Starter marathon…

Today I brewed and canned 5 gallons of starter wort. It was quite a feat. I started at 9:30am, was canning around 2:45, and finished canning at about 6:30… Long long day. As a result I’ve got a little over 5 gallons ready for future brews, and actually have another 2 quarts in the fridge that I’ll use to make a starter tomorrow for my Bastogne Belgian Ale yeast. I’m going to brew a regular Belgian Pale, then use the yeast cake to brew a massive Tripel. I’m pretty stoked as this will be my first all-grain tripel and will be using some new techniques I’ve picked up over the past year.

Last night we bottled the first 5 gallons of Black Honey Ale that’s going into the cases I cleaned last weekend. Of course one case is walking out the door with Donna’s parents tomorrow, and my guess is that the other will be leaving with my parents in a few weeks, however that’s why I brewed 20 gallons of it.

I also need to free up some secondaries… my saison and fruity wheats are both coming due soon. Heating up the saison has totally saved it… it has significantly dried out, and will be very drinkable and tasty. I am not certain how the short “rest” it had at 1.030 will impact it long-term, nor the decreased yeast count during its slow decline thereafter, but at least its not 10 gallons of pond water. If nothing else, I learned a very valuable lesson about the WLP565 yeast, and not to EVER rack it to a secondary before 2 weeks, and to keep it at 75 degrees during the entire length of its fermentation.

HEAVYWEIGHT Open House … Last Call ???

Email from HEAVYWEIGHT:

Hello everyone-

Thanks,
Tom and Peggy

No mention of them closing shop, but my guess is this is pretty much the last public date they will have.

So …. who’s up for a trip?

Use the Comment section below to voice your interest

Pop quiz

Which of these carboys has the RASPBERRY puree and which has the APRICOT puree in it.

I bet you’ll never guess. It’s too hard, I know.

Definitely glad that I chose to name this batch “Wheatopia”… judging the clarity, color, and probably overwhelming Frooooooo-tay taste… it probably won’t be too far off the commercial fruit beverage offering. You know you may have gone too far when the krauesen has pink / red highlights too it.

**Snicker**… I’m a sick little monkey.

Kicking left and right…

The kegs in my kegerator, that is. Ya’ll put a serious hurting on my my beer last Friday night at the May meeting… I had about 1/2 gallon in each keg. After the meeting my friends and I had a few pints and … pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft… Kicked.

So now I’ve just put on tap the Native Rage India Red and last 2.5gal of Abbey Dubbel, with something to replace the Oak Aged Vanilla Porter soon – it is also near kicking. Not sure if we’ll put the Choking Sun stout or Black Honey on tap… I’m thinking Black Honey since I’ve got 20 gallons of it ;-)

I honestly am not complaining about them kicking – Quite honestly I take it as an assertion of two very important truths – People really liked my beer, and folks had a rocking good time at the meeting. It was pretty impressive – I can’t remember the last time we had that many people in attendence… if ever. I imagine we probably had close to 30-40 people over the course of the night, not including kids.

Did everyone have a good time? Do we want more meetings like that, or was it TOO big? Just curious… I have gotten a couple comments from newcomers that if our monthly meetings are typically like that, they will attend from now on regularly… What about you other folks? I think Ric did a fan-f’ing-tastic job with the presentation, and hope we can entice more professional brewers to come in to talk to us… even if it requires shaming them with the fact that STEWARTS did it and they’re not ;-)

Done more ubergeekiness, but I think I’ll hold off posting any more pics until I actually get a full layout ready. Its going really well, better than I expected. Its amazing how quick coding Visual Basic 6 comes back to you, even after a year hiatus.

Sucks that Heavyweight is closing… that pretty much puts the kabash on us going there to do a club brew with them. I’ll have to brainstorm and find some other **cough cough** suckers **cough** I mean iterested parties…

My saison is way underattenuated. I’m actually pretty pissed… but not willing to claim defeat yet, I’ve put a heating pad next to them and heated both carboys up to around 76 degrees, and they seem to be fermenting again. I may actually end up repitching some fresher Saison yeast if HDYB has some, but we’ll see. I pitched a good sized starter, so there really isn’t any friggin’ reason why it should be under attenuated… the only thing I can think is I racked it to a secondary too fast (1 week) and maybe didn’t keep it warm enough. I **WILL** brew this SOB again if it turns out crappy just to see how it was supposed to be…. and I’ll pitch a ridiculous quantity of yeast.

State Line Liquors Beer Schedule

Here’s the latest beer schedule at State Line Liquors!

Thursday, June 1st, 7-9 pm. “Europe: The Ones We Don’t Normally Taste” … Specially selected brews from France, Netherlands, Denmark, Holland, Austria, Poland & Czechoslovakia. This is one you don’t want to miss!

Thursday, June 22nd, 7-9 pm. “Summer Beers”… Pilsners, Kolsch & (select)Wheat Beers.

Thursday, July 13th, 7-9 pm. “Wheat Beers”… North American Microbrews & Craft Wheat Beers, plus German & Belgian Wheats.