I wouldn’t say that I’m sick of brewing beer, per se, but the tasks that surround beer brewing are starting to get a little old.  For example, bottling.  And cleaning.  And cleaning.  And organizing.  I have a lot of bottles, and with my new all-grain system, a lot more equipment, and every time I want [...]

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So, the short story is that I didn’t get the Best Brews Intern position.  The long story is that I got screwed out of…something.  Here’s what I wrote, cross-posted from my main blog:
I’ve been writing about how I was one of the finalists for the Best Brews Summer Intern position and how I was going [...]

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My thoughts on batch #1 were pretty clear: don’t shake the starter.  I’m still cleaning yeast and malt off surfaces in the kitchen, and the ants that are constantly scouring my kitchen for tidbits sure liked a couple of stray splatters I missed.  I also realized that I had taken my OG reading incorrectly, so [...]

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I did my first batch of the year today, and I think it came out really well.  I used 3.5 lbs. of extra light bulk malt extract, 3.5 lbs. of wheat bulk malt extract, and 3.3 lbs. of Breiss Sparkling Amber malt extract, along with Mt. Hood, Cascade, Fuggles, and Willamette hops.  Topping all that [...]

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I had a bottle of Beer Valley Brewing’s “Highway to Ale” barleywine-style ale last night.  I wasn’t familiar with Beer Valley, but hey, 10.5% ABV always get my attention.  Plus, Highway to Ale?  Sounds like a song a cockney AC/DC would sing.  But I was impressed.  Very impressed.  It actually didn’t taste anything like a [...]

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Not much movement on the homebrew front.  My lager is still…well, lagering.  I racked it into the carboy on Christmas Day, and I’ll let it sit there for at least another three or four weeks before bottling it.  I haven’t been taking regular hydrometer readings–in fact, I haven’t ever once taken a hydrometer reading between [...]

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I tried the first bottle of my special Christmas ale last night, and it was quite good–better than I expected it to be, really.  My only major complaint was that it didn’t quite have the bitter maltiness to it that my porter did.  I didn’t expect a porter taste out of it, but I would [...]

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Last Wednesday night I brewed my 10th and final batch of 2007, an amber-colored lager (which was odd since I used light and extra-light malt, but perhaps it will “mellow out” in color) that I’ll rack into a carboy around Christmas and bottle around Valentine’s Day. It’s no wonder that breweries prefer ales to [...]

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I bottled my 10th and final batch of 2007 last night, and with my trusty brewing companion-slash-girlfriend’s help, things went much more smoothly than the last two times I bottled by myself.  I ended up with 23 22 oz. bottles (and one filled halfway up) and six 12 oz. bottles.  Since this is the Christmas [...]

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I racked my special Christmas ale into a carboy last night after eight days of primary fermentation, though from the lack of bubbling in the airlock it appears as if fermentation is about done.  I didn’t bother to take a hydrometer reading to tell for certain, however, since I hadn’t sanitized my hydrometer.  I watched [...]

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