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Don't Mind Us, We're Just Spawning

Hey Everyone.  Most of you probably know that everyone involved with Good Scarlett either a) just had a baby, or b) is about to have a baby.

As a result, there is not much brewing going on at the moment. 

There are still tentative plans for another Big Brew Day in the not-to-distant future - probably around St. Patty's Day.  Keep an eye on your in-boxes or check back here in March for details as they solidify.

 Cheers!

Party Time

The evites have been sent.  If you didn't get one and want to attend the next big brew day, get in touch with us.

Double Brew Days

Our big brew days are even bigger now!  We're brewing TWO batches each brew day for a total of 40 gallons of sweet sweet beer.

The flip side of the coin is that our brew days less frequent, so we want to make each one even more special.  You can help us do that by joining us for the day!  We'll break out the grills so you can char up various meat products, blast some tunes, and generally make an all day party of it.

We'll be sending out an evite soon for our next Big Brew Day.  If we accidentally forget to send you one, contact us and we'll get you on the list!

Too Many Vacations

As if there is such a thing.  We missed a lot of brew days, but things should be getting back to normal.

Batter Up - Spring is Here!

This weekend will be the first in quite some time that we're not freezing our butts off for the glory of brewing.  Spring has arrived at Good Scarlett HQ.

At the plate is the Edel-Hell again (A.K.A. Edelicious!).  If we could brew more than 20 gallons of this liquid gold we would because this beer is impossible to keep around.  Not too many people have tasted it yet because, frankly, we've been hoarding it.  We promise to let some of this batch out in to the wild for people to try.

On deck is Shawn's Triple A (American Amber Ale) - another fantastic beer.  I had a pint of it on St. Patrick's Day and was again reminded of how tasty this hoppy ale is.

In the hole, possibly the Four Shepherds Stout although we may put in a pinch hitter as we still have a lot of stout at the moment.  We're also performing some equipment upgrades that will allow us more flexibility in our brewing schedule.  Right now we have to stick to an Ale, Ale, Lager, Lager pattern.  The equipment upgrades will free us from having to follow any pattern at all.  This means that we could brew the Edel here again if we wanted.  Awesome.

The Whitetail Ale has been kegged.  Obviously, we waited a bit too long to brew this "holiday" style beer - I don't think Memorial Day is supposed to count.  We'll do better next year.  This beer is a slugger (for us) at 6.7% ABV.  We don't usually make beer this strong (we like to drink beer, not fall down) but it was a big hit last year.  We recommend drinking it while already in the prone position to save time.

Happy Spring everyone!

Edelicious

We're really pleased with the new Helles.  We've been working on a good Hell for a long time and this may be the one.  We're brewing it again next week, so we'll see if it was a fluke or not.  I have faith.

The beer is definitely the lightest colored beer we have ever made. It's probably a 3-4 SRM (think Budweiser) and it has fantastic flavor.  It's well balanced and has the driest lager finish we have ever produced (thank you fermentation temp control).

This is a session beer without a doubt.  I tend to hang around the tap when I'm having a few because the need for a refill comes fast and often.

Work Sucks

"An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools."
Ernest Hemingway

The Triple A is a Winner

Shawn's first from-scratch recipe, the American Amber Ale, is wonderful.  Flavorful while still being "light" and delightfully hoppy without stepping over the line.

It was a big hit at our New Year's Eve party.  We tapped a keg of it about halfway through the party when the Oktoberfest ran out. I checked today and that keg is nearly empty so clearly it went over well.

Nice job Shawn!

What Fresh New Hell Is This?

We've been working on a Helles here for quite a while now and although we have made some great tasting beer, we've never given ourselves a passing grade.

The Helles is a tough beer to make.  It's so light and subtle with no place to hide any mistakes in the recipe or brewing process.

We spent a lot of time over several batches of our beer and several score of our favorite commercial examples of the style.  One big issue was narrowing down the yeast that we preferred and another was fine tuning boil times and the temperatures during fermentation - specifically performing a proper Diacetyl rest.

I actually forgot to do the Diacetyl rest on the last batch.  I'm drinking a pint now and it tastes like I dropped a pat of butter in it.  This makes me sad.

When we started, we began with a recipe that tried to make up for the fact that most homebrewers don't do decoction mashes.  This was fine, because at the time, we were not doing them either.  The recipe was very good and can be found here.

Now, however, we are performing decoction mashes with consistency.  We've also fine tuned our current brewing process so that we are hitting all our numbers within .001 SG and we have good data on fermentation temperatures, boil times, and hopping rates from previous batches of Helles.

So, it's time to start over.

Our next batch will be our all new Edel-Hell.  German breweries use the term "edel" (which means "noble") for their most delicate versions of Helles.  The recipe uses only German Pilsner 2-Row barley and a little bit of Carapils for the head.  It has 3 hop additions with a different type of noble hops each for bittering, flavor, and aroma.

We're excited about brewing this beer and even more excited about drinking it!

A Milestone

This weekend's batch (#44 OktoberWinterfest) marks our first anniversary brewing as "Good Scarlett" - that is brewing with Shawn (and now his wife Donni) as a team. Whenever we are short a person on brew day, I am quickly reminded at how well it works when all four of us are together cooking up a tasty brew.

