And so it begins…
Saturday, March 19th, 2005Starter for my next batch is boiling on the stove… I will brew my “Rainy Day IPA” tomorrow evening… It uses some of the Chinook hops I got from Jeff Ramberg back in our December meeting (hop swap) and a partial mash. I must say I am slightly concerned about the hops - they smell slightly cheesy, which might be great if I were brewing a lambic - and so I dub them “The hops of dubious history”. I removed them from the “dry hop” bill and reduced the amount going in the recipe to 1oz… (.5 for 60 minutes and .5 for 10)… but I am going forward with the recipe. We’ll see what happens. I have to believe that Jeff wouldn’t swap 2oz of crappy, bad hops for 2oz of good Amarillo pellets… he doesn’t seem like that kind of guy.
EDIT: I just couldn’t do it. They smelled too funky. A second opinion from my wife confirmed the cheesy smell. I just can’t do that. So I tossed out all the Chinook (as in garbage can) and replaced it with 1oz Magnum pellets @ 60 min.
Next weekend will hopefully be the Alucard Strong Dark Ale (My belgian-style stout) and after that the Limey Vale Nut Brown Ale.
Meeting last night was good. Big turnout - Jerry generally has a big turn out though. Some new faces - was great. I gave away some supplies and I swear Jerry must have unloaded about $40 worth of DME on the new guys - Lucky. I could have used some of that DME for starters 
Fun was had by all. And let me tell you - Dave Lawrence makes a mean Imperial Stout and Marty Drinan had a fantastic Black Chocolate Stout clone.
The servomyces saga continues - It should be in NEXT Thursday or Friday.
I’m off to tend to my starter and finish rebuilding a keg for Marty. He indicated last night he needed to borrow one so I broke down one of my recent acquisitions, replaced all the gaskets, soaked it in PBW for a couple hours, and I’m rinsing it for him to pick up tomorrow. Hope he remembers…
