Singapore Mini Maker Faire 2014 Recap
What a weekend!
We weren't allowed to give out any samples (alcoholic or otherwise), so I decided to focus on a "touch and feel" experience, with some malt and hops samples and plenty of enthusiastic chatter. We also had a couple of yeast starters (third gen US-05, since you asked) and on Saturday, we attempted a mini-mash. The awesome malty aroma quickly drew a crowd, and we got super confident and decided to actually turn it into a brew. Why waste wort, right?
As we were about to boil, we realised we didn't have any hops bags! I was reluctant to gum up Nick's heating elements with hop sludge, so this needed fixing. Luckily we were at a Maker Faire! A short trip down the hall led me to John & Steph's tinkering/tailoring stall, where Steph was kind enough to hook me up with some fabric and a needle. With thread from one of the tatting stalls, we were in business! Of course, Natasha didn't approve of my crappy half-remembered sewing technique, so she quickly took over. Prettiest hops bag ever!
We didn't have any sort of chilling gear on us, so went for a lackadaisical "no-chill" by stashing the hot hopped wort in a sealed bucket sanitised with StarSan. After cooling down to about 25C overnight, we pitched a full 1L starter of high-krausen US-05 into what at this point was about 6-7L of 1.045 wort. I hear it's pretty hard to overpitch a beer, but we may just have done it! Anybody's guess what this stuff will taste like.
Speaking of Steph and John, they were actually demonstrating a beer-fetching robot! Looks pretty awesome, though I'm not sure it's homebrew-optimised yet. ;)
So with that, I'll call it a day. Follow up post on tasting the SMMF-brewed pale ale should be up in a week or so, stay tuned!