Update on the Oatmeal Stout

The only way to safely transport tasty brew is to put a seatbelt around it.

Brewing went pretty well with no real surprises.  It was awesome using my new brew kettle, a 7 gallon, with a brew thermometer on the front and a sparge valve.  The new brewing facility was quite awesome as well.  I used the kitchen at the Travois office, which has a full professional grade gas range top that makes bringing everything to a boil so much easier than the typical stovetop.  I think I did everything right with the partial mash, but I guess I will find out in a few weeks.  I hope it comes out to be as strong as I expect – about 6% alcohol.  As a last minute change, I decided to make it a chocolate oatmeal stout by adding about 8oz of pure dark cocoa.  That is quite a bit for just five gallons, but hey, experimentation is what home brewing is all about.  It looked like hot chocolate, smelled like hot chocolate and is hopefully going to taste like one kickass chocolate beer.  I look forward to tasting it.

I am Awesome

This has absolutely nothing to do with beer...but I just wanted to show you how awesome this parallel parking job was.  I am definitely tooting my own horn on this one.  There is easily less than a foot of space between the front and back bumper.

And yes I did get out and stand in the middle of the street to take a picture.  Go me!

Kegs and Cherries

OK first off, I have been way behind on blogging.  Second, I have been way behind on brewing.  So, a little recap of my last beer is long overdue:

Cherry wheat.  It turned out all right, a little weak in flavor for what I wanted but still pretty solid.  It was more of a light Belgian(y) flavor than I anticipated, but the cherry flavor was subtle and sweet.  I was expecting a stronger flavor though because I used five pounds of raw Flathead cherries for shit sake.  I guess I didn’t get the total flavor from the cherries by only adding them to the carboy during secondary fermentation.  Next time I try a fruit beer I will know to mash the fruit and pull some more of the flavor out. 

The beer, however, was not the focus point of this batch - the new keg and kegerator was.  Yep, I got myself a keg, CO2 tank, and turned my mini-fridge into a damn nice kegerator.  I drilled a hole right through the top of the fridge and coiled the liquid tube around the top freezer part of the fridge.  I thought it was pretty clever, until the liquid tube froze solid after 10 minutes of not pouring any beer.  So, that was a total buzz kill that lead to me turning the fridge on and off constantly to keep it flowing.  I will have to find a better way to quickly drink my experimental brews without putting them in a bottle.  But in the meantime, I will be bottling my next beer, an oatmeal stout.  I just got all the ingredients and will be trying out a partial mash this time instead of 100% extract, which means basically it is a little more than just steeping some grains and using malt extract.  I will use the grains to extract all the sugars out to get the alcohol content I want and truer flavor.  It’s closer to real brewing and more entertaining.  I will be sure to post pictures of this brew process.  Anyway, I am glad to be back to brewing and will follow up with a long overdue blog on the weekend that was BEERFEST!!