A very productive day.

Started at 6:00 AM. Went to the waffle house for breakfast ( double order of hash browns all the way ). Came home and lit the smoker and the boil pot. Brewed a 5 gallon Christmas ale, kegged 5 gallons of wheat smoked 12 pounds of beef and trying to drink 10 gallons of beer with 10 of my friends. Life doesn't get any better than this.

nasty_rabbit said:

Started at 6:00 AM. Went to the waffle house for breakfast ( double order of hash browns all the way ). Came home and lit the smoker and the boil pot. Brewed a 5 gallon Christmas ale, kegged 5 gallons of wheat smoked 12 pounds of beef and trying to drink 10 gallons of beer with 10 of my friends. Life doesn't get any better than this.

Click to expand...

Is it too early to get a Christmas Ale going?


How'd the beef turn out? I cooked 20 lbs of country pork ribs yesterday. They were $1.59/lb so I figured why not? Turns out the GF is on a diet and I have only been able to give 10lbs away. Delicious though! I'll either eat 8 lbs of ribs this week, or eat as much as I can til they go bad.

"Too early" is relative, I am planning to have 5 kegs full and 1 batch bottled by then and with everything else I question the ability to have it done. The "Milk Stout" is bottle conditioning now and the "Christmas Ale" has some spices that I want to blend and mellow before I tap it. Next on the list in no particular order are an IPA, a Honey Ale, a Blonde and a Cream Ale. I know, not much variety but I am looking more at the guest list than my preferences.

The beef was great and I regret that there are no left overs. I built an Ugly Drum Smoker about 3 years ago and it is not used nearly enough. It always amazes me that something so primitive could be so precise. I lit it at 06:00 in the morning and cranked it up to 400f, adjusted the vents and brought it down to 250f. I then added some pecan and plum to the coals and placed the meat. The thing flat lined at 250 for 6 hours and the internal temperature came out at 170f. I wrapped it in foil and placed it in a towel lined cooler for an hour and the meat generated about 2 cups of juice and just fell apart. The only monitoring was when anyone passed by to get a whiff they were obligated to at least look at the thermometer.

I was worried about getting it all done because I forgot to add to the above list that we had to clean and rebuild 8 new to us "corney's".

The only item we fell short on was the amount of beer that we were planning to consume but one guy brought over a very BIG IPA. More alcohol = less empties, and when a few fell out of chairs or the coolers they were sitting on and there were 2 chalk out-lines in the garage floor we decided to call it a night.

I can’t wait till next weekend to do it all over again.

nasty_rabbit said:

there were 2 chalk out-lines in the garage floor we decided to call it a night.

Click to expand...

This just sparked a lost memory for me. We were on a camping trip with about 30 people. A friend of mine hit the dirt at some point and felt comfortable enough to stay there. We happened to have some orange marking paint, so we outlined the poor bastard. Then we felt bad, so we painted a runway back to his tent for him.

The same guy is always the first to go down. My house is in the center of a cul-de-sac at the top of a hill and his is at the end of the road at the bottom. We usually end up in my garage and I have a few old wheeled office chairs there. This guy has been known to pass out in one of those chairs but that was all in the past. One night we decided to duct tape him to the chair, after he decided to "nap", and send him home. All was well until the chair decided to hang a left and go off roading. He survived with a few scratches but would now rather sit on the floor than in any of those chairs.

nasty_rabbit said:

The same guy is always the first to go down. My house is in the center of a cul-de-sac at the top of a hill and his is at the end of the road at the bottom. We usually end up in my garage and I have a few old wheeled office chairs there. This guy has been known to pass out in one of those chairs but that was all in the past. One night we decided to duct tape him to the chair, after he decided to "nap", and send him home. All was well until the chair decided to hang a left and go off roading. He survived with a few scratches but would now rather sit on the floor than in any of those chairs.

Click to expand...

Baaaahahahaha! We used to have a guy like that. One time I showed up at a party, and he had a lit cigarette placed in his mouth(he didn't smoke), and various phallic symbols drawn on his face, as well as some kind of a beer can sculpture erected around him. He had some kind of a radar for parties, and would usually show up with a 12pack at around 8 o'clock, drink himself under the table and be all set for some premium entertainment by the time anyone else showed up.

Same guy different day. We were swimming and drinking and again he passed out. We have learned that it's better to let him sleep it off than try to rouse him and he will find his way home in his own sweet time. We threw a towel over him and went our own way. I got up the next morning and he was gone so I figured all was well. About a week went by and I had not heard from him so I gave him a call to see if all was well. He said that he stayed away because he was embarrassed because he pi$$ed himself the last time he was over. I reminded him that we were swimming and his bathing suit was wet. His reply was " oh in that case I'll be over tonight ". And the saga continues.

nasty_rabbit said:

About a week went by and I had not heard from him so I gave him a call to see if all was well.

Click to expand...

I thought for sure he was gonna be decomposing in the bottom of the pool.

Reminds me I need to find a nice christmas/holiday ale recipe.

Today I should have only been a bottle day of Rogue DEAD GUY ALE clone. It turned into that plus wash the yeast, keg a BLONDE, brew a wheat and right now there are 15 neighbors DRINKING MY BEER in the garage. Can't as for a better day!!!

Well my brew partner is not available today. His daughter is enrolled at Ga Tech with a Chem E major and he had a family home work project to help build a catapult (what that has to do with Chem E I don’t know). So I’m on my own but that won’t bring me down. I started at 09:00 and brewed an APA that may be bordering on an IIPA (eyeballed the hops and weighed the bags after additions, ended up using 4.5 oz instead of 3). Plumbed in two more spigots in the keg-o-rator and now heading to a neighbor’s house to watch football.