Getting ready for our anniversary!!!

A little bit more than a year ago, I knew very little about beers, I knew there were divided into Ales and Lagers and that Stout were black as night but not much more; of course I love to drink them but wasn't quite interested in understanding how they were produce.
On 2012 the 1st Festival de Cerveza Artesanal was an eye opener!!! with enough luck to find out about it on the right time and with the support of my lovely wife, I got a couple of tickets and along with my wife and my 4 months old daughter we headed into the new world developing in Costa Rica.

I was amazed to look at all the different kinds of beers being showed off and presented by many different brewers, it was hard to believe that someone in Costa Rica was home-brewing such delicious beer!
After paying close attention to the different speakers and listening closely to they presentations the possibility of gaining the knowledge and the materials required to make our own beer was now right in front of us.
After having a quick chat with Chema we didn't hesitate to sign up for this "Cachuita Amber Ale" beer brewing class; it is one of most exciting experiences ever, just to realize that you are transforming grains, water, hops and yeast into your own beer is a feeling you'll keep for the rest of your life!
Having take very accurate notes of the training, I started collecting all the equipments needed to start home brewing:

• A large pot
• Cooler (that was modify to serve as mash tun)
• Some PVC to build our filter
• The brewing kit from TicoBirra 
• A mill
• A gas burner
• All the grains, hops and yeast required to replicate the Chema's Cahuita Amber Ale

 With every thing in place and ready I called my best friend Solson and had the following conversation (at least a very close memory from a year ago):
Adrian: Hi Sols!
Solson: Hi bro
Adrian: Dude, what are you doing next Saturday?
Solson: Nothing, why?
Adrian: Want to brew some beer?
Solson: yeap!! I'll be there!!!

We set up all the equipment, read a couple hundred times the recipe and directions and with much excitement started brewing.
I can surely say it was a learning experience, we had issues with temperature control, boiling, cooling but, after about 6 hours we had our beer ready for the yeast to be added. After 2 very long weeks we bottle it and after another 2 very long weeks we were able to taste it.
Happily... it had a great flavor!... it also had a lot of alcohol in it (sorry... forgot to measure the gravity so, it will remain a mystery) but it tasted good! we enjoyed all of it and were convinced that we should continue brewing.
Now, almost a year after our first brew (June 10th, 2012) we decided to pay our respect to the guy to started us in this mystical and delicious brewing journey, our friend Chema and this is why, we decided to celebrate our anniversary brewing a special Amber Ale using Chema's Cahuitas recipe as base (we add our own modifications), we added a bit more Crystal Malt, used only Cascade hops,  and boiled for 90mins :-).
During this year, we've meet a lot of great new friends and rejoined with great old friends, home brewing has allowed us to enhance our friendship and that is why we are happy to share our brewing experiences with you, and now... the pictures!!!

Brew day, get every thing set up, clean and sanitize again and again :-)

 Mash tun set up, don't forget the filter!!!

 Strike water ready to hit the mash tun

 Can you recognize this? oh yeah!!!

 Our very cool CCO and Sanitation Engineer making sure we have a nice mash with no lumps of dry grains.

 Happy brewers!!! I know... I know we don't have a home brew but our honey porter was still conditioning and we needed to drink something!!

 Wort... sweet wort!!!

 Hot break almost done!!! let's get ready for hops!!!

 Really Randall, those green pellets that smell funny are Cascade hops!!! I swear!!

 Adding out 1st oz of Cascade hops!!!

 After 90 min boiling, it is time to use our chiller to cool the wort... look how much it has evaporated but, that is the tax you need to pay for a good home brew :-)

 Randall, make sure no one touches the beer!!!

 Working as a team!!! there is still a lot to be done before calling it for the day :-)

Thank you all for taking the time to look at our brews and our blog, we will try to set up a meeting to share this special brew with you, keep a close eye to your facebook calendar!!!

Happy brewing!!

Adrian