I have used it many times and from my first experience it can be quite "fragrant" if left in a pile. I would mix it with shredded leaves ,paper, hay, straw and other high high carbon browns. I've also tilled it into the soil. I think it's a great source of free material ,just treat it with a little caution and don't let it rot on it's own. I agree with Kim on the 1:3 ratio but I would stay away from vegetative waste that tends to be a green and tends to be moist. With spent grains you want dry browns. On the other hand if you hate your neighbors mix the spent grains with freshly mowed grass. Back in the days when I thought greens were green and browns were brown. ooooh boy things got pungeant. lol

Mostly PBR consumed here... just cheap generic-ish beer. A fan of Atwater Brewing Co... their Hell beer is amazing. Mad Hatter Ale a favorite. Two Hearted Ale is very decent. For a hoppy hop beer I love Lake Superior ESB. It has been awhile but I make stout that is priceless. Hard to find good hops these days. Maybe the "coloring" of memory but it seems years ago the hops tasted better. As most brewers recall a terrible plague destroyed the noble hops. Not a huge fan of Cascade hops but Sierra Nevada with the green lable is a decent mid-priced beer. Also a fan of their Porter but it is very filling. Frankenmuth Brewery is about 45 minutes from my home. Years ago before the tornado hit it had the most wonderful brews... I drank many bottles of Bad Frog which was really excellent beer. When it was rebuilt I really enjoyed the heffe weisen they had on tap. It failed economically but has reopened and I've not tried the new brews. Really miss the old brewery which had a brew shop and tours.... for about $2 a pretty girl would lead you around the place and then serve you "samples"... I took many many tours... often the only guest on the tour. Years ago I loved Sam Adams Honey Porter... I'm a fan of the Porter style in general. Alas, they seemed to have changed the recipe or the hops changed. Perhaps my taste changed but it ain't the same anymore.

Wow! This is a lonely old post. Hopefully by now we have some homebrewers in the crowd. Some friends and I got into homebrewing a few years ago and brew every chance we get. I never tried any of the kits though. We built our own systems complete with laser cut home made jet burners and stands, copper coil wort chillers, cooler mash tuns, and modified 1/2 barrel cookpots. My most recent addition was a 20 gal. conical fermenter. I'll never go back to carboys. Memorial Day weekend we brewed a combined 100 gallons in my back yard. I'm always up for homebrew stories!

Useful story ... and a good one, too. As for the beer ... I'll take milk ... or coffee, if you don't mind: I think that someone should pay me to drink beer. They just brought six very large vats, built somewhere abroad, from Hamilton Harbour, at the west end of Lake Ontario, to a brewery near Toronto airport, arriving this morning about 4 a.m. They had to move about 150 light standards (I think - they referred to "traffic lights", but I think that they really meant the ones for illumination) ... and something like 1,500 wires had to be dealt with. ole joyful