<p>So here's a sketch-up of my plan for success. (Or winning, if you're into that sort of thing.) Please feel free to comment on logistics. I request only that you comment constructively. I am determined to do this thing now that it is between my teeth. :)</p>
<p>In preface, all of this presupposes only the effort that you can commit in addition; I am assuming responsibility for success or failure, and will if needed do this on my own. But I invite you to help make something beautiful happen. So from here forward, I use we as an opt-in term.</p>
<p>We'll be providing a stout, a pale, and a gluten-free. (The majority of the beer will obviously be the former two.) For ~90 guests, we should do about 2 5-gallon batches each of pale and stout. The stout will be the time bottleneck, as it needs several weeks total in secondary and bottle conditioning, so we should have two vessels dedicated to stout production.</p>
<p>We should choose two or three divergent recipes of stout & pale, and make small batches. (The pales will take less time than the stouts, naturliche.) I want to give Rob some choice in what his wedding beer will taste like. If we have the samples ready for Rob & Caitlin to taste by late May, that will give us time to have both batches of stout bottled by mid-September. (Clinton made the excellent point that pales can be done in as little as 2 weeks from brew day to tasting, so we can interleave the pales toward the end of the summer.) I want to be brewing the sample stouts somewhere near to April 1st if not before, but first I suspect we should get a gluten-free batch down. (I can dedicate my 3.5 gallon to that purpose.)</p>
<p>I shall be getting another 6-gallon fermenter with my groupon, and another racking cane. I shall also be doing the grain bills; this is all on me. I'll set up at some point a google calendar thing to track necessary deadlines and schedule brew days.</p>
<p>I plan to begin moving on this in the next couple weeks, so your substantive input is respectfully requested before the close of March. </p>
<p>With beer goggles on,<br>
Your friend,</p>
<p>--<br>
Steve Killen <br>
| elvestinkle @ twitter<br>
| <a href="http://pursuing.calefaction.org">pursuing.calefaction.org</a></p>
<p>etsi provectus in sententiis sis<br>
esse parvulus in spiritus debes</p>