It’s been a long time since we did our first all-grain batch of homebrew — and never looked back. But we recently moved to New Jersey and bought a very well-preserved mid-century house, which among its many quirks is the fact that all of the kitchen appliances are just a little bit smaller than is standard today. In particular, the clearance over the stovetop is about 20 inches, much too low to have a 18+ inch kettle boiling on it.

So, we dusted off our book of extract recipes, dug around in our odds-and-ends box of specialty grains, and put together a dubbel using the extract version of the recipe we used for our first all-grain batch 8 years ago. It was a little strange to be measuring malt mostly by ounces instead of pounds, but it was also nice to have the brew be a leisurely afternoon instead of an all-day affair (having much colder groundwater helped cool the brew down much faster too). And the yeast didn’t seem to mind — they went to town and produced a vigorous froth that foamed out the airlock after a couple days.

So we siphoned the beer over to a carboy to finish, and harvested that happy yeast for later. We’re planning to brew an extract variant of our colonial stout and blending with some of the last batch that’s been aging in a small oak barrel for far too long.