In the last month I’ve brewed all-grain versions of both of the White House beer recipes: Honey Ale and Honey Porter.   No, I’m not on a “honey” kick… it was the result of a bad guess on my part.

Every March there is an auction (the “Youth Auction”) at our church.  The auction raises funds for youth activities and it is a popular event.  People donate items or services to be auctioned off and the proceeds fund things like trips for the Appalachian Service Project or the youth gathering in New Orleans.  This year I donated a case of empty beer bottles.  The winner of the bidding for these bottles was told to contact me and I would fill those bottles with homebrew beer for them for free.
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___Groovy___?

A subtle glitch in my Logitech mouse has caused me a lot of grief.

Today I fixed it.

This is the mouse that came with the S501 keyboard I use daily (for hours.)  Because of the glitch I had resorted to some older Logitech mice  for the past few years but in early February I retired those old mice and went back to the mouse that matched the keyboard.

This mouse had a mind of it’s own (so to speak) and would double-click on a single click about 50% of the time.  That, as you might imagine, was extremely irritating.  Now I remembered why I had put it in the drawer and resorted to the old mice. [Read more →]

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It’s less than two weeks away and I’m already anxiously anticipating the judging results from War of the Worts – especially for the American Amber Ale.

Yes, I recognize the “a” alliteration overload in the previous sentence.  I hereby offer my anxious apologies for that

Last night I sampled another bottle and I’m happier than ever about it.   It was bottled on January 26th and took a while to carbonate sufficiently in this drafty cold house.  Six days in a room specially heated to 80 degrees helped out greatly with that – but at what cost?  I’ll find out when the power bill arrives

It’s a great medium-dark amber color with a wonderful malty profile and just enough hops to balance that out.  Even better, there was enough beer at bottling time to fill 2+ cases.

Once again, my cup overflows.

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My expectations were 100% correct – this event was great!  As usual the brewers were a friendly and talented group.  The 180 attendees (yikes!) were equally wonderful.   The folks from Dock Street were friendly and helpful.  It was good all around.

When people barge through the crowd to get to your table and then say: “I’ve been told I need to try your beer” it’s exciting.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t our beer.

All the participants that tried our Oatmeal Stout liked it.  As good as it is, didn’t get any votes.  I blame that (ha!) on the two award winning (and delicious!) stouts that were RIGHT NEXT TO ME  :-) [Read more →]

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The last month has rushed by but a lot ‘o brewing has been going on.  After the Oatmeal Stout we brewed an American Amber ale.   Dan returned to college the next day.  I then bottled the amber ale and brewed another rye IPA (#7)  which is conditioning in the fermenter.  On top of that, I’ve entered two contests with a third scheduled for later this month.

Back in May of 2012 I wrote about Josh Weikert’s  brewing accomplishments.  At that point I’d resolved to start entering brewing competitions – but haven’t been able to implement that plan… until now. [Read more →]

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I’ve been on a short (okay, three months – maybe not so short) hiatus from blogging and brewing.  There have been serious health issues in our extended family and that took a lot of extra time.

But the break is over… and I have resumed brewing with a vengeance!

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On Sunday I brewed my all-grain version of the White House Honey Porter recipe.  The brew process was okay but I have to devise a better way to measure volume…  the O.G. was a bit too low.

Here’s the funny thing about this porter: it’s Kick Ass.  What do I mean?  40% more alcohol.

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Brewing has it’s own strange vocabulary.  It makes sense when you think about it – evidence of brewing goes back more than 9 thousand years and they sure didn’t speak American English at the time.  Much of the brewing vocabulary that we use today owes it’s genesis to the English brewing industry.  Tun is one such word – it’s equivalent to barrel or cask.  See the Wikipedia entry for barrel.

Brewing beer from grain typically requires a mash tun and a lauter tun.  The mash tun contains the grain and hot brewing liquor (water) while the enzymes convert the starches into sugars.   The lauter tun is where the wort (water with dissolved sugars) is separated (lautered) from the now-spent grain.  To make homebrewing a bit simpler, many folks use a combined mash/lauter tun.  Here, for example, is my mash/lauter tun:

 Okay, stop laughing.  You were expecting something fancy?.

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I’ve decided to enable comments on this blog.

Since I have precious little “free” time to moderate the comments I’ll have to rely on you to “self police” to a certain extent.  Your cooperation and some automated anti-spam technology should do the trick.

I guess that I will develop and post some commenting rules… when I have the time.  Let’s see what happens.

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Traditionally, European brewers would cease or severely limit brewing in the summer.  That was because they could not keep their ale fermentation temperatures low enough.  If you ferment ales at a temperature that is too warm the yeast start to go a bit “crazy.”  Crazy yeast produces crazy flavors.  Now some beers need some of those off flavors but most beers do not and certainly not in the quantity you can get them in an overly-warm fermentation.  Refrigeration has eliminated the seasonal variation in brewing – except for those of us who don’t have air conditioning or a spare refrigerator to use as a fermentation chamber.

In the late summer of 2011 I threw away almost two entire batches of extra special bitter that had been ruined by overly-warm fermentation – but not before I found out what caused it!

As Dan and I prepared for the fermentation of the India Brown Ale we had to find a way to control the temperature.  The target was 68 degrees F. and the weather is consistently in the 80′s and 90′s.. Without a spare refrigerator or freezer I decided to resort to using thermal mass and some ice. [Read more →]

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