end of the world eve

It's a few more hours until the rapture, so thought we would get one last post in.  We had a few beers from the beer advent calendar and from the other beer fridges, and checked in on the bubbling IPA.  All in all a nice relaxing night.  Also got to watch the Blazers win.  And with the additional beers checked off, I am at 1174 beers on my list.  I should hit 1200 by New Years.  Great Success!

The beer advent calendar is going great, with more and more people mentioning to me that they have seen my posts and wondering what the next one will be.  I mentioned the idea to Dave at Hop n Grape half heartedly, but as I thought, if I had pushed the idea on him of beer advent calendars and 12 beers of Christmas a lot harder, he could have sold a ton more beer than he is already selling.  Man, if I only had my own brewery or specialty brew store.  I would be killin it.

Don't Worry, Be Hoppy

Yesterday Gus and I made our first attempt at brewing our session IPA, Don't Worry, Be Hoppy.  We were inspired by Lagunitas new session IPA Daytime.  Just like Daytime we're hoping that this is going to be the perfect beer to enjoy with just about anything.  It should check in at about 4% ABV with about 75 IBUs.  We used two-row grain as our base and added a couple of other grains to add some flavor.  We used Chinook hops for our bittering and a mixture of Cascade, Citra and Nelson Sauvin for the finishing hops.  The smell of the hop combination was absolutely amazing at the end of the boil. 

We were joined during our brew-day by Garrett Booth of the Booth FLD Brewhouse.  He brought up a couple of his tasty beers and we enjoyed his Absinthal Gourd Ale (pumpkin beer), Yamaltonic Ale (yam beer) and his Cascadian Dark Ale which I forget the name of.  They were all delicious but my favorite was the CDA.  It started off like a nice tasty porter and then Boom!, the hops hit you.  Very well balanced and very, very delicious.  We also enjoyed a Founders Breakfast Stout, Lagunitas Daytime, Bear Republic's Hop Rod Rye and finished the brew day off with some L-Town barrel-aged Snow Patrol Ale.  The barrel-aged Snow Patrol is probably one of the best beers Gus and I have made.  It reminds me of Firestone Walker's Parabola and I can think of a ton of worse beers to be compared to.

We did have a couple of minor set-backs during our brewing but luckily it wasn't anything major that we couldn't overcome.  Our first issue was one of our burners shooting orange flames but Garrett ended up taking the burner apart and after that it worked like a charm.  We've always had problems with our pump not pumping correctly.  Yesterday was no different but we were able to move the mash tun onto the ground and gravity fill it from our brew kettle.  We suffered for a while when we were sparging but I was able to slow the flow from the mash tun to the boil kettle so it all worked out.  About halfway through our sparging something clicked in the pump and it started working correctly.  In our haste of focusing most of our attention on the pump we let our sparge water get too hot.

All in all it was a successful brew day and our first batch of Don't Worry, Be Hoppy should be fermenting happily in Gus's closet.  We will be brewing this beer three more times to try to get our all-grain brewing processes in line so both of you readers out there will get to sample it.

Dogg Haus Brewing

Hello to both of our readers!  Thought I'd drop by to give you both an update on L-Town Brewing's recent developments.
 
About a month and a half ago I was sitting home on a Saturday morning and I was really wanting to brew some beers.  Unfortunately for me, Gus was at the beach with his family and all of our brewing gear was at his house.  Since he picked up the all grain system from the judge we haven't used the old extract brew kettle that we started on.  I asked him if I could borrow it to brew at my place and just like that the L-Town Dogg Haus Brewery was born.  Why Dogg Haus you ask?  Well if you've ever been to my house you know that my dogs, Barney and Lola, pretty much run the place.

So after picking up the brew kettle and some other various supplies I had my first brew day at the Dogg Haus.  The very first beer brewed was quite the experiment and I honestly have no idea how it's going to turn out.  I started with a basic porter recipe that was pretty light on the roasted malts.  It also has a very low hop presence.  Before the boil started I added some baker's chocolate and with fifteen minutes left in the boil I added a bunch of peanut butter.  And just like that our Peanut Butter Cup Porter was born. 

After I finished the Peanut Butter Cup Porter I started right away with batch number two.  Batch number two is a Scottish Ale that I added some smoked malt to.  I have had a couple of very good smokey ales lately and this should be right there with them.  In addition to the smokey flavor this beer should also have some oak and whiskey notes as it is currently aging in the whiskey barrel.  We will be bottling this one sometime in the next week or so and it should be fantastic.  If you can't already tell, I have very high hopes for this beer.  We decided to honor Kelso's Scottish heritage with the name and called this beer Highlander Smoked Scottish Ale.

