Shout Out

A hearty booyah to our SCRC counterparts for a job well done in Duluth this morning.

Slab.

Neighbor Bob

Went to my neighbor's house yesterday to sample a nut brown he made a few weeks ago. Very tasty. One critique I have of my own beers is that they tend to be quite malty, in taste, mouthfeel, or both. Wasn't the case with this beer at all. Which is bad. Bad because it was an all-grain batch. Now that I've been exposed to the all-grain process and its results, I can see all-grain brewing somewhere in my future. Hopefully I can stave off its advances until I'm more financially secure, and, say, have a place to live.

Any Sign of Sherman?

I remember some drunken conversation about how he was going to buy some brewing gear, but haven't heard of anything since then.

Long Time, No Post

Dudes, sorry for my recent hiatus from the posting, it's been a bit hectic with the honeymoon and house-buying (closing tomorrow). As for the brewing, I recently started my last batch before the move. It's a clone of Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout. It was a bit more involved than my previous brews, I had to toast 1/2 lb. of oatmeal beforehand and put it in the mash. I feel like I was a bit rushed in my sparging, so I hope I got all of the surags and flavors out of it. I feel like I need a better method for straining and sparging, it just seems like I either am not getting enough of the sugar out, or I let too much of the ground up husks in...
I'll be apprenticing at an 11 gal. all grain mash in a couple of weeks, so that should be fun, maybe I'll pick up some tips there. As for you question Paul about SG readings, I've been thinking of building a new apparatus that will essentially be a metal cage in which the hydrometer will rest. The cage will have some sort of wire handle attached so that it can be lowered directly into the carboy until the hydrometer floats. This way, syphoning and the accompanying waste of good beer/wort will not be necessary (patent pending...). I haven't gotten around to making it yet, but it seems like it could work well.
Anyway, the stout is looking good, I'll probably rack it into the secondary fermenter in the next couple of days.
Later hoseheads.

Recent lessons learned

As I was getting ready to leave DC, I had a bunch of beer in kegs that I wanted to get rid of. There was no way it was going to store well over the summer, and it sure wasn't going to transport well back to Wisconsin. In my haste to get rid of the beer, I learned some good lessons:

1) Better to make sure your keg is empty before you try to fill it again.

I had a bunch of dudes over a month or more ago to drink beer, eat meat, and otherwise be dudely. I was serving homebrew from the 'rator, and at one point one guy came down and declared one of the kegs kicked. Sweet. No prob. Go to the auxillary. Fast forward a couple weeks to Graham getting ready for his going-away BBQ. I went to rack a modified Hoppy Husky IPA to the keg and lo! The keg still had about 2 gallons of beer in it. Balls. I needed to get the IPA in the keg so it would go away before I left, but I really didn't want to waste the brown that was in the keg. So I tried to bottle it. Long story short, you really can't bottle a carbonated beer sans a counterflow filler without three things: a) a huge mess and 2) really flat beer. So that sucked.

2) It takes longer to chill 5 gallons than one (i.e. me) might think.

Once I cleaned up the mess of the bottling fiasco, I had less than 24 hours for the beer to get cold and carbonate before the party. I thought I could get by with the kegerator turned up to the max and near-constant agitation to facilitate C02 dissolution. It worked ok. Thankfully, the IPA was really tasty, so I and others were willing to overlook a low carbonation : temperature ratio.

Wisconsin

So I made it home. After a frantic couple of weeks, I finally left DC this past Thursday, and made it to BD's later that night. I left behind a few brews, and helped myself to a #10. Wasn't sure what it was, but it was good. BD is good at making his beers clear, crisp, and heady. I like it. Arrived in Ashland on Friday night.

Turns out my parents' neighbor is a homebrewer, and today was a brew day for him. I went over and watched him brew. He's an all-grain brewer. It was interesting to watch the process. It was the first time I've ever watched another brewer brew any batch, let alone an all grain batch. Bob, my neighbor, was also kind enough to give me a 7.5 gallon aluminum brew pot. It's more than twice the size of my current kettle, and while aluminum, will allow me to boil full batches all at once. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

And lastly, we've had a major drought of brew-related postings. Get to it. I know we all, myself included, are drinking far more than this blog would indicate...

Your favorite what?