It is also the anniversary of our journey in to All Grain brewing which has been an absolute blast.  All Grain seems a bit daunting at first, but after your first batch it's easy and after 30 or so it's a cake walk.

Another interesting fact, amazing really, is that this weekend's batch definitively pushes us (including my early solo brewing days) over the 500 gallons brewed mark. 500 gallons.  That's 4,000 pints of beer.

The last 3,500 of those are really solid beers as well! This includes the recent batches of Dunkle and the Riverhouse Ale. The Riverhouse was made for my uncle and is a Ballantine IPA clone.  Ballantine has been gone for a long time so I don't know how faithful it is, but it is a fantastic batch of beer.

In closing, we would like to thank everyone who has supported us with encouragement, taste testing, plumbing, and everything else. Here's to you... Sláinte!

Here Come the Kegerators

Some of the boys have wanted to go in on batches with us, so we've started to assemble kegerators for them.  It turns out finding free refrigerators is easy as pie Craigslist.  I've picked up two and delivered them to the guys in the last 10 days.

We're in the process now of collecting the rest of the parts we need (shanks, lines, etc) as well as procuring CO2 bottles and regulators.  All in all these kegerators are going live for less than $150 each which is pretty good.  Plus, the guys get the extra freezer space, etc.  Good deal.

What is going on in Montana?

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Brew Day Pics

 

 

 

Hot Mash Tun Action

I realized that I never posted details about our awesome Mash/Lauter Tun. It's huge (I think it's roughly 45,000 quarts) to accommodate what is generally around 40 pounds of grain per batch.

Shawn put on his engineer's hat and built the Greatest Homebrew Manifold Ever to Grace The Universe. It disassembles for easy cleaning and everything.

Then, because he has an unlimited supply of Awesome, Shawn installed a sparge arm in the lid of the thing. We've been fly-sparging (and just plain fly) ever since.

Too Much Beer? That's Unpossible!

Seriously. We (and by "we" I mean "Shawn") had to buy more kegs just to have a place to put it all.

As a result we're going to relax our schedule just a tad. Big Brew Days will happen a bit more randomly now, so if you're thinking of dropping by keep an eye on the Next Big Brew Day block at the top-right of this page.

Speaking of dropping by, please do and help us free up some kegs. We haven't seen some of you (I'm looking at you ScottScatJeffBeanTonyPaulaPagsSoda) for a while and haven't seen others (RodTyAdamJackieJebMikeJessiePGDave) for a brew day ever. It's a dirty job...

BTW - this batch of Irish Red Ale is on the money, Money. Also, I wish I had taken another picture of the Octoberfest because it cleared up nicely after another week but I couldn't because Tony drank it all sheesh.

OKTOOOOBERFEEEEST!

The Oktoberfest has arrived and it is fantastic. It is arguably one of the best beers we have ever made. I can nit-pick about the chill haze or slight adjustments I would like to make to the flavor, but it is very good. Great flavor, beautiful color, and a dry lager finish. You can drink three of them before you even realize what you have done and THAT, meine herrschaften, is what October is all about!

A Secret Message

I Said I'd Never Do This...

Bottling sucks! But I had to free up some keg-space, and I had to send Aric some of our Bloody IPA.

This beer is a real ass-kicker and was nicknamed "The ZJ" by a friend somewhere around the bottom of the inaugural keg. If you have to ask...

(ok fine here)

We Roll On

Tons of things going on around here. New equipment (look at this place!), new recipes, and new techniques, and of course tons of beer. Here are some of the major notables from the last month.


New Software
Things are getting complicated, so we invested in Beersmith software. This is an excellent product that has been around for some time. We've done two 20 gallon batches with it so far, and it hasn't led us astray yet. It is especially helpful when using more complicated brewing techniques, such as...

Decoction Mashing
We did our first decoction mash yesterday on the Oktoberfest. Using a newly acquired and modified keg (a Weihenstephan keg at that) to boil part of the mash, we ended up with an amazing tasting wort. We are very excited about this beer!

Grain Mill
The new grain mill is working great. The best part is that we can now buy our grains in bulk (much less expensive) and we can buy them at our convenience which helps scheduling. Shawn did his usual excellent work mounting the mill and motor to a rolling cart.

Main Man Aric
He's going All Grain! We're going to try to help Aric out with equipment as much as we can. We're hoping he can drive out (from Kansas City) and pick up some of our gear that we no longer use. In addition, we've offered to build him a new Keggle. As a bonus, we're hoping he can time his trip with our...

Huge Octoberfest Beerfest Party
For those of you that know us, keep an eye on your in-boxes. This party is going to be EPIC!

Beugels
Our buddy Jeff brought us a case of Grolsch swing tops! These bottles, officially called Beugels, are tough to find these days. Although Grolsch still uses them, these are the older 467ml bottles that are no longer made. Awesome. Thanks Jeff!

Thanks!
Thanks to Aric for sending me an awesome Guinness bar mat (bought in Ireland no less) and number-one-brewing-partner Shawn for the tap/faucet drain thingy. These two items will keep me from having to clean up so many messes around the taps!