So a week after brewing the Peanut Butter Cup Porter and Highlander Smoked Scottish Ale I wanted to brew again.  My lovely girlfriend was in town and we decided to jump onto Homebrew Talk to try to find a new and exciting recipe.  What caught her eye was an Apple Pie Ale.  The recipe uses a pale ale as a base and we added some vanilla beans and cinnamon sticks to the boil.  At flame out we dropped in some pure maple syrup.  This beer is currently sitting in secondary and will be kegged most likely tomorrow.  Before I transfer it into the keg I will be adding four ounces of apple extract.  We decided to name this one Grandma's Apple Pie Ale after my grandma's delicious home-made apple pies.

A few days after I brewed Grandma's Apple Pie Ale I decided to brew up a batch of hefeweizen for Mrs. G aka Gus's wife aka Abby.  The recipe I used wasn't the same as before but it should still be a tasty hefeweizen.  Since hefeweizens ferment so quickly this beer will actually be going into a keg tomorrow and be on tap at Gus's in about a week.  Hopefully Abby enjoys it.  Since she has been so understanding with our brewing addiction we're going to try to keep hefeweizen on tap at all times.

I was still itching to brew a week after finishing Abby's Hefeweizen so I decided to swing by the homebrew store and see if I could come up with something to brew.  After checking out the hop selection I decided to brew another batch of our CCWA NWPA.  This was the third beer we brewed and it was definitely the hit of the party when we had our first tasting.  I figured another batch of a beer that everybody loves wouldn't be a bad thing.  It's almost done fermenting and should be racked into secondary this weekend and dry-hopped a few days after that.

With all of the extract brews done we are finally going to break the all-grain rig out again this weekend.  I've got a session IPA recipe pretty much dialed in.  It's got four different types of hops and a pretty small grain bill.  It should finish up around 4% ABV with about 65 IBUs.  It will be delicious.  I'm just excited to brew all-grain again.  We'll be buying all of our supplies for the session IPA in bulk and have enough to brew four 10 gallon batches of this beer so we'll have a ton of bottles and a couple of kegs each. 

We also have some Barleywine and Imperial Kahlua Stout bottled and conditioned.  Gus and I will be tasting a couple of those tomorrow while we keg and bottle.

Cheers!

Success

Winter Brew Fest was a success.

I tried every beer I hadn't had before.  They were all good except the Cranberry Stout from Westport.  And I only had one full beer and the rest just tastes, so I could function afterwards and everything.  I ended up with some extra tickets, but if I'm super lucky I won't lose them and maybe they will be good next year.

The only downside (besides the cranberry stout of course) was that I couldn't go back the next day.  I didn't get to try Brrr and a handful of others that I have already had but still would have liked to drink if I had more time.  Plus that Hawaiian food truck had AWESOME food and I want to get more.

And with that and a couple more beers from the Advent Calender, I just hit 1140.  I am a rock star.

On the 7th day of Christmas...

...we are going to the vancouverwinterbrewfest and going to really go for the record for new beers this month and try to push the limit upwards of 40-50.  Should be fun.

There are 18 beers I haven't had, and I am at 1118 on my list, so I should be somewhere around 1130-1140 by tomorrow I hope.

If you aren't following along on facebook, here you go.  Beers #1-6 of the Advent Calender.  Tonight I won't have beer #7 until after brewfest.

They read like this...On the first, second, third, etc. day of Christmas, Beer Fridge gave to me...

New Years Eve Countdown Fridge

Nate in I got in a quick email war.  Something about me calling him out on facebook about asking a silly question which I had already answered.  Specifically, what was the 2nd beer from My Beer Advent Calendar.  These last two meme's = Nate Wins.

But more importantly, what is my Beer Advent Calendar?  Thanks for asking.  It is simply the best idea I've had (someone else thought up and I stole) all month.

I filled up our wine fridge (currently not being used because I buy too much beer) with 20 beers from my other fridges.  And I let my three year old label the bottoms of the bottles in random order.  WAHLAH!  Random beer every day in December (once I get the beers that Nate went shopping for me in Seattle to get so I could put in a few true random ones).  And I will likely do the thing through New Years and call it New Years Eve Countdown Fridge.  Or I survived the apocalypse and now have a giant supply of beer... or something like that.  Maybe 365 Beer Fridge.  Stock it every month.  Maybe Bed Bath and Beyond, maybe Home Depot.  I don't know if we'll have enough time...

