My Next Step....

Well, Cathy and I have been kicking around the idea of eating healthier with a leaning to more natural foods. We started this last fall by going to the farmers market a lot (Those were great canning tomatoes Uncle Dick and Aunt Caroline..we still have your basket!!), and we canned about 30 quarts of tomatoes, and froze a lot of corn, peppers, etc.

This year we are going to start a garden to help support that and such, and I came across an article about growing hops in containers, as opposed to planting them in the dirt and making an elaborate trellis system and such. So after some research, I went ahead and ordered some hop rhizomes. I'll get some pictures up when they arrive and the planting system I use. I ordered 2 Kent Golding rhizomes, 1 Cascade rhizome, and 1 Mt. Hood rhizome.

And Now....Back To The Beer!!!!

Well, it finally happened.....I finally got everything together...well almost...and ready for my "kegerator". I found an old fridge and 6 corny kegs on Craigslist, bought the tank, and regulator on ebay, and the odds and ends, beer line, disconnects, etc. at Siciliano's.



The beer being transfered into the keg is my scotch ale that was brewed back in February. It has had a nice long secondary fermentation, and had a wonderful aroma coming out of the carboy. I tested a little of it and it had a really nice "warmth" to it, along with a nice sweetness, with just a faint hint of "pine" from the simicoe hops.












Here is the finished set up....well again, almost complete. I'm going to be putting two or 3 spouts in the door of the fridge. Right now, with the one keg, I have just a simple "cobra" or "picnic" tap for serving. The bottom line is it's still kegged beer on tap. After getting it in the fridge, I force carbonated it, setting up the keg with 30psi of CO2 for about 3 days, then turned it down to about 10psi for serving. Worked out pretty well. I have a hefeweisen in the basement still in secondary, and in the next few days or week, I'll get that kegged up as well.

Vacation Time

Once again, it's been a while since I could update this thing, but there are some interesting things going on. First is the wife and I took a wonderful vacation to northern Michigan and Mackinac for our anniversary. We toured both forts, and spent a good full day wandering and exploring Mackinac Island. This is a picture taken at Fort Michilimackinac. You can see the Mackinac Bridge, which connects the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan, in the background. It was pretty amazing to see, hear and feel a 6 pounder being fired.




Here is a view of inside the fort looking over the parade grounds. Every hour they had two "interpreters" who talked about life in the fort from a soldiers perspective, and fired their muskets. They had two dressed as period soldiers(1750's-Revolution), a working blacksmith, and a "family". They actually do baking and cooking there using period tools, etc. I picked up a really neat cookbook called The History of the Hearth, which has recipes from the time period.





And here is a picture of Cathy and I outside of of the visitors center. We had this goofy thing we did of taking pictures of ourselves outside of pretty much everywhere we went. This picture is outside the welcome center at Fort Michilimackinac on the Lower Peninsula side. The Bridge actually runs right over the welcome center. You can feel and hear the cars going overhead.







This is Fort Mackinac, which on Mackinac island which is located between the Upper and Lower Peninsula's of Michigan. The only way to reach the island is by plane or ferry. Interesting story about this....it is built upon a limestone cliff on Mackinac Island. At the onset of the Revolutionary War, Fort Michilimackinc was dismantled and burned to the ground while this fort was being built.










This is a view from the ramparts of the fort, which you can see from the above picture, overlooking the harbor. During the war of 1812, the fort was retaken by the British without a shot being fired. Inside the fort are some really interesting displays. One is a diary of one of the lieutenants stationed here, along with letters he had sent to and received from his family in New York.






We took the carriage tour of the island. Neat thing about Mackinac island is that motor vehicles are not allowed. If you want to get around, you either take a horse or bicycle. Here are Huey, Duey and Louis, our faithful transportation for the day.

Been A Long Time...

Wow....I can't believe I haven't posted here for so long. It was a very hectic fall and winter for me. Work was unbelievably busy, and I had some medical issues that kept me from brewing for the remainder of '07.

One perk of the time off is my last brew, a classic dry stout sat in secondary for about 3 months. I bottled it in early January. After three weeks in the bottle it was awesome! By far the best brew I have done. Well, that was until I was moving some bottles around in the basement and found 5 bottles left of a Russian Imperial Stout that I brewed in the summer of '06, just before getting married. It has a nice warmth, with almost some wine-like notes to it. I hid two of the bottles...one to try this winter..the other in the summer of '09.

