I’m really lucky to have friends that love craft beer and who also love the brewing process. My wife and I have had them over on a few brew days and I find teaching how to brew almost as satisfying as brewing.
As part of my friend Jessica’s birthday gift, I ordered an extract kit of a “fat tire” clone (one of her favorite beers) and invited her over to brew it at our place. She was so excited! I only made the starter, setup the equipment, and answered questions, I let her do everything else.
Right in the middle of heating up the water it started to rain so we moved everything under the metal awning attached to the house and continued undeterred. The rain kept getting worse and worse and turned out to be the worst storm we’ve had all summer. We used beach umbrellas to shield us from the wind and rain but there was still almost an inch of water that slowly crept up as we moved closer and closer to the house. It was miserable, and turned out to be the most fun brewing we’ve ever had.
We unanimously named it Rainy Day Ale and three weeks later we presented it to her on her birthday. It was deliclous. I don’t know what was better, the brew day, the beer or the smile on her face when she opened the bottle and took her first sip.
She did a fantastic job and we all had a great time. I highly recommend doing this for your friends, you’ll be happy you did! I know I was!
Sounds like great fun. I’m planning on going to a group brew in a couple of weeks. Setting up my all grain equipment and brewing with a few extract brewers. They have never seen the all grain process before. Should be a good day.
Good for you! I have a love/hate relationship with brewing in the rain, as it always seems to be muddy out on my brewdays. I’m coming in and out of the house a hundred times over 9 hours (I do 2 ten gallon AG batches on brewday). I’ll never forget brewing in a severe thunderstorm, where water was coming down like buckets just outside. I brew under my deck and had to put a tarp down above and have a beach umbrella over the boil kettle. I was soaked! The best feeling after days like that is when you’re all done cleaning up, yeast is pitched, everything is put away, and you get into some dry clothes after a shower. Having that first sip after putting your feet up for the day is the best. Here’s to a job well done and to what will shortly be coming out of that fermenter!
I have a few neighbors who come over and brew with me on occasion. I call them my minions. It’s a great deal for me, as they offered to pay for all the expenses, and I still get 5 gallons of beer.
As far as brewing in the rain, my boil-off rate gets rather unpredictable. Unless it’s really windy I do not boil off as much as normal. I now plan for a lower final volume and top off as needed.