One Beers Trub is Another Batch's Treasure

After moving King Harvest to secondary, I pondered what to do with the leftover watermelon. I decided to go stout. I crushed up some country malt sample packets given to me by a local brewer, and just added some DME for ease. Good ol' Zeus to bitter, and some NZ hallertau for aroma plus about a gallon and a half of the dregs from KH. I decided to add some brett lambicus just to see what happens. I'm not sure if I've ever had a watermelon stout, or a brett infected stout, or a sour watermelon beer at all. A mere 3 hours after I brewed it there was an explosion! Of course I was out so not only did I miss it, but it made an extra large mess.


(notice the lid to the airlock in the bottom right hand corner )

King Harvest II

The O.G. was 1.062 before I added any watermelon, and I didn't take the time to measure the watermelon puree's gravity. It tastes like last year's batch, but a little stronger. I'll save the dregs from primary, and I'm going to add a wheat mash to it, and a sour yeast of some sort(probably brett).

On Tap

King Harvest

Last year at spring time I was really excited about fruit beers, because I started brewing in the winter of 2008, and there was no more fruit to be had. One of my first(and favorites) was the watermelon wheat. A regular beer with a 50/50 wheat/barley base, and a shitload of watermelon. Last years batch had a 20lb watermelon(without the rind of course) pureed and added in primary. This year all I could find were 2 15lb watermelons, so I decided to just go for it. I also tried to weigh all the rind that I cut off, but my scale does not go that high. I added the puree about 3 days after I initially pitched the yeast, because I kept getting home after 10:00 pm every day, and I'm sure my neighbors wouldn't appreciate my blender whirring for a half an hour while they're trying to sleep. It might work out for the best, seeing as how the yeast will have a bit of a head start.

Welcome Home!

(This is all the "shake" from a 5lb. bag of Zeus hops. Mmmmmmm)

When I said my posts would be sporadic I lied. I meant non-existent. Between moving, not brewing, and losing my camera it was hard to come up with anything worthwhile. Now that I'm pretty much fully established it's going to be trial by fire. I'm upstairs now, which is VERY different from my last house. I could be as loud as I want, and make the biggest fucking mess, and no one would care in my old place. That is definitely not the case now. I plan on hooking EVERYTHING up to quick disconnects, and streamlining my whole process. I try to re-use, and/or save as much water as possible, but now I'm trying to store any extra water in kegs, carboys, and buckets. A pump, and a plate chiller would be the shit. I brewed my first batch of beer in my new place, and things went pretty smoothly.

I had plans to do a beef jerky stout for my inaugural experiment, but my new roommate works at Elephants Delicatessen, and brought me home one of the best fucking pieces of pie I've ever had(I'm sure the drunk munchies had nothing to do with it). All I could think of was a pint of stout to go with my dessert. Being the ambitious brewer I am, I did another double batch to split in two. They will both live an identical lifestyle until it's time to keg. One will condition with jerky, and the other will mellow on top of an entire marionberry pie.

My next project is to brew a 6gal. batch with the private collection Wyeast"Leuven" Yeast, and split it up into 1gal. jugs, and add different bacterias and yeast. Claussenii, delbrucki, lambicus, and bruxellensis.

The pilot brewery is back in operation.