One of my favorite storytellers, Wil Wheaton, has lately entered the world of homebrewing. It was something he’d tried out last summer as a bonding experience with his newly-twenty-one-year-old son, but has, he admits, turned into something more. I won’t say it has become “consuming”, but he says he’s been doing it a lot more than he thought he would. (I’m sure you other homebrewers out there can relate.)

He’s just started his ninth batch, and is already doing all-grain brewing. I’m a little jealous, honestly. He can also write some pretty pictures.

It was warm on the patio, and a gentle breeze stirred the trees in the back yard. The Postal Service played on the Sonos. A Stone Pale Ale sat on the patio table, condensation beginning to bead up on the neck and run down the bottle. Next to it, the 10 gallon cooler I’d turned into a mash tun with judicious use of weird plumbing things that, 24 hours earlier, had been as relevant to my life as a musket. Just behind the mash tun, in a paper bag, nearly 13 pounds of crushed grains waited to go into the mash tun.

I looked at the brewing kettle on the propane burner to my right. The water was beginning to stir, small bubbles rising from the bottom as science happened. I took out the thermometer and checked the temperature: 155 degrees.

“Well, here goes nothing,” I thought, in the digitized voice of Lando Calrissian from the Return of the Jedi arcade game. I picked up the bag of grains, and poured it into the cooler-cum-mash tun. It filled it about 1/3 of the way in a small cloud of fragrant dust. I turned the heat off on the burner, and stirred the water. I checked the temperature again: between 160 and 162. Perfect.

Go read the rest at his blog: Wil Wheaton: Further adventures in Homebrewing