome of us found turkey fryers on sale after the holidays for less than $70, big steel pot AND a propane burner included.
I dabbled in homebrewing for a bit right after I graduated from college (96-97). I never managed to make anything worth making again, but I did manage to craft a coffee stout that was like the hellish offspring of Guineess and the strongest truck stop coffee you could think of. That stuff would drunkenly hop across the table to you.
ReplyDeleteChris