Friday afternoon around my lunch break I jokingly sent my brother-in-law (who lives over four hours away) a text message telling him I would be brewing beer Sunday morning and he should come and help me.

To make a long story short about eight hours later mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew rolled into my driveway!

We all went to Portillo's to get some dinner and then went back home. Everyone else went to bed but Tim and I stayed up until a little after 1 AM talking about beer and we sampled 16 of them between the two of us. We have a lot of fun buying a big variety of individual beers and then splitting each one and see what we like and don't like.

Even though I then took a shower and didn't get to bed until 2 AM we were awake and brewing on the patio at 8 AM. I had a good time because that's what I was looking forward to doing all week anyway, and Tim seemed to enjoy it, but I think everyone else just indulged our beer enthusiasm. Thanks guys!

It was humid and getting warmer by the hour so by the time the beer was in the basement starting its fermentation and we got things a little cleaned up I was all hot and sweaty. I took a shower and then we went to Two Brothers Brewing Company for lunch, a few celebratory beers and a brewery tour.

After that we stopped at Binny's and picked up a large bottle of Chimay Blue and an out of this world outstanding large bottle of Avery Maharaja.

By the time we got home the lack of sleep, early start, heat and beer got to us and the guys stayed home and took a little cat nap and the girls drove to our downtown and walked around a bit.

For dinner we got some nice Chinese takeout which hit the spot and then we drank the two bottles of beer from Binny's.

This morning, Sunday, we got up and went to breakfast and then stopped at a local international grocery store and picked up a few fun things. Then we went back home, they had to pack up and they hit the road around 12:30 PM.

Since then I have just been doing little chores: laundry, straightening up, putting away brewing gear, etc. It was a really fun weekend that seemed to go too fast. I think part of the fun was that it was so last minute and spontaneous.

Somewhat related: last week I chilled one of the beers from my first solo batch and it seemed very light in body. Almost no mouth feel, but the flavor was good. I didn't care because it was my first batch and didn't expect it to be perfect. Thursday I brought another beer upstairs and put it in the fridge. While waiting for the family to show up I thought I would drink the now two-week-conditioned beer so the family wouldn't have to make polite comments about it. To my surprise the extra week of conditioning turned it into a super star! It was so good I immediately put eight of them on ice so they would be ready when they showed up after their drive, and I brought 6 more up and put them in the fridge before going to bed. Yeah beer!

The batch Tim and I brewed Saturday morning seems to be doing fantastic. The wort tasted good, and the piney hops smell that is coming out of the bubbling air lock now is just amazing. My original gravity was 1.060.

After the boil was done I added 10 pounds of store-bought ice per Alton Brown and it brought the temperature of the wort down to 70 degrees almost instantly. Great tip.

For aeration I used a half gallon plastic pitcher and scooped up water from my dechlorination bucket and then dumped it back in from about 6 feet up and did that for a few minutes and then added that water to the wort to bring it up to 5 gallons. I did not actually aerate the wort for fear of it oxidizing. So far the yeast seem to be digging it.