First State Brewers Blog

John Biggins here, excercising his first post as an FSB blogger. Hopefully all will go smoothly!

Yesterday was the BRANDYWINE CRAFT BEER FEST at Iron Hill-Media. The Good News is that there were some fantastic brews among the 25 invited breweries. Standouts I can recall (alas, no notes were taken) included WEYERBACHER Double Simcoe IPA, IRON HILL Bourbon Barrel Russian Imperial Stout, and STEWART’S 2005 Bourbon Barrel Barleywine. Luckily there were plenty of great Pilsners, Hefeweizens, and Belgian Whites to choose from to re-hydrate on a pleasant sunny Satuday afternoon.

The bad news has been confirmed: HEAVYWEIGHT BREWERY is shutting down at the end of June. Tom Baker is closing down the Ocean Twp site, so stock up on all your bottles, as they will be all gone soon. The semi-good news is that he is not giving up totally, but planning on opening a brewpub (in PA, I’m told ~ details not firm on my end) which means we can probably expect a selection of highly quaffable brews plus the few rotating/seasonal high-gravs for which he is famous.

It has been a fantastic weekend to turn 33.

On Friday night we had one of the biggest meetings the First State Brewers has seen since I joined two years ago. Jerry and Joyce Carney always have alot of folks for St. Pat’s, but we must have had 30-40 people here Friday night (more if you count children). Ric Hoffman from Stewart’s gave a fantastic speech on recipe formulation, and I think everyone walked away with some words of wisdom. I have to say that Ric went far beyond my expectations, and I can only hope that we can convince him to speak again sometime in the future. There was a crazy amount of beer to be had, and I think everyone really enjoyed themselves. My only regret was not grabbing our digital and taking some pictures… Thank you to everyone who came. I hope future meetings will see a similar level of participation and revelry.

Yesterday was my B-day and I celebrated it in true homebrewer style by brewing 10 gallons of wheat beer. Entitled “Wheatopia”, I will be polluting it in the secondaries with raspberry and apricot purees (seperate, not together… blech!). The brew itself was textbook perfect - I nailed my mash-in temperature and mash-out temperatures, minimal grain matter went into the kettle, my gravity was dead on (maybe even a little higher), and it is fermenting like mad downstairs. I also got to use a new toy, my 14 gallon demijohn fermenter.

Today will include an activity that most would probably despise, but I am quite honestly looking forward to it… de-labeling and cleaning 7+ cases worth of bottles so I can fill them with homebrew. 4 cases are already spoken for in the way of black honey ale for my family & friends, and as much as I wish I had a couple cases of 750mL amber champagne bottles to put 5 gallons of saison in, I have a feeling that much of it will end up in 12oz. That’ll only leave me with a few spare cases for future batches… I’ll be soaking them in my 14 gallon kettle in PBW, which albeit expensive is a very effective way of removing labels and cleaning the crap that may be growing inside the bottles.

Life is grand