Surplus

I’ve got a drinking problem, I know – namely the lack thereof!!! For the first time in a long time, I’ve got a surplus of beer in my basement. In fact, I’m almost at 100% utilization of my available kegs, despite having alot of beer in bottles too. Brewing big batches (10 and 20 gallons) is certainly part of the cause. Couple that with a significant drop off of visiting friends & family, and Donna and I both having allergies that have curtailed our consumption… and my basement has filled up. I wish I were in this position back in June so I could have coasted through the summer months and not struggled with hot fermentation temperatures and warm ground water that had to be chilled with ice.

We have in kegs right now:

* 2.5 gal Gnarleywine (Brewed in 2006)
* 2.5 gal Tripel (Brewed in 2006)
* 10 gal Peated Scottish (5 of which is spoken for)
* 5 gal Ginger Pale Ale
* 5 gal Travelers & Tourists Dubbel
* 5 gal Saturday IPA
* 10 gal American Brown
* 5 gal Blackberry Dunkelweizen
* 5 gal Irish Red

Which totals up to 45 gallons in kegs pending rotation through the kegerator, so I think I will be doing relatively little brewing until the end of the year… might be a nice change of pace.

I also finally got off my duff and made some tap handle labels. Only one of them am I particularly pleased with – the Saturday IPA I brewed with Brian. I hope we brew this beer again sometime in the future, but given the fact that Columbus and Simcoe hops have become incredibly scarce (and expensive!!!), I think it might be a few years until the hop growing industry recovers. Scott Bieber tried some when he and Marty were over here last Sunday, and he seemed pretty pleased with it. Marty liked the peated scottish too – he threatened running off with my keg :-)

Also, it appears that my level sensor testing inspired a fellow brewer down in Australia. Arnie has had an automated home brewery for years, and is constantly upgrading and improving his designs. I hope one of these days I’ll be able to pull together an automated home brewery as well, but priorities have put it on hold for now. Its just as well – I still have alot of work to do on the control and user interface software. Check out Arnie’s site, as well as Aussie Homebrewers where he is a frequent contributor to the forums.