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Thursday, December 20, 2012

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.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

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!

Monday, December 10, 2012

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.

Friday, December 7, 2012

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...











Monday, December 3, 2012

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...