Anyways, I am rocking pictures on facebook and instagram, and then pictures on untapped, so the internet better get a second server.  Cause I'm filling it up this month before the world ends.  Speaking of which, I should probably put the last few Elysian Apocalypse beers in here before the 12th or 21st or whenever it is that cats and dogs start living together...Definitely gonna have to change this to New Years Eve Countdown Fridge...

Beer Advent

http://2012.beeradvent.com/
http://2011.beeradvent.com/
http://2010.beeradvent.com/
beeradvocate.com/community/threads/beer-advent-calendar

I can't believe I never thought of this before.  365 beers just doesn't work.  Too hard to drink every single day.  Or more importantly, too hard to only drink one new beer every day and not go over.  So the natural progression was to just see how many different beers I could drink.  Forever.  I am well over 1000 now after a bunch in 07-08 and then starting again this year and trying to fill in some from memory the ones in betwee.  (you know, during the lapse of focused efforts for the few years after I lost my list in 08 and during the time I moved, and since we were blessed with a son and now a second one).  But now I am again focused on the task at hand.

Wow, I suck at transitions, and that was a rambling paragraph.  But where I was going with that was, I am going to turn my wine fridge that we aren't using (drink a lot of beer, wine and alcohol kind of get forgotten) into a Beer Advent Calender.  I could just doctor up a couple empty 22oz boxes, but then the beer isn't cold.  And you can't drink very many beers warm, at least I don't like to.  Hence a use finally for the wine fridge.  I am going to have Nate stock it with 24 of the 80 or so awesome beers I already have ondeck.  Mix it up a little, make it exciting.  And even go to the store for a few surprises that I haven't had before.

My hope is that I will forget about half the stuff I have in the fridge anyways, and that plus the new ones will make for some good surprises next month.  And A Very Merry Christmas.  Hopefully have the ends facing out with numbers.  I'll post a picture once I get it done.  Something like this.

brew brew brew

Nate has been hella brewing at the satellite office of L-Town Brewing, the L-Town Dogg Haus Brewery.  He finally brewed up his Peanut Cup Porter, and then went crazy and brewed a second batch and made it a Smoked Scottish ale.  Then he went even crazier and brewed this weekend too with an apple pie beer.  We should be fully stocked for the apocalypse next month.  Especially if we can get some Hef and IPA brewed this month too.

Meanwhile we are also going crazy trying new beers, I still have way too many in my fridge since I keep buying them, and he and Barb keeping buying crazy new beers in Seattle and Portland when they travel.  Plus he is hooking up some beer exchanging with some enthusiasts in the Midwest.  All that leading up to me hitting 1102 last night with new beers.  And considering I have 72 in the fridge I haven't had, another 20 at least I have already had, a few homebrews still and three kegs, plus a closet full of homebrew...wow, sounds like a lot when I say it that way...

On my way to 1111

I hit 1088 beers last night.

I just passed Tracy McGrady and Cuttino Mobley in 3s, and hope to catch Dana Barros tonight who has 1090 over his career.  That will put me at #51 on the all time leader board.

Also, if I can get to 1111 I can pass Kareem for all time defensive rebounds in a season and be #1 since they only tracked off/def rebound splits back to 1985 it looks like.  Before that guys like Wilt and Bill Russell used to get 1500-2000 every season and likely most of those were defensive, so probably would blow Kareem's record up, but I do what I can to be #1, even if its going off incomplete records...

It's Stout Day

25-must-try-west-coast-stouts-for-international-stoutday
Brewpublic is awesome.
Plan to get three badges on untapped tonight.  Stout Day.  Flying Saucer stout badge.  And 1000 beers.  That's right, I finally have almost all of my beers logged into untapped, and will hit 1000 with a stout tonight.  I actually have a couple new stouts to try in the fridge, but will likely go with the Elysian Apocalypse beer 10 stout.  It sounds sooo good.

Whiskey Barrel time

Gnate's Barrel Aged Gnarleywine going into a bucket to get re-yeasted if needed.  Turns out it was ready, and went into the bottling bucket instead, 4 gallons at a time to mix with molasses for flavor and sugar for carbonation.  It smelled wonderful and the gravity reading sample tasted great.  This beer is going to be awesome.  We got about 45 bottles (22s) so this should last us quite awhile.  Hoping to drink a little here and there and try aging it over the next couple years.

