Brewing Again

After a five year hiatus, Mike's Nanobrewery is back in action. Yesterday I reacquired supplies from Dan's Homebrewing Supplies and today I brewed.

I got this photo of the supplies, all new and shiny, plus ingredients. (I forgot to add the hops when I took it though.)

I brewed an IPA because I've never done one before, and since moving to Vancouver three years ago, it's become a favourite style, so it seemed to be a good one to start with. (I haven't named it yet.) I'll definitely be doing darker styles soon; in fact Margo's requested one for the holidays.

I'd brought my Charlie Papazian Joy of Home Brewing for its IPA recipes, but the guys at Dan's quickly tipped me to the fact that the US measurements are smaller than their Canadian counterparts (23 vs 17 litres I believe) so I needed to up the malt and grain measurements a bit. When it came to picking hops I mentioned I'd be happy to end up with something like Central City's Red Racer IPA, and they happened to have a recipe with the same hop profile, so I ended up getting Cascades and Zeus hops. They smelled like the brewery does, my favourite in BC.

Here's me after taking the original gravity reading.

I'm quite happy to be doing something creative again, and I look forward to sharing bottles with friends in a few weeks.