In my never ending quest to ingest as many strange meats as possible, I had the German deli version of a BBQ sauceless McRib for breakfast. It wasn't bad, but it was definitely one of those things you only need to try once. Plus I knew there would be a lot of running about today while we were brewing, and I didn't want to show up on an empty stomach.

This time around at Doemens we were split into two groups of ten so that we get more individual attention when brewing, malting, and working in the labs. It's been great. We get much more hands-on time.

Today we brewed an IPA. It's a recipe one of the professors had brewed in the past and thought we could produce again for him. While I'm not too excited to brew somebody else's recipe, it's nice to be brewing. The first week was all review, and the second week was all lab work. We used Hercules hop for bittering and did a whirlpool addition of Hallertau Mittelfruh and Cascade. The plan is to also dry hop with a ton of Mittelfruh and Cascade hops. 

The brew mostly went smoothly. We were a little off on our gravity and whoever set the temperature of the boil kettle forgot to set it to automatic mode, so the steam was on full blast and the wort started to boil before we even finished sparging. Good to learn these things on test batches in someone else's brewery.

We also got the full hands-on tour of how to fire up and run the boiler and air compressor this morning. More than anything, I think I'm getting confidence out of the course. I know now more than ever that I really can do this. I really can open a brewery and run it successfully. The only thing I worry about is finding the right investors, and raising all the necessary start up capital.

This time around at Doemens, everything is a lot more practical. SO much more so than at Siebel. These guys really focus on what we can REALLY do as small brewers. Siebel is so focused on macro-brewing techniques. I don't care that there as a $5M piece of equipment that can analyze my beer. At Doemens, they are showing us how to use equipment that we can realistically afford to do those tests, how to do the tests, and which ones we really need to do. Very practical. Very realistic. Very German.

Then for lunch today, I went to a deli that's a few blocks from Doemens. The lunch lady is still on vacation, so we have to make due. I had some weird, pork shish kabob that was pretty dry, a tasty meat patty, and some mashed potatoes with gravy. I also had a delicious chocolate cookie with a little jam in the center for dessert.