We also put half of the 10 gallons of stout into the barrel, so in a week we will bottle 5 gallons of Winter Ale (white russian stout) and 5 gallons of Barrel Aged Winter Ale.  So excited.

Great lines

There are some great lines, slogans, taglines, etc in the beer industry.  The most interesting man in the world is easily one of the best advertising campaigns in awhile.

But I just saw an awesome on in the newest Rogue Nation newsletter.  A Coors slogan, "Turns it loose," was translated into Spanish where it was read as "Suffer from diarrhea."

I love Rogue.  I went online to order the 15,000 brew that I meant to buy last month.  And there are none available.  Whoops.  Limited releases are like that.  But they have the GYO pumpkin and the fresh hop in really cool bottles.  With us going to the beach this weekend hopefully I can get one of each of these.  They are having elections for Rogue Nation candidates, which it looks I missed the deadline to nominate myself, but there is a contest, and you should all enter.

Had another Widmer Nelson Imperial IPA while bottling last night, as well as tried the un-carbonated versions of our Dead Scotsman and new TriApfelwine.  As well as another Speckled Hen.  All excellent.

And lastly, Ashtown is getting closer and closer to opening.  So sweet.

Stock up for the Apocalypse

I hit 1062 distinct beers on my list last night after a successful meeting at Hop N Grape to plan an upcoming chamber event.  3 of 4 beers on my taster paddle were new and I picked up a few more beers (12) before heading home and had one of those while dealing with Fantasy Football league problems.  (Some unhappy.  Change rules to make some happy. Make the others unhappy.  You just can't win)

But it led me to a quick photo op this morning while checking on the barrel of barleywine.  The beer fridge is just about full of beers I haven't tried with all of the other beers I have already tried being in my other fridge.  I plan to be well stopped for the coming Apocalypse.  I hope you are, because when the water supply is suspect and you run out of bottled water, you will need something to drink.  Which reminds me, I should probably go buy some bottled water.
And toilet paper.

Hop N Grape also finally got a website in addition to Facebook.  Nice!

beer is good

Beer is good.  But it tends to make one a little bigger than intended when one doesn't exercise enough.  Hence I bring you this image to relate how I feel in my Halloween costume.  Fat guy in a little coat or motivational speaker livin in a van down by the river.  Either way, very funny, but very constrictive...

But on the positive side, I have fresh hop beer on tap.


And I had two new beers last night, Old Speckled Hen, which was surprising in that it had a nitro ball like Guinness Draught cans, but was an English ale.  And one of the Cripin Cider hard ciders, and that was also excellent.  Which puts me at 1058 distinct beers after the couple I had over my son's birthday weekend.  This included a double dark ipa from Booth, which was excellent too.  Guest homebrews are the best.

bottlemark

Bottlemark.com is the shit.  In case you use regular bottle caps, or use labels, or whatever, you really should be getting custom caps for your home brew.  They are awesome and only .12 each plus shipping compared to about .5 for blank caps.  When you are spending cash and time on all this beer you make, shouldn't you spring for an extra $5 for caps?  They make excellent collectibles too.  Buy the magnets they sell and stick the caps on your fridge.

We are hoping to go to secondary with our few big beers and bottle up a few others here in the next few weeks, so are putting in a large order to bottlemark for all these caps and collectors caps for all the beers we kegged.  The side of the beer fridge should be looking pretty excellent in about 6-8 days.

We also had a succaba by FW last night, and it was outfuckingstanding.  We had that after a Pliney, and followed it with a Black Bear Stout from Alemda.  Which just means we barely got our cap order half done and didn't even transfer any beer.  And had a slight headache this morning.

Oh well, maybe Saturday we'll actually work on beers.  After that I am hitting up a Timbers game with my wife and some friends.  Time to find a new Portland brewpub and try some new treats.

Your quest, should you choose to accept it

Drinking Quest is my next must have of the season.  Not that I have time to play RPGs anymore as the few times we get together to drink are consumed by making beer and/or watching football.  But still, we need to get this and it was an excellent find by Nate.

Last night I had the Peste (another apoc beer) and it was a chocolate chili bock.  I learned that if you mix it with Oatis by Ninkasi, you get a drinkable beer.  Not that it was bad, its just that this is my second or third chocolate chili bock, and I really prefer fruit and spicy and not chocolate and spicy.  Plus mixing it made for a lot of very strong beer and putting down two 22s of dark beer proved to be too much and I still have a little saved for tonight, albeit probably kinda flat.

