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!