A barrel of fun

This past Sunday, members of the Boston-area homebrew club the Wort Processors got together to do a group brew. This meant that more than half a dozen people were brewing the same recipe, a wee heavy that would go into a rum barrel to ferment (see my story in this week's Food section about brewers barrel-aging their beer). Each person used his own brewing setup, but all were gathered in the same place, the backyard of one of the members (above). Grain was milled, hops were measured out, and then the various burners were fired up and the boiling began.

There was a lot of improvising going on, including using a power drill (below) to unclump some of the grain.

Eventually, all the beer ended up in this barrel (below), where it will ferment for several months. As the Wort member who volunteered his yard for the brew reported,
200 pounds of grain +
2 pounds of hops +
830 gallons of water =
60 gallons of Wee Heavy in a rum barrel. Cheers!