On the off chance that I get a new visitor, welcome!  It’s really great to see you after all this time.  Has it really been so long?!  Hard to believe… The things you and I have been through in the interim could fill several volumes.  I’m just glad you’re here, and doing well from what I can tell.

Anyhow, right now I have a Porter that’s ready to be bottled, and a Belgian Pale that’s just about ready for bottling, too.  I’m a bit unhappy with the Porter, though.  It look a long time to start fermenting, and never took off vigorously.  I wanted to get gravity down to about 1.014, but it’s around 1.019 now, so it’ll probably have a bit too much residual sweetness and maybe not as much boozeahol as I would have liked.  Still, I’m sure it’ll be fine.  I dub it Recuperation Porter, for reasons I shant divulge.

I recently bottled Mercy Me (Mesquite Raspberry Chipotle Melomel), and hoary crappah is that some tasty schmegma.  I should share it around, but it might be just too good for the plebes.

So next step is to determine my next brew, as well as when to cook it up.  Figuring about 6 weeks from brew to bottle, that would put me towards the end of March.  End of winter, beginning of spring.  What’s a good early spring drink?  Troegs Nugget Nectar clone would be good, otherwise a Belgian somethingorother.

Jeepers, it’s been a looooong time since I’ve written anything here.  Nearly two years, as a matter of fact!  So here’s a quick update.

I’m still brewing.  Thanks for asking!  Won a couple ribbons, so I guess that’s vaguely noteworthy.

Bottled a Saison last weekend.  Even though it’s only been a few days, I plan on drinking one tonight.  Looking forward to it.

Made a few meads in the interim.  I’ve got one in tertiary right now that I’m particularly excited about.

I stopped at Shoreline last night and picked up a few nice-to-haves.  First, they’ve never carried it before (that I’ve seen), but they had a few Chouffe selections on-hand.  I picked up the “Houblon Chouffe Dobbelen IPA Tripel”, sort of a tripel married to an IPA that sounds intriguing.  Also picked up a Fantôme Saison D’Erezée – Hiver (their “winter” offering from their seasonal line… this must be close to a year old at least!) and a Reissdorf Kölsch.  Also drank the Fuller’s London Porter last night, which was exemplary.  Now I’ve never really reviewed a beer, so don’t expect me to wax prosaic along the lines of “pours a dense black liquid beneath a fluffy brown cloud” cause I didn’t take notes or anything, just drank it and enjoyed it.  A very nice porter, indeed.

I also spent a couple hours cleaning up the basement around by brew section (something I’ve been meaning to do for a good long time), and it feels peachy to have done so.  Remember when I had the blowoff from the Belgian Golden?  Well, I had been shielding the carboy with an inverted carboy box, with a hole cut in the bottom for clearance of the airlock.  That box was dank and musty and covered with tried hops and trub and crap.  That box was also still in the corner, gathering a nice bit of mold (wild yeast anyone?).  Finally got rid of that thing.

Also dumped 11 bottles of the Weissbier (Scheisse Weisse) for being just nasty.  I still have a case, and I might let it sit a while to see if it settles out.  I tasted each one as I opened and dumped them.  A couple gushed, so either infected or over-carbonated.  Hopefully none of the remaining case will become bottle bombs.  One or two actually tasted OK, so maybe there is some hope.

The night before, I cracked into one of the Rye IPAs.  Now, I know it’s only been a couple days since I bottled, but there was pretty close to zero carbonation going on.  Did I maybe skimp on the priming solution?  I only used about 3/4 cup of corn sugar, rather than the whole 5oz (probably about 1 1/3 cups).  The bottle was also the last one from bottling, and was only about half full.  Could the extra head space in the bottle contribute to a lack of carbonation?  Maybe not as able to build up the pressure to force the CO2 back into solution?  I’m no chemist, so I just don’t know.  The beer tasted quite good, though.  I think I may have run the dry hops at the wrong point, though.  In the future, dry hop for the week prior to bottling, not the first week of seconday and then racking to tertiary for a couple more weeks.  Should preserve more aroma.

