Jim brewed our third basement batch of Cross of Gold today, mainly because that was what we had ingredients to brew. We wanted to brew pale ale, but we were short a few ingredients and got started early at 8am, long before Grow & Brew opens. This incidence of poor planning convinced me that it is finally time to place our first monster order of malt, hops, brewing spices and other accoutrements we need to start brewing on the big system. It is nice to run around town (or mail order) for brewing supplies at the homebrew level, but it is much nicer to have a truck pull up to your building with 4000 pounds of freshly malted barley and several hundred pounds of spicy, fruity hops.
Unlike hops, which have come down in price recently, one thing that you really don't need to spend too much money on is yeast. Keep it clean and you can reuse the part of the previous batch and occasionally get a new batch to grow up. Or get a fresh squirt from a friendly neighborhood cerveceria (thanks Chris). Brewer Jim was very proud of his new wide mouth yeast container that was a big improvement over the half gallon growler:
Now that we have electricity at the building we should be able to test out the grain handling system next week and it will be helpful to have a couple bags of malt around for that. Unlike the water service which thundered through the pipes with a thud (although we still don't have fixtures) the electric juice came in but didn't really go anywhere at first. Slowly, the electricians have been running a little wire here and there and lights start working. Where you once had to run two 50' extension cords to power a saw, there is now an actual convenience outlet. Yesterday we bought a wood/electric smoker and today 'Danny Boy' the Romanian electrician decided to wire it up and came down to the basement asking us "Are you ready to smoke?"
The other exciting arrival of the day was the dishwasher hood. Before starting this project I hadn't even thought that such a device existed to alleviate the constant humidity in the dish corner that creeps everywhere else. Sure, it is just one more thing to buy and feed power to over time, but it will also help create happy campers. Gotta keep that dishwasher happy.