Posts tagged 'homebrewing'

• Christmas brewing - November 28, 2006

  Last night, I made the first beer here at my new place. The recipe is an idea Sarah and I came up with last winter for this year’s Christmas seasonal. The basic idea is a stout with chocolate and cherries added. I used my Oatmeal Stout recipe as the starting point. I removed the oatmeal, added a body-enhancing grain, and added real chocolate. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time agonizing over the details of the recipe for once. I decided to go with a pound of baker’s chocolate and cherry extract. Working with real fruit is really difficult and adds a lot of time to the procedure. Since I’m trying to have this drinkable by the end of the year, using the extract speeds the process up quite a bit.

• All bottled up - November 2, 2006

  Last night was a really busy night. On Tuesday, I went up to Nashua Garden to meet with David and Chris Aillon for food and drinks after an especially rough day at work. Well that killed everything I planned on doing that night, so I had to make up for it last night by getting tons of things done. Among other things, I had to bottle my pumpkin beer that I have previously talked about.

• Quick new recipe - October 17, 2006

  Ted and I were hanging around in IRC earlier today when someone mentioned how he wanted to try a stout that reminded him of non-fruity granola. Ted immediately started thinking of the flavors that go into granola (oats, nuts, some honey sweetness) and started thinking up a beer recipe for it. A couple minutes later, he had the hasic idea outlined and messaged me for my opinion. After ten or fifteen minutes, we’d debated the merits of various ingredients and decided on a final grain bill. A lot of it took the form of “I like oats, so let’s use more!”. This was a bit of a departure from how I usually come up with recipes, as my technique starts at the final numbers I want to achieve (ABV, IBU, color, etc.) and works back to the amounts from there. This was very much just talking about what we wanted in it, kicking some numbers back and forth, and then just picking a final amount. Interesting.

  Anyway here is the final recipe. Ted thinks we should both make a batch and then send them off for tasting. I was going to make a second batch of my oatmeal stout in the next month or two, but maybe I will make this instead. It was lots of fun to come up with. I sure do enjoy talking about and working on beer.

• Brewing the pumpkin beer - October 2, 2006

  Now that fall weather is upon us, it’s finally cool enough in my house to get back into homebrewing. I hadn’t made any beer since early June because of the temperature inside, but the past couple weeks have been really nice so I can get away with running the stove for four hours again. Anyway, yesterday I made the second batch of my Drunken Pumpkin fall recipe. Pumpkin beers are a big fall tradition, dating way back to colonial times when grain was expensive in the fall, but pumpkin was plentiful and cheap. Brew with what you’ve got on hand. These days, we brew with pumpkin because it’s tradition and because it tastes good.

• Goodbye, free bottles - September 28, 2006

  I went to the homebrew store today for the first time in several months. While I was there getting my ingredients, I got to talking with the owner and he told me some distressing news about one of my favorite New England breweries. It seems that Smuttynose is going to stop bottling their Big Beers in 22 oz bottles, and sell four packs of 12 oz bottles instead. The reasoning for this is that the retail market for the really large bottles is smaller than the market for packs of the smaller ones.

  Unfortunately for me, I love these bigger bottles. They’re exactly the same as the bottles I get at the homebrew store, which means I can add them to my rotation after drinking their contents. While a $3.50 bottle isn’t a cost-effective way to increase my bottle capacity, it’s still a really good price for that much delicious beer and it comes with a free bottle. I guess I had better stock up while they’re still available. Also, I suppose this could just be a rumor.

• Keeping resolutions - September 14, 2006

  Way back in January, I posted a list of things that I didn’t want to call resolutions, but really were. I’d like to point out how well (or not) I’ve been keeping those.

• That didn't work so well - January 9, 2006

  Well, that sure was a failed experiment. However, it’s a new year so let’s try this again like that means something. The last several months have been pretty crazy at times but since I’m so far behind writing about them and most people already know about everything, I’m just going to ignore talking about it. Ask if you want to know.

• I have entirely too much beer in my closet - June 29, 2005

  I just took a quick survey of the closet and as it turns out, I have a whole lot of homebrew. It appears I brew way faster than I can drink.