Finally got around to bottling the Rye IPA the other night (Aug 20), and boy is that sucker bitter!  I’m hoping it’ll mellow out a bit over the next couple weeks.  I was lower on bottles than I thought, so I had to mix it up pretty much.  Used 8 22oz bombers, 14 of my older, heavier, nicer 12oz bottles, and the rest the newer, lighter, cheaper, not as nice 12ozers.  Oh, and it did drop a couple more points in the three week secondary, so finished at 1.020.  Target was 1.018, so it’s close but no cigar.  From a start of 1.074, that gives… 73% attenuation.

Also racked the mead into a new carboy as well.  Gravity hasn’t changed (still 1.020), but it’s getting very clear and tastes quite nice.  I’ll probably bottle it in a couple months, rather than racking to yet another carboy.  There was a bit of lees (yeast sediment) in the bottom of the carboy post-racking, but not a lot.

Tried a couple more of the weissbiers, and they were both way too sour.  Took a sip and poured them out.  I guess it’s an infection.  I’m going to give it a month or so to see if it settles out before I dump the batch, though I may pour some of it out now to reclaim some bottles.

Got the ingredients for yet another batch, a Banana Oat Stout, so now I’ll have to decide what (and when!) to brew next.  That or the DFH Indian Brown Ale clone.  I also picked up a counterflow chiller that I have yet to use.

On a bit of a personal note, we went on vacation last weekend.  We went to Connecticut (not far) for the Day Out With Thomas festival (fourth time now… PA twice, ME once, and CT once).  We stayed in Meriden which was a pretty crappy little town.  Found a liquor store that had an adequate selection of craft brews, and ended up visiting them 4 or 5 times while we were there.  Delirium Nocturnum, Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse, Hoegaarden, some local IPA, and I think that’s it.  The DN may have been a bit old, cause it wasn’t all that good.

Anyhow, we were supposed to come back last Monday.  We checked out of the hotel and then went to play a bit of mini-golf prior to our short-ish drive home.  After about 3 holes, pop-pop’s leg started really hurting.  It got very bad very quickly, and we ended up callng an ambulance.  Turns out he had a blood clot blocking an artery in his leg, so they had to do surgery to remove it!  Then they kept him in the hospital for 6 more days to monitor him.  They put him on Coumadin (a blood thinner) and Lipitor (anti-bad-cholesterol) and had to wait for them to become therapeutic as well.

Long story short, the hospital was very good, and the doctors were excellent.  We had to stay in the hotel an extra six day, and board the dog an extra 7 or 8, so our short, cheap trip ended up being long and expensive.

Parts of it were fun, though.  There was a small amusement park, Quassy, that we visited that I think was the most fun.  Besides the rides (one of which broke just as we were about to get on it for the second time), there was a Saturation Station, basically a water park.  The main feature there was a GIANT bucket that slowly filled up with maybe 1000 gallons or so of water and then tipped over and dumped on anyone standing below with enough force to just about knock you down.  That was pretty cool.  But the water was FREAKING FRIGID!  We surmised that was to keep people from loitering, as you literally had to run from one spot to the next to avoid freezing.

Racked the Rye IPA to secondary last night, on top of 1oz Columbus dry hops.  As with my previous IPA, I probably should have taken a gravity reading BEFORE the transfer.  From a start of 1.074, it’s currently at 1.022, where my target was 1.018.  As I’ve said before, I rarely have luck dropping any further in secondary, but we’ll see.

Also hit up Shoreline again and spent way too much money on beer.  But this is what I got, from what I can recall:
Southern Tier Imperial IPA
Southern Tier Hop Sun (6 pack)
Westmalle Triple
Fuller’s London Porter
Stone Vertical Epic 06
Saison Dupont

Not a bad little selection.

I may have cracked into my Weissbiers a bit early.  They have a rather tart flavor profile to them that I wasn’t intending.  It may be that they just need a bit longer conditioning time, and that I’m just too damn impatient.  It hasn’t even been two weeks since I bottled them.

The Altbier, on the other hand, is extremely tasty.  Nice and smooth with a significant maltiness and little to no hop aroma or bitterness.

