First Steps in Homebrewing with Darrell Humphrey

This past weekend I got the chance to meet up with a brewer, stay at home dad, and all around good guy Darrell Humphery to learn more about homebrewing and share stories about fatherhood. I was also reminded exactly how much energy is required to keep up with two kids under six years old!

It turns out that this guy lives about 1.5 hours from me. That’s pretty cool. Add to the fact that we “met” through a Facebook group run by Daddy Porter and both love beer. That’s a real win! I am a part of many online communities. The really cool part is when you have the chance to meet in real life. We drank some of his other brews, talked about being dads. He shared with me what goes into being a stay at home dad. I shared with him my role as a dad. It was cool to get out of the house and hang out for a while.

The brewing process at it’s core pretty straight forward. So far, we have

1. Heated a massive amount of water.
2. Added a brewbag loaded with 10 lbs of grain into the keggle.
3. Waited while enough time and heat, “forced” the sugar out of the grain.
4. Removed the brewbag.
5. Quickly cooled down this “mash” and transferred it into fermenting buckets.
6. Add yeast to the mash and let it ferment.

Some what labor intensive but, extremely rewarding we braved the 80+ degree temps to get this beer started. And while the mash was “cooking”, I cooked some barbeque on Darrell’s grill.

The wort is transferred to buckets and the yeast is added. Then, things are sealed up.

Timing worked out perfectly. Just as the brew was completed being transferred into the buckets, the barbeque was just about done. I have to admit that those temps kind of wore me out.

Darrell approaches brewing in much the same way I approach barbeque. I appreciated his attention to detail and the craft that goes into brewing. I look forward to bottling the brew in a few weeks. Thanks again Darrell!