Welcome to Scott Pointon's Home Brewing Site

My newly lighted glassware shelves.

I've launched a new Facebook page for my "brewery", the Midnight Brewing Company.  From now on that will be the one spot where I most often post updates about my home brewing status, photos, etc.  I may still occasionally post things here, but for the most up to date stuff, go visit me over there.

https://www.facebook.com/scottsmidnightbrewingcompany

Last week a local newspaper contacted me about a couple of my upcoming You Can Brew It talks, and that turned into a full feature article about my homebrewing hobby!  I had a great time with this interview and especially enjoyed showing off my brewing process to the photographer.  The full story is online here:  http://www.theherald-news.com/2014/08/13/fermenting-an-interest-in-beer/axnzh9j/

As a result of my gold medals at the B.O.S.S. competition this past March, I will have the honor of brewing three of my beers at commercial breweries this year!  The second of those occurred on July 3rd when I got to brew my Saison Ale with Lanny Fetzer and Shaun Berns at RAM Restaurant and Brewery in Wheeling, IL.  It was very rewarding to see my recipe scaled up to brew 465 gallons.  Can't wait for the tapping party!

As a result of my gold medals at the B.O.S.S. competition this past March, I will have the honor of brewing three of my beers at commercial breweries this year!  The first of those occurred yesterday when I got to brew my Belgian Dark Strong Ale with Brandon Banbury at Hailstrom Brewery in Tinley Park, IL.  It was quite an experience seeing my recipe for 5 gallons scaled up to brew 465 gallons.  We used nearly 1500 lbs of grain!

In March I participated in the Brewers Of South Suburbia's home brew competition.  The competition, called the Charlie Orr Memorial Chicago Cup Challenge, is held each March and is the longest-running home brew competition in the greater Chicago area.  This year I was fortunate enough to take home six medals!  Three golds, two silvers, and one bronze.

 

I also had the great pleasure of meeting our keynote speaker and all around home brewing celebrity Gordon Strong!

OK, so here is a peak into the mind of an obsessive homebrewer... 

As much as I love gadgets, I have always had a rule that if buying a gadget to solve a problem creates another problem to solve, well then that is not something I should automatically do without a lot of research.  Wanting to shave time off of my brewday, I decided that I needed a brew stand so that I could situate my brew kettle on it's burner while collecting the wort, and thus heat the wort as it is being collected - saving as much as 20-30 minutes of time I would have spent standing around watching a pot reach boiling temperature.  So I put my woodworking skills to use and built a nice wood brew stand to make my life easier on brew day. 

When I got my annual review at work (and thus my raise) my wife decided I should splurge on something from my brewing equipment wishlist.  So that lead to a new 10 gallon Northern Brewer Megapot 1.2 brew kettle.  That got me to thinking that I could shave significantly more time off of my brew day by getitng a counterflow wort chiller instead of using my old immersion wort chiller.  Well then, naturally that lead me to the realization that this set up would work much better if I had a pump to push the wort through the chiller as opposed to it being gravity-fed.  Then I needed to get the hoses, the quick disconnects, etc, etc.  Needless to say, I did it all, and I now have an AWESOME brew rig that should save me between 45 minutes and an hour every time I brew beer.      

I am excited to write that a reporter from the Lockport Legend thought my homebrewing story interesting enough to write an article!

I just sent off 5 beers for the first competition of the Fall season.  Here's hoping that my English Mild Ale, Smoked Lager, Hefeweizen, Kolsch, and Kriek beers do well!

I am also happy to announce that there is an AHA Rally in October that I have been asked to attend as a special guest.  Drink beer and talk about beer for a couple hours with fellow brewers?  Yes please!!!

I was not fortunate enough to win a medal at this year's National Homebrew Competition.  Similarly, I didn not place any of the three beers I had entered into the Indiana State Fair Brewer's Cup.  I did however, get to be a judge at the Indiana State Fair Brewer's Cup and it was a great experience.  I even got to judge professional entries (stouts) that afternoon.  One of the beers I judged was Bell's Expedition Stout, a beer that I have appreciated for years! 

Fortunately, I gave it a good score :D.