I brewed today, the 1st batch since my surgery. Here's how it went. (I'm going to do this in installments so you dont have to suffer through one long BOORING read...)

The base recipe is Doug's "New Water IPA" modified to be a partial mash. With 7.44 lbs of grains and 4lbs of light DME it promised to be a pretty good IPA, then I got started on it.

The 'fun' started Saturday night when I pulled the Wyeast 1272 slap-pack out of the fridge. I carefully layed it out on the counter and pressed hard. So help me I have NEVER heard of this happening before, the top seam split like a catchup pack under your shoe and sprayed across the kitchen. I know that only I could do that, seriously...

Since it's Saturday night and Just Brew It's closed until Thursday and I didn't take good advice form my brew club mates and keep spare dry yeast on hand... I was in trouble. Thinking (relatively) quickly, I made a starter (boiling DME in a couple of cups of water, and chilling it quickly in an ice bath). I added this to a sanitized bottle, along with what little remained in the slap-pack and topped it with an air-lock. Then I spent an hour cleaning the kitchen, cabinets-wall and oven.

The following morning, to my surprise, the starter showed activity and I had a nice nice thick yeast layer on the bottom of the bottle. It wasn't bubbling actively, but it was "exhaling" every 20 or 30 minutes. The brew day was salvaged.