Hops Rhizomes

Midwest Supply is taking orders for Hop Rhizomes to ship out in April.  I'm excited to start growing some.  My HOA (don't get me started) won't allow any fruiting plant in the view of the public.  So I figure the best way to utilize the space is with edible flowers.  I think they are pretty, and the HOA will never know any better.  On an aside, I am also doing edible landscaping elsewhere with blueberries, plum, peach, pomegranate and blackberry in the back yard and Silverado Sage along with the hops up front.

Here is a link to their site, if you'd like to join me on this one.

I threw down for six of the cascade rhizomes, and I'm about to go out and do some rearranging of the flower bed this morning to accommodate them.  Time to brew some coffee first.

Fun with Yeast

So I finally got a magnetic stir plate.  After years of not being able to justify spending the 50 bucks for some reason.  My first impression is that it seems to help my process, but it is also just plain freaking cool.  I feel like some kind of mad scientist with it sitting on my work bench next to me as I type this.  Thankfully, for you all, I am only using my mad scientist powers for good. The pursuit of better beer!

 

So there is the first usage.  I used it to bring back to life a smack pack of yeast I'd had in the fridge since October...  Which is waaaay to long.  For the uninitiated, Brewing yeast does not hold up very long in a dormant state.  At least not that long, without some special considerations taken into account.  So I was impressed, and used the results in a cherry chocolate porter I'm concocting.  

Round 2:

And here we are with an English Ale Yeast from Wyeast.  I've got it in a 1.020 gravity starter, which is basically, 800ml of filtered water, and two table spoons of wild local honey.  The plan is to create a "Wild Honey Oat" brew.  Which will not only be me trying to pass a braggot off as a beer, but it's my second attempt at gluten free brewing.  Maybe this one won't taste like a glass of molasses.  Stay tuned for future awesomeness.

I keep bees, and they keep me.

I picked up a nuc from a local bee maker a year and a half ago with great dreams of producing my own honey for meads and wheat beers.  Honey, of course, being the most expensibe fermentable on the market.  And I've mostly just let the Bees be since then.  Deciding it was better to let them get established.  Well, I finally took a frame from them, that yielded me a quart of honey, and I was ecstatic.  Meanwhile, I've spent the last year contemplating the keeping of bees and the idea of letting them keep them selves and I've decided that while bad for production, I'm going to be switching to top bar hives and start practicing the organic small cell style of keeping.  Thus having a hobby that takes less time out of my week and is all around better for my thousands of little friends.  I really love the bees, I think I could have hundreds of hives and still want more.  Oh and, Bee Suits are for chumps. 

In other news, now that the holidays are over and I've gotten a shipping issue sorted out, there's going to be much goings on in the next few weeks at the brewery.

Ginger Beer Update:

The Ginger Beer turned out really well, or at least it appeals to my tastes.  I like a bit more ginger than most people. I had to do some finagling to get it into the kegerator though!  So as you can see from this picture, my kegerator is already too small.  Also, I developed an air leak but didn't get around to topping off my co2 tank to hunt it down untill it was time to go back to work.  Now all that ginger beer is just sitting in a keg waiting for me to come back off the road.

Food

I spent all my time this time home from the boat on an organization project which led to spending all my time playing with the new food saver we got for the house.  I really like this thing!  So I put up 3 pounds of asparagus and 4 pounds of brussel sprouts today.  If you don't have a food saver, you should put it on your Christmas list.  I'll be back to brewing after the first of the year with a cherry chocolate stout.  Happy holidays!

The Kegerator

I got the kegerator finished finally.  Or at least finished for now.  I'm sure I'll come up with something else to do to it in a couple weeks.
Here you have it, 4 taps, and 4 kegs.  Orange Cream Ale, Pumpkin Pie Ale, Experimental GF, and the latest, a from scratch Ginger Beer.

New Hardware/Ginger Beer

Picked up a few kegs over the last couple months.  Finally got around to turning one into a "keggle."  I prefer to just call it a brew pot though.

Here I'm giving it a test run with a batch of Ginger Beer.  Thats a nonalcoholic version of 'ginger ale' with more of a ginger bite to it.  I formulated my own recipe as I went along, so I'll update you on the finished product in a few days.