Today I brewed with a friend who has been interested in brewing for a while. Beth took some notes, and I tried not to drop random tips and trivia when it wasn’t important. Overall, we kept it fairly simple with a single infusion mash, which is good because there were two toddlers tooling around the “brewery.” She seemed surprised at how simple the process was, and as the same with all-grain, once you understand the process, it’s really a cinch.
We happened to pick the most unpleasant day to brew though. It started out as just hot and sunny. We ended up yanking a patio umbrella from my parents to shade us while we mashed, but then the breeze died down and the humidity crept up. By the end of the boil, it was really muggy and I felt a great deal of awe for the commitment all my fellow homebrewers in the midwest, east coast and south, who cope with this stuff all the time.
Setup to tear down took about 5 hours, something that almost make me miss partial-mash brewing. The final numbers? Roughly 5.5 gallons (short by 1/2g) with an initial gravity of 1.058 (short by .003), so maybe I do need to consider looking at my efficiency. The wort tastes nice, and we kept pretty close to the original hop bill. Thanks to the chomp-happy Safale yeast, fermentation was going within 2 to 3 hours.