Spring Fever?

This last weekend Jen and I decided to try something we have both been interested in some time, home brewing. We bought each other kits for Xmas this year and finally got around to playing with them.

This is Jen's kit. It came with instructions (all 5 steps). Just grape juice, yeast, and toasted oak chips (for those of us who don't have wine barrels at home, I presume).

Here is the wine-to-be all mixed up and on it's way to being White Zin. The peat mossy looking stuff on the top is the afore-mentioned oak chips.

Here is Mikey's kit. Notice the number of ingredients. (Beer is much more complicated than vino - as evidenced by the 25 step instructions that accompanied the kit).

Here we are after the grains have been steeped, malt and bittering hops added. Boy did that smell like heaven. Btw, this is a brown porter that I'm working on.

Here we are on Sunday. An hour or so before the Super Bowl, Jen tells me that we have grape juice on the office floor as her wine decided to "explosively ferment" (no shit). So we transferred her brew from the carboy into an extra fermenter (positioned next to mine full of "sweet wort") and both have been bubbling along happily since.

So, after two weeks, Jen has to transfer hers over into the carboy for another 12 to 14 weeks before it can be bottled (and needs to wait for another 3 months to age). Mine will go into bottles with corn sugar (to provide carbonation) for another two weeks before it is ready to drink. I can't wait.