Here goes nothing. I haven’t brewed in nearly 3 years. And when I find spare time, there are like 8 other things I’d rather do first. So I’m selling the full Rooftop Brewery in it’s complete glory. If you’re in the market, now might be the time to pick up a brewery capable of brewing 10 gallons of god’s pure nectar. Not to brag, but it has made some stellar beers. Beers that are better on average than the mediocre stuff you tend to get at McMenamins for like $6 a pint. You can do better.
I’ve not brewed in 2 years. It’s not that I’ve stopped drinking beer, it’s just that I’ve seen the 6 hours it takes to brew a batch of beer and decided to use my time in some other way. Kids, Fishing, Camping, etc. I’m dragging my feet, but I’m prepping to sell my brewing gear at some point. Just need to pull the cord. It takes up a ton of room and someone could be making wonderful beer with it.
I’m not going to shut down the site just yet. The ads pay for the hosting, and I’m fairly proud of the content and time I spent on it over the years. The process of reflection (posting) is incredibly important to learning. And I really enjoyed the DIY aspects of brewing and setting up my brewery. So I’ll keep that online for some other prospective brewer to find and hopefully get some use out of.
I dusted off my Amarillo Red recipe and decided to change it up a little for a fall brew. I have an abundance of Simcoe hops at the moment and a relatively small amount of Amarillo pellets, so I’me going to tweak the recipe for this brew.
You know the drill, right? Get up at 6am on a Sunday, start heating the water in the HLT, go back and get some more coffee, etc. The SRM should come out around 13-14L. f
Yesterday, as rain poured down outside the open garage, a Baltic porter was born. A few friends joined to get a refresher in partial mash brewing (extract plus steeping grains). We started the morning with a quick recipe, a trip to Homebrew Exchange (which is open Sundays thankyouverymuch), and got the water heating. I had to do some reading again to remind myself how to do an extract batch, but the savings in setup, time, and cleanup were a nice change of pace. To mix things up, and to get beer a little sooner, we decided to split the beer in two carboys and pitch one with british ale yeast and the other with California lager yeast (2 packs on a recommendation from the shopkeeper). Brew day was easy, and the extra hands around meant that cleanup (and carrying the 6+ gallons for beer to the basement) was much easier.
Anyway, here’s the recipe:
Grains:
Hops
Other
OG came in at 1.087. Get to work yeast!
I was recently given a homebrew from a coworker. Not an entirely unique thing, but when she said it was brewed with avocado leaves, I was intrigued. It’s a partial-mash beer. The carbonation is great, the beer is a nice hazy pale, and the aroma is predominantly malt but with an earthy sweetness that I’m not familiar with. The taste is great – I’m actually surprised by the beer – for an extract beer it’s very clean and there’s not too much sweetness or anything. It’s really good – and there’s just something different about it that is intriguing. I’ve never had avocado leaves in anything so I have nothing to compare it to.
There’s not much hop to it, but I understand why. The leaves apparently came from a friend in Hawaii, and were steeped and added to the wort. It’s definitely a recipe worth brewing again.
Today’s brew went from normal to Imperial when the hot liquor tank ran out of hot water. I was shooting for an IPA with a nice biscuit flavor. Thus BIPA. All told, the OG was 1.078 and I managed to pull off a full 10 gallons.
I debated whether to have two separate batches with a unique yeast, but given the initial gravity, I opted to mix and pitch to make sure both beers got a running start.
After 3 months sitting on bourbon soaked and toasted oak chips, I’ve kegged the remaining robust porter. It smells great and the sample I had while racking the beer suggests that it’s going to be a doozy. Stay tuned.
I built this banquet tap tower for Michelle’s office christmas party in December. It’s a simple block of CVG Douglas fir with a hole straight-thru for a beer spigot and a partial groove in the bottom that allows it to be attached to a desktop with a C-clap. It started out as a part of a jockey-box, but after reading a fair amount, I decided that for the purposes of a party (or a wedding), the 5-gallon kegs usually get finished before they can cool down, and having the keg under the desk in a bucket of ice would be cheaper and less foamy than trying to get a jockey box dialed in.
Anyway, it worked well, looked nice, and was fun to make with some scrap I had laying around. I re-sawed some of the CVG fir to glue to the sides so that it would be CVG all the way around. It seemed a shame to have only 2 pretty sides. I didn’t finish it – and I probably should given the wet nature of beer – but unfinished fir just looks so lovely. Personally, I like it better with the short tap-handle. Next step will be to make a matching handle.
This year’s holiday ale is based on a Robust Porter recipe, but one the two halves of the 10 gallons were halved, each faces a different fate. The first half was inoculated with my regular Fermentis dry ale yeast. It will be infused with cold-press espresso roast coffee during secondary, and will likely get quite a kick from it. The second half was pitched with Wyeast British Ale yeast, and will be put in to secondary with bourbon soaked oak chips. Both will have some pretty strong constituents, so I hope that this base recipe will be robust enough to support such big flavors.
I’m still working out the details on how much coffee to add. Talked to a brewer and have been reading about other home brewers’ experiences. Plus, there’s a lovely step-by-step to cold-press coffee on America’s Test Kitchen.
As an FYI, the O.G was 1.062, and no less than 10 people stopped by to comment how good the the wort smelled.
During this year’s Super Bowl, President Obama created a stir by offering guests at the White House beer that he’d brewed himself. And now the president reportedly plans to have another batch of his homebrew on hand March 17 — that’s right, for St. Patrick’s Day.
Who would have known. From NPR News.