I’ve been thinking of joining a homebrewing club here on Long Island, but I can’t seem to find good information on them.  I know there’s one that meets at the Blackforest Brewhaus, which isn’t too far from me, but my wife’s schedule prohibits my evening freedom (she does a lot of volunteer work).  I’ve also been thinking about starting my own club of sorts, either of brewers or people I think would enjoy it, or just as a beer appreciation thing.  I don’t have a lot of guy friends that I get together with often at all, and I think maybe I’d like to change that.

It wasn’t really with the “beer appreciation” thing in mind, but I’ve been building up a little collection of beers that I think I’d really enjoy but haven’t been drinking, either to keep them as collector’s items or to cellar them for a couple years and then quaff or something along those lines.
Monty Python’s Holy grAil (more a curiosity than anything else)
Fuller’s Anniversary Ale 2000
Rochefort 8
Rochefort 10
Stone Old Guardian Barleywine
Stone Vertical Epic ‘06
St Bernardus Abt 12
Southampton Abbot 12
Plus lots of homebrew!

A bit of catch up. I bottled the Weissbier on July 16, using the Speise and the yeast dregs from the Blackforest Hefeweizen (decanting off the beer first). I’ve tried a couple bottles since then (one only three or four days later!), and it’s nicely carbonated (allaying my fears that the Blackforest dregs were nothing but trub or dead yeasties) and quite tasty. Very cloudy, though, if you pour the whole bottle, but then, that’s to style.

Saturday night (July 22), I brewed up the Rye IPA. I started about 6 and finished about 2, so it was a long, late night. Went pretty well, though. No stuck sparges. I used pellet hops, and this is a reminder to myself: use hop bags with pellet hops! Filtering out all the hop gunk and hot break and stuff took a good long time.

Took a gravity reading on the mead. It’s at 1.020 now, down 2 points from 6 weeks ago. It’s starting to come together, getting very clear and tasting quite nice. I should rack again in a week or so.

On Tap: “Bull & Bladder Bitter” Ordinary Bitter (1.032), “Thar She Blows” Belgian Golden Strong Ale (1.076), “Milo’s Alt” Northern German Altbier (1.058), Kelheim Weissbier (“Scheisse Weisse”) (1.056)
In Primary: Rye IPA (1.072)
In Secondary: Sweet Clover Mead (1.114)
On Deck: DFH Indian Brown Ale clone, Banana Oat Stout, Strong Dark

Took a gravity reading on the Weissbier.  It’s at 1.014 (with a target of 1.012, or maybe a bit lower), so I’ll give it another day or two to drop a couple-few points.  I also removed the blow-off tube and affixed an airlock.  Using the carboy brush to clean up the tube, I REALLY got it stuck, and it took me a good 20 minutes and a possible hernia to get it back out!!

Brewed up the Weissbier today.  Things went pretty well, though I think I came in a bit low on a couple of the step temperatures.  Also, the first runnings were very cloudy, but seemed to be grain-free.  The sparge was pretty sticky on the second runnings.  Note to self: use rice hulls next time (or when there is significant wheat in the grain bill… maybe rye too).  Hit the OG pretty much dead-on (measured 1.052 at about 90 degrees, which is 1.056 once temperature-corrected, and that was the target).  Fermentation started within a couple hours, and the blow-off tube was filled with gunk by the next morning.  Oh, and the yeast starter smelled just like the hefe from Blackforest.  Set aside two quarts of wort for the Speise.

Had another of the Alts as well.  Quite tasty, though maybe a bit light on the body.  It’s already nicely carbed, though.  Also drank the last Skidmarks (cellaring box contents notwithstanding).  Had the Allagash Tripel during Saturday Night WoW-Fest, which was good but not spectacular.  Followed that up with my very own Thar She Blows, which is shaping up quite excellently, I must say.

On Tap: “Bull & Bladder Bitter” Ordinary Bitter (1.032), “Thar She Blows” Belgian Golden Strong Ale (1.076), “Milo’s Alt” Northern German Altbier (1.058)
In Primary: Kelheim Weissbier (“Scheisse Weisse”) (1.056)
In Secondary: Sweet Clover Mead (1.114)
On Deck: Rye IPA, DFH Indian Brown Ale clone