Where have you been????

What has happened to you in the past 2 years I was recently asked? Where have you been? I don't think there is a short answer to that question. To put it in a nutshell I've gotten married, moved twice, been evacuated from 2 houses due to two different hurricanes, gotten two promotions and a partridge in a pear tree. I have made friends with another homebrewer at work and will very soon be picking up where I left off...... starting my bid for world domination. Details to follow.

A little green

Suz and I sampled the pumpkin spiced ale this past weekend with a friend but it seemed very "green". I'm hoping more time in the bottle mellows it out a bit and the flavors meld and compliment each other. You can definitely taste the spice part, the pumpkin part... not so much. It's drinkable, just not what I was hoping for.

Another week

It's only been one week since I bottled up my pumpkin and amber ales and I am dying to give 'em a try. Brewing has been kind of on the back burner for me lately as money has been tight and free hours to do so kind of short. But have no fear, this brewer is going nowhere...... as the saying goes:

relax, don't worry, have a homebrew!

Forever and a day

Been far too long since I've posted on this here bloggy. I've done all kinds of stuff and drank all kinds of amazing beer since the last time we spoke.

I put the Scary Cherry Ale into secondary on top of the cherry puree and added the Bret Lambicus on top.

I bottled the Blueberry Blonde for Kyle and RP

I had a buddy of mine who has been homebrewing for 25 years on and off tell me that my Scotch Wee Heavy was one of the best beers that he has ever had the pleasure to taste.

I picked up two bottles of this years Firestone-Walker Parabola stout. It says on the label that careful aging will be rewarded so I plan on testing that theory.

I will be putting my Ron's Amber and Pumpkin Ales into bottle tonight and might dry hop my second try at the Decimation.......

so much beer and so little time on this earth.....

Devil of a beer!

I've had a few of my Devil's Nightmare Duvel clone and it's rapidly getting better with age. At first tasting it was pretty hot and solventy from the higher alcohol level, but now after just a few more weeks in bottle it is drinking much differently. It's showing lots of clove and banana from the higher fermeting temps and it's getting that nice crisp and dry finish to it. Last week it seemed more like a Hennepin clone than a Duvel one, not like that's a bad thing though, lol. I have a feeling this one will improve with some age behind it. The brewmaster himself at Duvel Moortgat prefers his own product at the three year old mark, so who knows.

Checking on a berry

I will be sampling my blueberry blonde tonight when I get home to see if it's ready for RP's party this weekend. I'm hoping with the warmer temps we've been seeing this week have hastened the yeast's output of CO2 just a bit. I'm sure it would have been better to let it rest for a bit, but the beer was on a tight time crunch so whatever it is, it is.

Cooling the swamp

I went out Saturday with a plan of building some sort of controlled temperature devise/area/box
to ferment my wort in, instead of just letting the tempurature of the condo (first floor cool, second floor warmer, third floor Hades-esqe) determine my fermeting temps. I had read about a couple of designs online and even saw a few pics of various sizes and builds.

My first stop was the local Target to get some bins to use as the chamber itself. How big would I need? I had done some rough measuring with a fermenting bucket complete with airlock and a carboy also with airlock both height and a working diameter as well. I get to the store and have more choices than you can shake a stick at( and I can do a lot of shaking). Large bins, small bins, pink bins but nothing that screamed "buy me". I pulled one of the medium sized ones down and immediately knew it would be both too small and too narrow to house my brewing gear. I tried the next biggest one and this size still wasn't what I was looking for. I skipped two sizes and went to a vastly larger one, a 30 gallon behemoth. Perfect. In fact it was appropriately sized to do two fermenters at once if I got the itch to do that again.

Next stop on my magical tour was Lowe's. I couldn't remeber which was closer to me on the highway on the drive North, them or Home Depot and I don't really have a preference between the 2. I had talked to one of the guys at the LBS and he mentioned something about finding insulation to wrap around my "box" to keep the temp down. But not just any insulation. Who has the space for their fermenting chamber to have a 15 inch ring of fiberglass wrapped snuggly around it? Not I good sir. He told me of a foil and air insulator that is less than a half inch thick but still works wonders. I inquired about it with three of four different Lowe's employees before I talked to someone in lumber who told me that all of their insulations were together in aisle 18.
So I wandered over to said aisle and lo and behold........ Reflectix. A beautiful shiny roll some 25 feet long of the stuff. Just to be on the safe side I bought two and then headed over to the hardware department to find hinges and screws for my project.

I stopped at my morning job to pick up some specialty adhesive to keep the insulator firmly planted to the sides of my "box" and then headed home. It got messy quickly, well anytime there is spray adhesive involved, that sort of thing tends to happen. Luckily for me I was prepared with gloves and a half roll of paper towels. After some more measuring and spraying and cutting and more spraying I managed to get the Reflectix attached and in decent working order. The hinges were a breeze, although I should have stuck to my gut and gotten the 3/4" self tappers I had picked out before I opted for the full 1" version. Oh well. Pics to follow.