My life as a consultant

Yesterday I spent the morning in an unaccustomed role: that of the older, wiser homebrewer. My friends Ross and Wes were doing their first batch of homebrew, along with Kevin and Will, and wanted me along to help out. I was happy to oblige. My kids came along to play with their kids, and my wife to make homemade candy corn with the other wives (seriously, it's like a farmhouse social), and Wes brought beer for us all to drink, picked up from Central City Brewing the day before.

It was a damn good time and a shockingly warm and half-sunny day. The guys went all-grain for their first batch, and were using my homegrown hops for bittering and flavour. Ross rocked the clipboard while Wes and Kevin did the lifting:

A little bit of spilled wort on my shoes later ("Who the hell wears good shoes to a homebrew session?"), everything was in the fermenter and we were cleaned up. Gravity was a little lower than expected -- 1.038 -- but hey, we can clean up efficiency later, right? And word on the street is that the airlock was bubbling away later that night.

Awesome time. I might have to take this up professionally.