Ok...enough of the old brews....In February, I hit the ground running starting off with my first attempt at a Scottish Ale. I have to admit that I was a bit rusty after being out of the brewing loops for so long. It was my first chance to try out my keggle (15.5 gallon beer keg with the top cut off). It was the brew day from hell....1) After mashing in, I was trying to figure out why my mash was so hot...i was shooting for 158, and I was at about 165...after adding in cold water, I realized I didn't put all my grains in...Doh!!! 2)I ran out of propane halfway thru my boil. So after a trip up to 7-Eleven to switch out my tank I was able to resume my brewing.

It was well worth the problems though. After taking 3 1/2 weeks to ferment out (White Labs Edinburgh Ale Yeast....who knew it was such a long fermenter), it now sits comfortably in secondary. Hydrometer samples were wonderful. It had a nice "warmth" to it, nice sweet maltiness, and just a hint of piney bitterness from the Simcoe hops.



Shortly after doing my Scottish Ale, I wanted to brew up some more stout, so I did. I tweaked the recipe a bit, and after brewing in the middle of a snow storm. Yes, I was outside, in the snow tending to my boil keggle. It finished out fermenting in about 2 1/2 weeks, and I should be bottling it this week. Depending on how it tastes going into the bottle, it will probably be entered into Siciliano's HB contest.

Jamesport Brewing Company, Ludington, MI

Wife and I got back from spending the weekend in Ludington for our anniversary. The wife was wonderful enough to allow not one visit to the Jamesport Brewing Co., but two..and she even enjoyed a Pear Cider they had on tap there....

Nice building, sandwiched between two antique shops just off the main drag in downtown Ludington. Food was really good as I had a 4 cheese pasta dish, and my wife had a spicy chicken wrap. Service was pretty good in the "eating" part, and the servers seemed pretty knowledgeable about beer.

In the two days, I sampled the following brews...

Dry Stout...Pretty much says it all. Not a bad brew, good roasted flavor, just a titch of carmel flavor, just nothing to write home about, but good enough for me to take a growler home.

Scotish Ale...By far my fave. good strong ale 7.2% that wasn't "hot" or overly alcoholic. wonderful carmel and toffee notes. I thought it finished quite dry for being so full bodied.

ESB...Not being an over big fan of the style, I loved this beer. Good but not overpowering maltiness, and wonderfully balanced with very flavourful hopiness. If I hadn't wanted to try more...I would have had 2 or 3 pints of this.

Kolsch...Again, not a huge fan of the style, but I wanted to try some new things. I really liked this beer. Nice spicy flavor up front, but a nice mellow maltiness that blended will with the hops.

English Mild...This was another good beer, although it was a little fuller bodied that what I was expecting in a session beer. Kind of a sweeter finish that worked well with the light hopiness. I did catch some very very faint carmel flavor, but not as much as i would thing for style. Still a good beer though.

Prices were pretty darned reasonable @ $4.00/pint, and $11.00 for the full growler incl. the "deposit".

Been busy with work lately, so not much time for beer...much less posting here. I got my Cherry Wheat bottled up on Sunday after watching the Colts eek out a win on the road. I also racked my brown into secondary.

The wheat tasted great going into the bottle, and I can't wait to try one out in a few weeks!!!

Lots of things going on the weekends coming up so I'm not sure when I'll get to brew next. I'm pretty positive it will be a stout of some sort, just not sure what I'll do with it.

I got my scores in from my entries in the Michigan State Fair Homebrew Competition. My "Ohana" Pineapple Pale Ale scored a 31 in the fruit beer category. I was pretty pleased with this. The great thing about the competition is that I was fortunate to get a lot of really good feedback on my brewing. There are some changes that I will be making to really help the quality of my brewing. My Belgian Wit didn't fare quite as well, scoring a 25. One thing I got feedback from the judges on both beers was some oxidation, as well as some issues with Chlorine. Both pretty darned fixable.

AG batch #2 is in the books. Much easier and less stressful than the first batch. Everything went pretty well, and I even used the mash time to rack my wheat to the secondary. I couldn't resist adding cherries to it. I added 4lbs. after I had simmered them in 160' water for about 20 min.

But enough of the wheat. I'm pretty geeked about the brown that I just made. 8lbs of pale 2 row, 1/2 lb of crystal 60L, 1/2lb of crystal 120L, and just a hair less than 1/4lb of chocolate malt. Mashed at 153 for 70 min. I took 1 gallon of the first runnings and boiled it down to a tad under 1/2 gallon, and added it during the boil. I added 1oz of EKG at boil, and 1/2oz of cascade at 15 min. I pitched with WLP005 British Ale Yeast. Got good airlock bubblidge at 7 hours @ about 68'. I did manage to hit my OG this time at .051, and my volume was much much better. I have it calculated out that my efficency was about 72% and I'm pretty happy with that.