All Good

We had a great time at the party. Shawn lugged up his much-toiled-over kegerator and it, as well as our beer, was a big hit.

My brother and I spent some lathe-time on Friday night and whipped up the two Mahogany tap handles you can see in the picture. We had a third, but we painted it and the paint was not dry by party time - oops. We had fun experimenting and now have some good ideas for our "official" handles which we will work on in the near future.

Thanks to our hosts and everyone who came to the party for a killer time!

Going Mobile

This weekend our friends are having a Big Ol' Party™ and Good Scarlett is showing up in a big way. We're taking kegs of Irish Stout, Belgian White, and the specially brewed Whitetail Holiday Ale.

We're also bringing the newly pimped-out kegerator to make serving our beer a no-hassle experience. I'll post some pictures after we recover.

See you on the other side!

St. Practice Day

Patrick's in Frederick last weekend. Bad website, but an awesome bar. Irish music only and a non-stop flow of Guinness, Murphy's, and Car Bombs. Kind of reminds me of a place I used to hang out...

808 Hours to St. Patrick's Day

But who's counting?

We are! I'm not sure what we are doing on the big day, but the following Saturday Shawn and I will be taking our entire brew rig and meeting other F.O.A.M. members for a St. Patrick's Day Brew Fest! Of course, we'll also be taking along a keg of our Irish Stout. In a kegerator. With a stout tap. And Nitro. Awesomeness.

Speaking of the Irish Stout, it is BLACK GOLD. I was happy with it from the start, but once you push it through a stout tap (yep, drilled another hole in the fridge) it is creamy heaven. Shawn says a stout tap plus beer-gas is even better and I can't wait to try that.

Batch #24 - Designated Hitter(s)

We brewed the Pilsener again today and hit our volumes right on the money. This should bring the ABV down to just under 5%. We'll see how it effects the taste.

We're also going to skip the dry hop on 5 gallons, dry hop with Saaz again in 5 gallons, and dry hop with Cascade in the remaining 5 gallons. Just for the fun of it...

Where the Beer Flows Like Wine...

Before I post about how awesome the just-tapped Irish Stout is, I need to post about the Pilsener.

I didn't have time to post about it before because WE WERE TOO BUSY DRINKING IT ALL AS FAST AS WE COULD.

It was excellent. The best beer I have ever made by a long shot. Shawn took a keg and I kept one (we only brewed 10 gallons - big mistake!) and they were both gone in about 10 days. Everyone that tried it loved it including people that swore they hated homebrew. I took 2.5 growlers of it to a Super Bowl party and it was gone inside 30 minutes.

We will be making some tiny adjustments to it when we brew it again tomorrow. We're going to try the dry-hopping with a different kind of hops in each secondary and we're going to do a better job hitting our water volumes which should bring the ABV down a bit making it more the session beer it wants to be. Other than that, we're shooting for a repeat.