We have caps designed for the stout and barleywine and plan to order those and have a beer Wednesday night.  And maybe play Munchkin while the wife and kids are out for the night.  I know, we are crazy party animals...

And with these and a few new untapped badges, I will hit 1040 distinct beers tonight.  Somehow it only equates to around 900+ on untapped so somehow I missed a bunch when entering them all.  But I'll still get to 1000 on untapped soon.  Most likely in November.

Winter Beer Fest

facebook > Ian's post > to PDX beer blog to find out the date for the Winter/Holiday Brewfest in Portland.  Nov 28th and through that weekend I think I know what my plans are considering I missed the main brewfest this summer a few days before Liam was born.

I can't wait.

I also started drinking the beers of the Apoc in reverse order.  The 9th, 8th and 6th have been great.  8th was the Blood Orange Ale and it was a fruit beer, and it was good.

And I think I have decided to get the 7th since I will convince my dad to buy it since he likes beets.

6th was the Elderflower Saison and it was also good although I didn't give it 5 caps on untapped.  Saisons really have to be excellent, kind of like Belgians, to get 5 caps from me because they just aren't my favorite types.   Looking forward to #5 tomorrow as tonight I am going to a blazer game finally.  GO BLAZERS!

Also had a new beers from Coors yesterday.

Batch 18 Pre-Prohibition Lager.  Not bad, worth trying one, maybe even buying a sixer if you are looking for something cool for your next tailgate.

Time for the Apocalypse

We had a successful tasting with a few of Nate's co-workers last night after work.  Or as we called it, a homebrewer's meeting.  Amazing that if you say you are going out for a beer that can be frowned upon, but if you have a meeting it's all ok.  The Judge IIIPA is finally gone.  So sad.  But the Fresh Hop Amber and Sunset Ales are in full swing.

We also made a stop at Hop N Grape for a glass of Drunkin Pumpkin by Fort George.  It was good.  I would buy that again.  And I needed to buy a few more Buffalo Bill's pumpkin beers and the strawberry beer for Abby to try.  After reading a blog yesterday that said they didn't like the Buffalo Bill's, I had to re-try.  Then it was home to feed the baby and have a Night Owl Pumpkin Ale by Elysian.

And then came the reason for the title of this post.

I asked my dad to get the Pumpkin Stout from the fridge but I was not specific enough.  And to be fair, there are a LOT of beers in my fridge.  I even said it was Elysian.  But I was referring to the Dark of the Moon Pumpkin Stout I had been saving.

Hence he came back with the Elysian 9th beer of the Apolcalypse, Blight Pumpkin Ale, and opened it before I could explain I was saving them all for December.  Shit.  But it was really good.  And I think I am going to just drink all of them one a day for the next week.  Kind of like a countdown.  I skipped the the one, the Beet beer, but my dad likes beets so now I may buy it just to try and complete the set, and he can drink most of it.  Or maybe I can make him buy it.  even better.

Regardless, this is your warning that on the 24th or 25th the apocalypse is coming.  Because I should finish the 8 or 9 beers by then.  Just FYI.

Also, I am at beer # 1023.  HOORRAAAY BEER!

pumpkin beers

Just a quick post.  I am so excited because my beer fridge is bursting.

Pumpkin beers in mass types and quantities.  Home brew is stocked and the closet has some strong beers fermenting so hard they are blowing tops off buckets.  All kinds of pictures on facebook if you are so inclined to see the barleywine and stout brewing from Saturday in process.  I almost killed myself twice, but I didn't, which is nice.

And I just got this sour Belgian sampler from hop n grape.
globalbeer.com/sour-power-sampler

I need to suck down some other beers to make room in the fridge for these and some other Belgians and sours I have been aging.  And then it is time for some seriously expensive and tasty tasting.

1012

1012, not only is it the month and year if you add a slash in the middle (10/12) it also the number of different beers I have had.  With a few beers on Sunday and a few more last night, I hit 1012 during the month of October, which is cool.  Not sure how many awesome records I have broken, but I am sure it is a bunch.  I wish I had more cool pictures, but alas time does not permit.  Hope to brew a bunch more beer in a few weekends, maybe some pictures then...

Brewvana Tour

A Successful Brewvana tour for the St John Foundation.  Gigantic Brewing, Hopworks, Breakside, and Amnesia all have great beers, and our tour guide Nikki was awesome.  I am now at 990 beers.  Photos mostly from what we uploaded to untapped, in reverse order which you can tell if you look closely. Untapped/fijigus