OK, I have witnessed houses cluttered with empty beer conainers, but not on the scale of this!
70,000 Beer Cans Found in Ogden Townhouse
I once helped a club member clear his kitchen of about 70 emply bottles, but this guy kept 70 thousand cans! Amazing!
Today I made use of my new stainless false bottom for my 14 gallon kettle while brewing 10 gallons of saison. I am going to try to move to more and more whole-hops instead of pellets, and the stainless bottom gives me the perfect opportunity. I have to say that I have never had so wort so clear with so little debris in the fermenters as today’s brew session, even with 1.5oz of Perle pellets for bittering - the whole Strisselspalt hops (6.5oz for 10 gallons) I used formed a natural filter bed.
After today my “whole leaf” hops inventory is limited to just 10oz of Strisselspalt 1.6% and some Northern Brewer, but I intend on slowly replacing my pellet hop inventory with whole hops. Yeah, they absorb wort and all that jazz, but with a false bottom - I don’t ever have to worry about them plugging the valve again.
I tapped the Maibock tonight, and the McBride’s several nights ago - I sure hope you guys love these as much as I do at the meeting on Friday. For a first attempt at a lager, I think the Maibock turned out AWESOME. My only quibble at this point is head retention, but it is CRYSTAL clear. I imagine my protein rest might have been a little excessive, and there are no head-forming proteins left anymore :-\. Good to keep in mind for my upcoming Belgian Pale and Tripel combo in a few weeks.
There was a private “Grand Opening” party at Twin Lakes today that was pretty cool. It was my first experience with their “Tweed’s Tavern Stout”, which was VERY roasty and tasty. I liked it alot, although I felt it needed a little more crystal to balance it out, but I would still buy the hell out of it over most commercial stouts. It had a deep coffee colored head, strong roasted notes, and a very smooth hop character that made it dangerously drinkable. Apparently one of our homebrewing friends from over in NJ assisted on this first batch - very cool.
It was also the first time I had tried their Greenville Pale Ale, which I must admit is equally quaffable and tasty. I do forsee a quarter keg of that taking up residency in my kegerator sometime in the future. I caught up with our Hockessin friends, the Zimms, who were there too…. Hopefully we’ll see them at May’s meeting.
While Mark Fesche was very busy during most of the day giving tours, I did get an opportunity to chat with him briefly. We’ll cover some details at the May meeting… Any of you guys want to spend a day being his biotch and brewing a REALLY big batch of beer? I’d gladly scrub a mashtun and haul grain for the sheer experience of living a professional brewer’s life for a day….
Just a quick reminder to all - our May meeting on the 19th will be at my house next Friday. We will have a guest speaker (perhaps 2) as both Ric Hoffman and his assistant brewer (and their wives) from Stewart’s will be in attendance.
I also intend on doing a demonstration of some sort. At this point it is a toss-up between a yeast starter, pressure-canning wort for FAST yeast starters, or counter-pressure bottle filling. I thought it might be cool if we pressure-filled kegs people brought and sent them home with some six-packs (for those that don’t typically do that).
I will have on tap:
I also have a number of different beers in bottles I will probably break out during the meeting, including:
And others…. if there are sufficient people in attendence to support the volume.
We’ll have a whole bunch of pork BBQ sandwiches, cole slaw, munchies, and other food stuffs, as well as non-ethanol beverages for those DDs that are coming. I know of several wives that are also coming, and several folks are also bringing their kids (we have a playroom w/ TV downstairs), so if that is your excuse for staying home, consider bringing them!
We should all have a rockin’ good time.
I believe I have secured both brewers from Stewart’s as guest speakers for our May 19th meeting. Even if they do not prepare a formal topic on brewing / homebrewing, they will be attending and available to answer questions. In addition the May 19th meeting will feature the debut of my first-ever lager (a Maibock) and a clone of Stewart’s McBride’s Strong Ale (how convenient Ric will be there). More than likely my Oak-Aged Vanilla Porter will be on tap as well (I don’t think we’ve really even dented the keg at this point).
We’re planning on having plenty of food (not just munchies). I believe we’re getting a couple of pork shoulders and we’ll have pulled-pork BBQ sandwiches, lots of sides, and plenty of snacks as well. I hope to have a demonstration as well - perhaps on yeast propogation, or perhaps some other topic - not sure yet.
I’ve been doing alot of research into what it would take to build a computerized home brewery. It really isn’t too bad, amazingly enough, provided you’ve got some aptitude with electronics and programming (of which I can claim credit for at least one of those disciplines, and I’m trying like mad to recall my skill in the other). Wicked Stone Brewery (aka Joe Stone) put together a pretty extensive website detailing the tools and components he used back in 1998 to computerize his brewery (Pre-Windows 95… *SHUDDER*) and while some things are outdated, there is lots of really good info there. I’ve also traded a small handfull of e-mails with him to fill holes in my understanding, and he’s been very helpful.
Donna (Mrs. GDSever) is on the wait list for welding classes… She’s planning on taking the entire gamut of courses offered (Arc, TIG, MIG, pipe welding, etc) and should be quite a force to reckon with by the end of the year. I can’t wait for her to start getting into it and have to rearrange my garage to accomodate all the new gear 
My wife is pretty bad@$$, ya’ll.
My brewing agenda, as it stands now, is as follows:
* Wheatopia (10 gallons of fruit-flavored wheat beer)
* Saison du Sevier (10 gal)
* Horizon Bitter (10 gal)
* Hell’s Bells Belgian Pale Ale (5 gal)
* For Whom the Bell Tolls Tripel (5 gal)
As you can see, plenty of pale beers being brewed in the next 2-3 months - perfect for a summer brewing season. I also need to squeeze in another batch of starter wort pronto (I’ve only got 2 qt left) and 5 gallons of Oak-Aged Vanilla for my sister (maybe I’ll make it 10 for expediency).
I’ve ordered a stainless false bottom for both my HLT cooler and my 14 gallon kettle. Thought was I could use the HLT as a secondary mash-tun for either 20 gallon batches or high-gravity 10 gal batches once I’ve got some other projects handled. The screen for my kettle was so I could start using whole-hops in my 10 gallon boils… Should be good. My “other” projects include building a low-cost float-switch circuit into my pump skid for automated sparging… more details to come later.
Cheers, Scott