Brother Brewing - In Person

My brother was able to come down and visit a couple weeks ago and we were able to brew together in person. I must say that I had been looking forward to doing this for some time. Jeff and I have shared common interests and hobbies since I was in kindergarten and it has been great to have another topic to talk about. We have definitely exchanged more phone calls and emails recently, discussing homebrewing clubs, equipment, competitions, and recipes. In fact, during the visit, my wife even requested "can we PLEASE talk about something OTHER than beer!" I count this a moment of personal success, as my wife is pretty much immune to beer-related talk at this point in our relationship.

At any rate, after much debate and research, we decided on brewing a Belgian pale ale. It fit our requirements to brew something slightly "paler," with an interesting element, something of moderate alcohol strength (~6% ABV), and something neither of us had brewed recently. We elected on doing a Brew Your Own (BYO) magazine clone of the Lost Abbey Devotion Ale. The recipe looked interesting and was developed with the help of the brewer (a key component when it comes to clone recipes). The brew day went very well, except for planning around a spring storm that never arrived, and Jeff spending time trying to solder an addition to my immersion chiller (more below). Jeff even got me to try a Flemish sour beer that I ended up liking (Duchess de Bourgogne, brewed by the Verhaeghe Brewery). I am planning on taking some of the Belgian pale up to Jeff when we visit his home later this summer. [Note: the Belgian pale is the furthest carboy to the back of the picture. The other two are oatmeal stouts for Baker's summer party]

One of the other brewing things we did during that weekend was to upgrade my immersion chiller. I had been having some trouble cooling batches down recently, with 10 gallon batches taking well over an hour to cool to pitching temperatures. My existing immersion chiller was only 25 feet of 1/4" copper tubing. So, I purchased 25 feet of 3/8" copper tubing with the hope that I could connect the two of them somehow and double my cooling capacity. I am glad that Jeff was here to help, as he had soldered pipes before. Even so, it took two different trips to Lowes to get everything we needed, plus about 90 minutes of work. But, the chiller works great and it is all thanks to Jeff.