Thursday, August 28, 2008

Tailgate for First Game

So here is my post for the first tailgate.

It isn't happening. No one can come so I canceled the tailgate. I am thinking of going to Four Peaks before the game so look for a review of their new Endless Summer beer.

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Monday, August 25, 2008

Tailgating Rudowns

Because my life is sooooo interesting, I am going to do tailgating rundowns on the blog, including but not limited to talking about what I cooked, new toys and games that I bust out for the games and a recap of what we drank. I know, I know it sounds truly fascinating and everyone with be hammering the site Monday mornings looking for my posts. Actually there are some interesting things that go on and I have cooked some pretty interesting things, so I give this a shot. Look for it next Tuesday (Monday is a holiday and will not be doing much of anything.)

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Monday, August 18, 2008

Milk Stout

This past Sunday I decided to finish off the 3rd of three kits I bought from Northern Brewer back at the end of Spring. The last kit was for the APA and the extract was a bit old which I believe led to some off flavors and the beer coming out too dark. A good stout isn't as likely to be impacted by either of these problems as much so I still had some high hopes for this beer. The biggest problem I had was old yeast. This was the first smack pack I had that didn't blow up like a balloon. I decided to pitch some of my Muton's dry ale yeast, and opened up the smack pack to check the quality of the liquid yeas. It smelled fine if a little boozy, which leads me to believe it smacked a while back and created a small beer in the pack. I pitched that yeast anyway, because it didn't smell or look bad. I tried the overnight specialty grain mash and it looked, smelled and tasted great come morning. I choose to do something less than a full boil, holding back maybe a gallon and a half of the water to allow me to dump in some ice cold water to help in the cooling. At this time of year the immersion chiller with Valley tap water just can't get the temp down enough. This appeared to work fine. This may be one of the last extract brews I do for a while, as I am planning to move towards all-grain. I did get some really great sounding extract with partial mash recipes in the latest BYO magazine, that are made to be low hop requirements. They had a Rye recipe that I am thinking I need to try sometime soon.

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Monday, August 11, 2008

Dead Soldiers


So this weekend I decided to do a little cleaning. I actually only emptied one of these this weekend. Last weekend friends cleaned out 2 of these that I had transferred a 1/4 barrel of Coors Light into and I had emptied out my original keg of cider about 2 months ago. The keg I did kill was the EPA that I had brewed this summer. It wasn't my best effort, so I wanted to plow through this beer and get on to better things. Next up is a milk stout next weekend. Not a standard summer fare, but one I have been looking forward to nonetheless.

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