Injury < Pumpkin Braggot

above: the rugged German (rugged = sexy) has an incredibly candid moment stirring the wort while we're determining specific gravity

Oh boy did we have a good crowd last night! Many people were in and out (or touch and go) for various reasons, but at the end of the night we succeeded in kicking off 2 gallons of a basic "nutbrown" braggot and 4 gallons of a more complex "pumpkin" braggot.

A braggot is an old fashioned drink that is essentially a beer/mead combo. Our basic braggot is half hopped english malt extract + half local honey + ?half? brown sugar. Our complex pumpkin braggot is half unhopped malt extract + half organic buckwheat honey + ?half? brown sugar + one can of pumpkin + assorted spices and eventually + Chinook hop pellets (we'll dry hop in secondary).

Note: There is a pumpkin shortage and many grocery stores are out of canned pumpkin. Our brewing evening was only made possible by the mature and responsible planning of a good friend of ours who had THREE cans of pumpkin chillin' in her pantry. One could call her a wise squirrel weathering out a pumpkin winter (with flying colors).
The event was...eventful. See below for an extensive photo montage:

above: the fake-Arab (the fArab, left) assists the fake-Frenchman (right) in catching the wort of our basic braggot

above: the rugged German (right) hits the fake-Frenchman (center) on the butt (with a ?sanitized? spatula); an obvious sign of affection and encouragement

above: first) the injured intellectual scoops pumpkin into the Ale Pail

above: second) in a stunning turn of events the can of pumpkin bites back hard, providing the injured intellectual with her namesake

above: third) luckily the beautiful Swiss lady was on hand for all of our First Aid needs, and during the surgery the injured intellectual found a way to cooperate with the mending and show off her pirate tattoo,"Write Hard [skull n' bones] Die Free"

(look, italics went apeshit-crazy in the HTML and i couldn't get it to turn off. thank you for being patient while we experience some technical difficulties)

Stay tuned as we dry hop our complex pumpkin braggot, get a label design (just for funsies), and bottle our cyser + braggots just in time for commencement.