Beer, kilts and pipes

The brothers Colin, Ben, and Matt

About a month ago, I had an amazing event occur. I brewed, with the guidance of my brothers, my first batch of beer. It all began with a spanking, as new life is wont to do.
I slapped a yeast pack, breaking a nutrient pouch and starting the reproductive process of a California lager yeast. As the gases built, and the population increased, the babies had to feed. So they were given a light malt, designed to feed the yeast without flavoring the future beer. In this malt they fed, our little yeastlings, multiplying like small-town Missouri teenagers...

The next day was truly the brewing day. Cold beers were consumed in the gorgeous Indiana spring sun. The burners were ignited, and our water was heated to 168°F in preparation for the mash.
The boiling kettle

2.25 gallons of this clear hot water (I still am coping with the non-metric units) were added to the mash tun, a large orange cooler with a false-bottom filter and spigot. To this we added 8-lbs Rahr 2-row pale grain and 1 lb. Simpsons Caramalt grain. This was allowed to stew for 1 hour, as the heat released sugars and enzymes from grains.
Hot water on the move

The grains taking a bath

Three-tiers of fun

Our next tool; gravity. I'm amazed at how simple this can be, in the absence of pumps and valves and gear. A three-tier system was created. The top tier was sparge water at 170°F. Its purpose is to help wash the sugars from the grain and husks. This flowed into the mash tun, our second tier, from a large sports cooler like the other, but without the filter. The mash tun then released our sugary soon-beer wort into the third tier, a boiling tank set on the ground. The sparge water kept the grains out of the nozzles and rinsed them, gravity pulled the wart into the bottom tank. The first few liters that came out were cloudy, filled with grain residue and husk fragments. They were sent back through the spent husks, which acted as a filter. After we began to get clear wort, it was on.
Sweet hot wort; yeast food!

When this was done, we topped off with more of the heated water, and set a very full kettle full of rich, sugary, syrupy wort to boil. During this time, we added 1 oz. Cluster hops, 1 tsp of Irish moss (to improve clarity). At the end of our hour, the beer was ready to be cooled by steam-punk-esque copper coils and prepped for the yeast.
Cold water immersion cooling coils

We drained the boiled wort into a sterilized fermentation tank, a giant clear carboy, and hauled it to the cool basement. The yeast was pitched, and the hungry little buggers began devouring the sugars we had prepared for them. And they shit alcohol my friends. They shit alcohol.
Wind-up and the pitch

I have dragged enough detail into this, my friends, so I will spare you the anxious, father-in-the-waiting-room specific gravity measurements. I will also spare you the delight with which the flavor moved from soggy friendship bread to hoppy alcohol and grain. Two days later, the beer was removed from the protein sediment (more yeast poop) and placed into a second sterilized carboy. The fermentation had gone from an active bubble-dance to a subtle fizz at this point.
So now I wait. Brother Matt will bottle this soon (keg date had been scheduled for August 1st, but I doubt he will wait). And then, I get to meet my baby beer.
Anxious Daddy.