Hop Harvest Update

Ralph Olsen of Hopunion left an encouraging post over on ProBrewer regarding this year's hop harvest. I'm not getting the feeling that prices are going to come down, but maybe we'll be able to find the hops we need in the coming year. This is good because out of the 17 batches I have brewed so far, I've had to substitute hop varieties in about half of them due to the shortages.

Don't Panic!

Yes, we are running out of beer. The last of the extract brews will be making their way in to our glasses over the next few weeks.

But the All Grain brews are coming and once we do a 5 gallon test batch this Sunday, we'll be doing several 10-15 gallon batches in fairly quick succession to build the supply back up.

LIFO - Clone War Results

As in Last In First Out. The Alt recipe wins the Clone Wars hands down. Crisp and clean and clear - we can't stop drinking it. The keg is almost gone and we are sad to see it go.

It could be that the season has influenced our results, but here they are:

1. Alt
2. Strawberry Blonde
3. UFO Hefe Clone

The rest we could take or leave.

These will be the recipes that Shawn and I start with when we begin all grain brewing, which may be as soon as this weekend! We'll probably start with the Hefe since a wheat beer will be ready to drink sooner than the others.

Hi, I'm a Mash Tun

Shawn built me. I will also be used as a hot liqueur tank sometimes, depending on what kind and the quanity of beer being brewed. I am super awesome, but I'm going to have a big brother that is even awesomer. He is not this super cool yellow color though.

Hello, I'm a 6.5 Gallon Carboy

I was bought on Craig's List for $10. I'm worth four times that. I may be sold for a profit in the near future as I am not expressly needed for this operation, but was to good a deal to pass up. I have two 5 gallon little brothers that were also bought for $10 each which will NOT be going anywhere.

Epic Pot is Epic

We've been looking for a big boil pot for a while now. We were looking for a keg to convert and when that didn't pan out, we started looking at large brew or cooking kettles. The problem was that they are extremely expensive (hundreds of dollars) and we never budgeted for that.

Then we found The Pot on Craig's List. The woman we bought it from said it was her father's who has passed on, but used to be a cook in the service - Navy I believe. It is stainless steel and the bottom has been replaced. All of these facts point to the pot being quite old and I like to imagine it might have served time on a battleship at some point - possibly during WWII.

She was selling it as a keg tub, or huge ice bin for parties. When she found out we were actually going to by using it for its intended purpose (kinda) she seemed quite pleased. I'm going to send her a picture from our first all grain brew day so she can see the pot in action.

How big is my pot you ask? THIRTY GALLONS. That is a huge amount of pot. A lot of pot. Way more pot than anyone else I know has. It is probably the best pot for miles around. I have a large volume of pot in my basement. Ha ha ha, drug jokes.

We can easily do 20 gallon batches in this bad boy and I'm sure we will eventually.

The kicker: we bought it for $20.

Moving Towards All Grain

Not much action here as we are still collecting the equipment needed to brew All Grain batches.

The SECRET RECIPE batch has been kegged and will be ready to sample around Thanksgiving.

I finally actually dumped the bad batch of Kolsch. It was sad, but it still tasted very bad and I needed the keg.

I'll have some equipment updates and pics soon.