In Preparation for Summer...

On Tap

14.89 First Taste

So it's finally been a month since I bottled my first mini-sour. It was 10 times better than I expected it to be. Nicely carbonated, very clean and clear, not too bitter(I was worried), and it finally has that distinctive brett character. I want to start waiting 3 months between bottles, but I don't think that's gonna happen.

Told Ya' Once Black Eye.P.A. IV

This is batch four of one of my favorite beers to brew, and drink. It was initially modeled after Cascade Brewing's fresh hop beer, but is constantly evolving. It's dark and slightly malty, but has a definite dominant bitterness. Black Patent, rye, honey, acid, crystal, peated, and flaked barley are some of the malts that make up this crazy mash. Dark cherry juice, tart red cherries, and red raspberries go right into primary, and oak chips in secondary. I did this batch with mostly summit hops, so we'll see what happens there.

Basic Gluten Free Beer

Round 2 with gluten free beer. I fucked the first one up by going crazy and doing 9 lbs of sorghum, and 3 lbs of honey. More like a "sorghum wine" I suppose. This one might be a little too bitter, but I can always keg it with some cherry juice or somethin'. Down with celiac sobriety!!!

15.12

Kinda the same as before. Wheat base, honey, acid malt, and a bit o' rye. Mostly simcoe for bittering, and some NZ pacifica hops for aroma. I forgot to add any coriander, but I think it'll turn out for the better. I might salt it later once it's calmed down, and I can taste it.

"HOLY SHIT!"

I brewed my black eye.P.A(C.D.A.) again the other night, and woke up to this. A full six inches of krausen that completely filled my 8 gallon bucket!

Oyster Stout Update #3

I kegged it up on 2-13, and added some fresh krausen from another batch and half a package of D-47. The other half went to the dubbel. I primed them both with a cup of honey. You can see the shells in the bottom of the secondary. Next time I'm gonna put em' in at the very end of primary, so I can spread them around a bit instead of all clumped together in the middle. They're about halfway carbonated right now so the wait continues.

A Date With My Palm(Sugar)

A guy came into the store a while back, and mentioned something about date sugar. I immediately went to New Seasons, and bought a pound of it. They also had palm sugar, which I've experimented with before. I got 2 pounds of it, but the brand of palm sugar I got this time had far more unrefined darkness than the last one I used. I re-pitched a jar of the 3726Farmhouse from the dubbel I made a while back. When I got the date sugar home I realized that there was oat flour in it as well, so she might be a little chewy. You can't really tell from the picture, but looking through all the beer in the carboy it has a purple hue. In the 3/8 siphon tubing it looks golden. We'll see how it looks in a pint glass!
In the kettle

2-11 24 hours into fermentation

2-13

2-15

2-17

Carlos SpicyWiener

I put 25 pequin chiles in the keg, and I still can't taste any spicy. Under-carbonated as well. How is my house even too fucking cold for lagers? The second generation of this beer is in secondary outside right now. I think I might go for 40 chiles next time, and keg a little early.

On Tap

Oyster Stout Update #2

S.G. is about 1.020, so it's getting close. Smashing the shells was a bit harder than I thought, and I couldn't break em' down into a powder like I wanted without totally destroying the bag. It also felt a little crazier adding the shells to secondary than I had expected. Fucking tastes good though!

They Grow Up So Fast

About a month ago they were only this tall!

Experiments with Fructose

I love finding new kinds of sugar to ferment. Bulk fructose is very cheap, and pretty tasty. 1 lb. of fructose in 1 gal. of water has a specific gravity of 1.o44ish. Let's see what happens!