As I’ve said before, I don’t have this blog just to show people my photography.  It’s also here to let my clients, potential clients, and pretty much anyone else out there get to know me better.

I have a lot of hobbies.  I play guitar and flute.  I love biking.  I’m thinking about getting a kayak (still not sure on this one yet).  One hobby that I have been getting more serious about in the past year is brewing beer.  I was inspired to start brewing when I first tried Schlafly’s amazing pumpkin ale.  Schlafly is the second largest brewer in St. Louis (you may have heard of those other guys that make more beer on the 1st of January than most other breweries do in the whole year), and their beers are absolutely amazing.  Until I moved right down the street from their brewery a year and a half ago, my beer pallet was pretty much confined to AB products.  The first time I walked through the doors to Schlafly Bottleworks, my eyes were opened and I was introduced to the world of microbrews.

It was then that I decided I wanted to try my hand at making beer.  I have since made gallons upon gallons of beer.  Some have been great (my Pumpkin Ale and the APA I’ve got aging right now), and some have been not so great (that Amber Ale that I added the wrong finishing hops to).  While not all my beers are perfect, it’s definitely something I’m becoming very passionate about.  So passionate, in fact, that I’m starting to seriously think that in 15 years or so, I’d like to open my own brewery.  Because of this, my friend Justin and I decided that we need to start documenting our brewing with pictures while we’re young so that when we’re 40, we’ll have some vintage shots to put up around the brewery.

Justin came over yesterday afternoon to brew a Vanilla Porter with me.  This is our first really dark, high-gravity beer so I’m not expecting it to be perfect.  As with anything, I’m sure it’ll take a few tries to get it right.  Regardless, I’m sure we’ll enjoy the fruits of our labor plenty when it’s finished in a few weeks.

Here’s the Vanilla Porter, still basically just water and sugar from the grains at this point, getting ready to boil.

I don’t know what it is about this shot, but when I look at it, I can smell all the dark malt and chocolate grains that went into this batch.

I was trying to get Justin to ignore the camera so I could get a shot of him actually doing something.  Didn’t work out so well.

A lot of time I’m so busy editing other people’s pictures that I never do anything with my own digital shots.  To remedy this, my mom got me an Instax camera for my birthday.  Obviously not the highest quality images, but there’s something very quaint and  simple about the pictures it produces.  Plus, there’s just something about watching the photo develop right in front of you.