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!