pushing the envelope

I hit 1250 on my beer list last night.  And my untapped list is up to 1220, so just 30 beers to find hidden in there that I missed off my list somehow.  And I am slowly plowing through my ondeck beers.  Which is nice.  With a beer tasting at Nate's place on Tuesday, a few beers while watching the Blazers win last night, a beer/wine tasting event tonight, and Widmer coming with samples and discounts to Hop N Grape Friday, this is proving to be a pretty fun week.  Even if I do have to work all week instead of brew.

A Year of Brewing

So this month marks the one year mark of Gus and I brewing our first beer together.  That beer was a clone of Deschutes Mirror Pond Pale Ale that we hopped up a little bit.  We named our version after Longview's most famous landmark, Lake Sacajawea.  Since then we have brewed about thirty batches and ended up with roughly two hundred gallons of beer between the two of us.  We started with small, extract-based beers brewed on Gus's stove and moved up to ten gallon all-grain batches as we improved.  Here's a look back at some of our memorable beers we brewed during the first year.

The First Three
After our first three batches had fermented we decided to have a small tasting party at my house.  At this tasting party we debuted our Beach Dog Brown, Sacajawea Pale Ale and CCWA NWPA.  For the most part our beers were a hit.  The Beach Dog could have used some more time to bottle condition and actually turned into a wonderful beer but the Sacajawea and CCWA were both fantastic.  We received a ton of positive feedback from our friends and I feel that really pushed us to keep improving our beers.

My First Recipe
After our first handful of batches I decided that I wanted to try to make my own beer recipe.  My inspiration for this beer was the now defunct Roots Brewing Calypso, a spicy sweet wheat beer that was perfect for some summertime drinking.  I took a basic wheat ale recipe but added a blend of apricots and peaches to sweeten it up with some Serrano peppers to supply a little kick of spice.  The beer turned out pretty good but it wasn't exactly what I was hoping for.  I do know that some of my friends really enjoyed it as Matt Jones is constantly asking me when I will be brewing it again.

My Favorite Beer
This is probably the toughest to name as I feel like we've brewed some pretty amazing beers.  Our first barrel-aged beer, Gnate's Gnarleywine is pretty phenomenal.  Our new session IPA Don't Worry, Be Hoppy is also pretty amazing.  St. Helens Stout turned out even better than I thought it would and is definitely one of my favorites.  But if I had to narrow it down to one brew above the rest I would probably have to go with the Judge GYO IIIPA.  We named our triple IPA after a retired judge that sold Gus the all-grain set-up.  Since he wasn't going to be homebrewing anymore he also gave us bags of hops that he had been growing (and continues to hook us up with hops).  We decided to brew a big IPA in his honor as our first all-grain batch we brewed together.  We may not have hit our temperatures and our beer turned out a couple points lower than anticipated but it was still an amazing beer and I would love to have it again.

My Least Favorite Beer
This one is actually a pretty easy call for me.  After Gus and I really started experimenting with our ingredients and different yeast strains Gus decided to brew another version of our CCWA NWPA.  But instead of fermenting it with our original yeast he decided to ferment with a hefeweizen yeast.  The resulting esters left from the yeast totally over-powered everything else in the beer.  If you were a fan of Belgian beers you would probably love this but I went to another tap when it was time for a refill.

Plans for the Future
I feel like we will definitely keep at the all-grain brewing and start to refine our recipes a little bit.  We're also planning on brewing a couple of really, really big beers with some friends we have made in the local home-brew community.  One of these beers will be a Sam Adams Utopias clone and the other will be our take on Dogfish Head's 120 minute IPA.  I'm really excited to see how these monsterous beers turn out.  I'm also in the process of planning my build for my own all-grain setup.  After messing around with Gus on his I was able to really plan out what I wanted and what I didn't.  I probably won't have it built for another year but that will give us time to get our processes all worked out.  I'm just really happy that I've found this hobby and I don't see myself ever quitting.  Cheers!

a little slip

So first I bought a couple beers at Hop N Grape when I was in for some brewing supplies.  But they were for Abby, so no harm no foul.  Then I was back in there to get two pelican beers to taste along side the other two I have chilling.  And I bought one of the new Widmer beers too.  So again, bought three beers only.  Which is good.  But not exactly NO BEERS like my resolution.  But way better than before.

I plan to have the MacPelican's, the Wee Heavy, the Stormwatcher's, and the Mother of All Storms on one super lineup of beers one of these days.  But it's roughly $50 worth of beer for four beers, and the Mother is 14% ABV and the others are 5%, 8.5% and 12.7%, so it's not a solo mission.  Likely an Erik, Nate and Barb mission.  Probably my dad too.

And after a few days, I'm only up to 1232 because I've had mostly home brew the last couple days, plus found a redundancy or two on my list so it offset a couple new ones.  But I did find a bunch of missed ones on untapped, so now my untapped list is only 30 behind my actual list, so I think I might be able to catch the two up.  And we have tons of homebrew fermenting and are making more this month.  So all is good.

So far so good

I've been to Hop N Grape twice since my resolution.  The first I bought only what we needed to brew for Shaun's batch.  The second to get something I was missing.  And I only bought three 12oz beers, one specifically for someone and the other two for Abby.  So I have resisted the urge to stock up on more beers I haven't had before.  And I am actually getting through some of the ones on deck.  And finished two of our beers.  So far so good.  But as I run down my list to see I am at 1231 so far, I see I have a long way to go.  Still a lot of beers ondeck, probably close to 50 still if you include the ones I am cellaring until later this year.

So maybe by Nate's birthday I might be able to buy some more new beers.  And considering we are going to the Dark Arts Stout Festival at Fort George, that is a good thing.  Because I will need to buy some beers...

New Years Resolution

I have a ridiculous number of beers in my fridges.  Just the fact that it is now fridges (plural) means that my new years resolution was easy this year.  And one I have a 50/50 shot of sticking with.  I will not buy anymore new beers until I get through what I have ondeck already.  It's still way over 50 beers to taste.  Not to mention all of our own beer we have made, the tons of beers that I have already had before but I had to buy a second time, and all the beer we are still making.

I pledge to not buy multiple beers at Hop N Grape until my ondeck stash is limited to single digits and/or one fridge and not three.

PS, I am at 1200 distinct beers.  I can't make Untapped match up with that figure without spending a day going through every brewery to see which beers I missed checking into, so at some point I may just have to cheat.

Like the guy I saw yesterday that had checked into a homebrew from Crockett Brewing I created a few days before and hadn't checked into yet.  Going in to my wish list and finding I am the 2nd to check into a beer was weird.  Even weirder was the fact that he got his newbie badge the day before, and WAS ALREADY UP OVER 600-800 beers in two days.  I have added some backlog in bunches before, but as soon as he ads beers he couldn't have possibly have tasted, you know he is full of shit.

Or the guy from Rio that checked in to one of our home brews.  Not likely stud.  You are a cheater.

But if they can do it, why can't I.  I think I'll just check into some shit beers I am sure I had a long time ago that I don't remember.  Or past versions of beers I have had.  I just want untapped to match my list without spending 6 hours at the computer...

I also completed the Advent Calender/New Years Countdown fridge on New Years.  There are still a bunch of beers in that fridge (see above) as I was thinking of going for Superbowl Countdown, but the photo taking, posting, copying, etc. to instagram, facebook, here, etc. were just too much.  Feel free to find all my sweet pics on facebook.  I've decided not to cut and paste for sake of sanity.