Kegerator (potentially) Secured!

A friend of mine recently pointed me toward someone with a spare fridge, one that it seems will fit into the basement with no real issues. All they want in exchange is for me to fill a keg of homebrew for them. So, it appears that I will soon have a nice shiny kegerator in the basement to dispense beer from.

This means my next brewing project after getting the mashtun converted and the fridge chillin, is going to be converting the fridge to be the kegerator I want it to be. I'm thinking if I work it right, I can set it up to hold either 6 kegs of homebrew, or 4 kegs of homebrew and a commercial 1/6 bbl of beer/mead/what-have-you.

Tonight will be filled with moving things around to get this fridge into the basement and the basement reordered. I also probably need to get over to Trevor's place and get those champagne splits picked up.

Oy, brewing is getting crowded! Luckily, with a kegerator I can get rid of quite a few standard bottles, which will free up some space. Just like with the mashtun conversion, I'll be able to get rid of one of the crappy old coolers, which will also save space downstairs. Of course, this means we'll need to have a yard sale soon..

:S

New Mashtun Secured!

Found a 70 quart Coleman XTreme cooler on sale at Bi-Mart this past weekend, which increases my mashtun capacity by 3 gallons. I'll probably start converting it tonight to just get that done for the next brew day, which is probably going to be next weekend.

Next up is going to be a fridge, to convert to a kegerator. Need to find a smaller size fridge to do that, but I already have a spot to put it in the basement. Just need to get it and convert. I have the parts to do a single tap already, minus the hoses, which are cheap enough.

Hop Madness follow-up

Hop Madness was AWESOME!

I am so staying there next year! Gonna brew, and drink, and drink, and pick hops, and drink drink drink :P

Adopt-a-Hop

So, Mike wrote to the listserv for OBC looking for someone to adopt some hop plants, and it appears I've scored some healthy Rhizomes for Willamette and Nugget Hops. I am hopefully meeting with him to retrieve those this evening at The Green Dragon.

After that, it's off to Dave's place to drop off his assorted bottles and breweriana that are currently at our place. and then back home for more cleaning and prepping for company this Saturday.

I'd like to maybe get some time in to brew a beer, but I'm not sure that is gonna happen. If so, it's probably just going to be something light and quick, like a blond ale. I'd also like to investigate the possibility of getting a kegerator. We'll see how the weekend unfolds and what craigslist has in store.

Also going to call that company again, to see if I can get someone on the phone that can tell me about selling me their kegs. If I can't buy what they need, I have a person in mind that can maybe make the deal. Maybe I can get a deal from him if I hook him up with a supplier :P

Iron Brewer 2 Judging Redux

IB2 judging was done last night at Max's Fanno Creek, after a false start last Wednesday at The Raccoon Lodge. My beer did not place, but then later someone told me they'd found another score sheet for me, which would have added an additional 35 points to my total score.

Honestly, that disappointed me a little, but I am not bitter. It was a fun contest to be in and I had some very nice compliments from a few pro brewers about the beer I submitted, and I guess that was all I really wanted - a little honest feedback.

Congratulations to Doug Savin and Alan Ruff, who took 1st place in both the People's Choice and the Pro Judging competitions. I am very jealous of the RR brews you won.

Now, granted I did not place, but a little advice for the organizers of next year's Iron Brewer -

* Please make sure that all beers get the same amount of score sheets, and they are all accounted for and tallied before announcing winners. Looking back, it seems I might have placed had the score sheets been properly tallied

* Have bottle forms and other paperwork on hand in case something occurs and someone has none. There are no printers at the bar, and the lack of bottle forms seemed to have the judges a little confused.

* Every other contest in the world seems to hand out prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. Why announce those as placing categories if the winners get nothing to show for it? The amount and value of swag handed out to the 1st place winners was pretty excessive, wouldn't you say? It should be divided up a little more next time.

Again, I would have handled it differently.

But then, I don't plan on being in a board or committee next year, either...

Someone else gets to carry the burden after November.

Of Barrels and Sour Beer

So, I had some of the Rum barrel Old Ale and the Bourbon Barrel Imperial Red last night. While neither was overly soured, it's painfully obvious that both barrels are infected with something, most likely Brettanomyces.

While a sour beer can be nice, it is a huge disappointment when it's not what you were going for. Several people have said they are flat out dumping their Impy Red, and for a home brewer, it takes a lot to say that because we usually hold out against all hope that the beer will somehow get better over time.

The sad thing is - because the Rum barrel is not stored at Dave's place, there is little chance of cross contamination.. but both beers have the exact same sourness, and it likely means that someone who participated in these 2 projects has an infection in their home brewery. I wouldn't blame anyone, hey it happens. It's more the fault of the people participating for not instituting more rigid standards and testing prior to filling the barrel.

At this point, we're going to get rid of all the barrels, step back, and try again using only fresh barrels from distilleries. If they last held liquor and have only been used once, the chances of contamination are far lower.

Here's hopin this can be worked out!

Searching for barrels

Our club is on the search for more barrels. Mark picked up two 30-gallon Brandy barrels today, and is on the hunt for a used White Wine barrel. Ron is looking for a small barrel for his place. Heck, even *I'm* passively looking for a smallish barrel (may look at getting the contact info for Mark's source, 30 gallons of BW in a brandy barrel under the stairs sounds SWEET!). I have a small 3 gallon one, and I have yet to age anything in it, but I'm thinking that toward the Winter I'll be making some beers that would be nice to have in that barrel for a while before I bottle them (Barleywine, Imperial Porter, Belgian Golden Strong, and Imperial Stout)

I still have 5 gallons in the Flander's barrel & 5 Gallons in the Old Ale barrel. I'll be putting 5 gallons in the Mead barrel in August, 10 gallons of a yet to be determined beer in a Brandy barrel, and perhaps another 5 gallons in the 2nd Brandy barrel whenever we get the recipe on that one.

As Jim said earlier today, "Maybe we should change the name to PDX Barrel Brewers"...

He might be right.