Thursday, August 25, 2011

Blog Expansion

So, my wife and I went fishing last weekend, and ended up with quite a large amount of Salmon. I'm going to be trying a few things I've never done before, smoking fish (Smoked Salmon), drying fish (Salmon Jerky), and curing fish (Gravlox). I am going to post that stuff here as well, because quite frankly, I pretty much consider anything that's homemade as "home brew" of one kind or another. Hope you don't mind!.

Friday, August 12, 2011

Having a Berry Hydromel on tap is going to be dangerous, I can see that already. Turned out fantastic!

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Now with an extra 10% slacker!

Yep, still super slow on the posts, sorry about that. Taught my friend Alan how to brew the other day, made a nice Beamish clone. Going to rack that today along with the multi-berry hydromel (mead) and get them carbing up in the kegerator. More later I'm sure, but for now its back to work!

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Back on Brew posts

Yea, I'm a slacker... sorry!

Just brewed my Diabolical Double Red, 1.078OG, should come out to about 8.5%abv when all's said and done.

Did ALTered States for the IB3 beer, a recipe based on the malt grainbill for an Altbier, but used a Kolsch strain for fermentation because A) I didn't have an altbier strain around, and B) I didn't have the fridge space for a lager. Beer turned out pretty close in flavor to an Alt (as compared to commercial beers), but has a very perfume-y aroma, likely due to the cereal secret ingredients we were given to use for Iron Brewer.

We also did a batch of 'Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town', our Raspberry Wheat beer. Beer is crystal clear and awesome, but we used a few too many Raspberries in this batch so its quite tart. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure that we used the right yeast strain on it this time around, I'll have to go back and check notes.

Finally, we have the fresh hop IPA I made, waiting to go into a keg or bottles. I might try and bottle this one up, so we'll see. I have enough of these hops left that I can make 1 more batch. Turned out real nice, I look forward to having this one around :)

On deck for brewing next: Fresh Hop IPA, Spring Reign clone, Moderately Impoverished Dick (a variant of the Poor Richard's Ale, without the Molasses), and an Oaked Whiskey Barleywine

Thursday, June 25, 2009

CItra Hops

My friend Steph got ahold of about 4 oz of Citra Hops, so for Big Brew, we combined making her 1st All Grain batch with about 2 oz of these hops. Made a simple IPA, but did Citra as the last hop addition a few minutes before flameout and then dryhopped with some.

Best. IPA. EVAR.

This beer was sooooooooooooooo good, I can't even begin to explain it. It's like getting hit in the head with a grapefruit... so citrusy and tropical, but still bitter and thirst quenching.

I really hope I can pick up some of these in the fall. If I knew where the fields were, they would be in danger of having "Migrating Rhizome Disease"..

'I'm sorry officer, I have no idea where these hops came from, they just spontaneously sprouted here! All 12 of them! Honest!'

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Ramblings

That dry hopping idea didn't turn out well at all.. in fact, I think it tasted worse after the dry hopping, alot like drinking liquid grass - I dumped that beer and picked up my 7.5 gallons of Brandy Barrel Tripel. I've heard we're getting a fresh barrel, and might be doing a belgian golden strong next, which sounds great!

1st PDX meeting of the year was last night. I look forward to what's going to be happening with the club this year, the new board seems to have everything well in hand. I'll probably end up doing some helping out this year, but I'm not sure I'll be in a full-fledged committe position. I kind of want to just kick back and brew, submit to comps, perfect techniques... we'll see what happens

Monday, January 26, 2009

1st Brew of the year and other bits

Made my first brew of the year on Sunday, a nice hoppy red ale.

I am a little concerned that there was no fermentation activity this morning. If it's not fermenting tonight, I'm going to have to pop and pitch that Pacman yeast; I don't want to wait too long and waste it.

I also got sick of the caramel flavor in that Blonde Ale I butchered, so I put 2 oz of dry hops into the keg. I'll try that after I get the BW gone and see if it helped. If not, I believe it's off to the flavoring factory.

In bonus news - I forgot about the Tripel at Garrett's place. That is a damn fine beer, and I can't wait to get my grubby little hands on it!! I should have it between this weekend and next, which means I have to finish off my Barleywine keg :)

The next 2 items on the agenda are to get the top cut off the keg, and get the tap put through the fridge door and ready to serve