Early this week, my friend Ben and I bought a bunch of brewing equipment. If you read my last blog, you'd know that we've been getting into homebrewing for a while now. This is our first big batch. It is going to be a really strong India Pale Ale, my favorite kind of beer.

We've got my new brew kettle there sitting on top of a propane "turkey fryer". You let your barley steep in the water until it begins to boil.

Here you can see Ben pouring in some malt extract while my friend Mark stirs the wort.

Here is a cool shot from later on when we are adding our hops. This is the first time we've used hop buds instead of ground up hop pellets. Pellets are a little easier, but I think we are going to get a much better flavor from these ones.

Once you've cooked all of the hops in, you cool your wort down from 220 degrees to 70 degrees and it is ready to put into a fermentation bottle.

This time we are doing a process called 'dry hopping'(make your innapropriate jokes Steel. I know they are coming.:P) Dry hopping means that you put some fresh hops into your fermentation bottle without cooking them. They will sit in the bottle for the next ten days until we transfer our beer over to another bottle to finish fermenting. I love this stufff.:)