Our homebrew club, Mid-Columbia Zymurgy Association or MCZA, does a little thing we like to call megabrew. This is in addition to the big brew concept where we round up several homebrewing kits. Megabrew means we take over a microbrewery and make one big batch of wort that we dole out into individual carboys. You can see your humble blogger doing the doling above.Since real breweries are licensed, we only do wort production on the premises---all yeast is added outside the bonded facility line. It's really interesting to compare the final beers, knowing that the base wort started exactly the same. We can compare the effect of different yeasts, dryhopping, fermentation temperatures, etc.
Last night, I tried an Imperial Stout made by Steve and Ryan from one of our megabrews. Allowing for it only being a few months old, it was a great example of its class. Not too sweet, great depth of hop character, and a complex roasted flavor and aroma (from the malts we used and from the half-full direct-fired kettle). I'm so looking forward to trying other examples of this brew as time goes by and the weather turns cooler.
A historical note: the fermenter over my left shoulder is a little piece of shrapnel from when my microbrewery self-distructed. Nice to know that it's still gainfully employed in making fine beers.
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