Well it is finished and I had planned on putting more info with each picture but maybe down the road. For now I put them on flickr and everyone can peruse them there. I would have more final pictures but my camera has taken a crap apparently. Click on the picture below for all the pics.

We finally started the project and put in a few hours Friday night and about 7 hours on Saturday. We did not work on Sunday because it was mothers day. Friday we spent most of the time cutting all the pieces and drilling out the gas beam We decided to miter the corners at the top for a cleaner finish. Saturday we started taking everything together. We spent a lot of time making sure everything was square, in fact that was probably the hardest part.

Check out the rest of the pics in the gallery

I've finally got the metal together for my version of a Brutus 10. I've dubbed it Brutus 10-DL because it makes me feel cool! To save some costs on the metal I've come up with a plan to use 1.5" sq tubing with a .065 wall. After talking to a few welders and some engineering buddies of mine we all think it will be strong enough with the thinner walled tubing and it sure saves a lot of money. My local metal supplier charged me $ 269 total for 4 10'. It also has a nice polished finish.
I've ordered most everything else and it should be here by the end of the week.
Sorry for the size of some of the images but for you to read them clearly they needed to be large.
Also you can download some of the images below as high quality PDF's to get a better view of the sizes.

Because I've been wanting to make a fresh hop beer and because it is cool, I decided to grown my own . . . . hops. I've included some pictures and the last picture shows how I plan on training them to grow across the top of the fence. I ran some twine along the green line in the picture.

Well I dropped all my entries off for the 2008 bluebonnet. I had a total of 13 entries in 11 different categories.

Here is the list

• Belgian Dubbel
  
• Schwartz
  
• Quad w/Bret
  
• Eisbock
  
• Oat Stout x 2
  
• Scottish 70s
  
• American Brown
  
• Kolsch x 2
  
• American Rye
  
• American Pale

Btw it hurts the pocket book to have that many entries at $7 each.

I finally found a good way to put a whirlpool return in my kettle. You can check out the pictures in the gallery.

Here is a list of what I've brewed so far for these two events. I started with lagers to give them plenty of time to age.

• Schwartz Beer
  
• EisBock ( Have not iced it yet.)
  
• Rauch Beer (Tried my first Decoction with this)

I made the executive decision (with SWMBOS consent) to go to NHC 2008 this year. I figured if I am going to be present at the nationals it would be awesome if I wont some sort of medal. I know I could be dreaming but it is worth a shot. I have come up with a brew schedule to have plenty of beers ready for the NHC and the Bluebonnet. Also if you want to find out more about NHC you can go to www.beertown.org

A buddy of mine has a pear tree in his backyard and this year it has gone crazy in producing pears. Mostly due to all the rain in Texas this year. So we had the bright idea of making some perry (Pear Cider) from the pears. So he collects some of the pears from the tree and stores them so they can ripen for a week or so. To make a long story short we spend about 5 horrible hours chopping up pears and feeding them to a new garbage disposal to pulp them and then we pressed them to get all the juice we could out of them.

I just posted version 1.1 of my grain bill % to pounds calculator. It not takes into account that sugars can be 100% fermentable and therefore not affected by your mash efficiency. Click the Brewing Spreadsheets on the left to download the newest version.