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

Sunday, January 18, 2009

PDXBrewers Holiday party

The PDXBrewers holiday party was last night, and I think it went quite well. It was my last act as a board member for PDXBrewers, but as last acts go, it was pretty good. I think the new board members have it all in hand and will do a far better job than we did, though I think they should consider the following for next year:

* Rent a room someplace that is open later: Maybe we should go back to Lucky Lab for the party next year, but anyplace that is open later than 9pm would be great. I actually felt like MFC was angry we were there so late.

* No beer judging: No more judging at the party - it was too confusing and people were distracted from other things we were trying to get done at the party, not to mention the fact that we had to vote twice.

* More varied centerpieces: I thought we did a good thing by getting the Unibroue beers for centerpieces, but everybody and their mother brought the same beers, which made it kind of suck

Overall, it turned out OK, and I'm going to go borrow Ron's mill all the time :P