Current Events

It's been a busy month, and not just for making beer. That's why I haven't updated this thing. Also, it's a little bit tiring to type out everything that goes on with the homebrew operation. I'm not saying that I'm tired of doing it. Whatever, I just haven't gotten around to it in a while.

It's kind of a shame, because some interesting stuff has gone on. Here's a quick rundown, in list format, of what's happened since I last posted. I won't spare the uninteresting parts.

-The dry-hopped Irish Red was kegged. While force carbonating it (a process during which the keg is under relatively high pressure) a line running to the tap blew. We lost, I estimate, a little less than a gallon of beer to the floor of my garage.

-We drank the remaining DHIR in only two weeks, which is a record. It was a really great beer.

-I ran into two issues with my so-called Lemon Wheat. The first was that somehow, the space heater that I use to control the temperature in my fermentation cabinet got unplugged. This resulted in a long, slow, start-and-stop fermentation. The second issue was that the recipe that I used- I called it "traditional" in another post- ended up coming out very different than I expected. Instead of a light, refreshing wheat beer like I was hoping for, I got a heavier, Belgium-style brew. It kind of reminds me of Hoegaarden or something. It has this bubble-gum flavor to it, as that kind of beer often does. It did not lend itself to the lemon infusion.

I hate to type this, but it's probably the worst beer I've ever made. That said, I'm the only person who has tasted it, other than Leah, who hates all of my beers, and almost everyone elses, uniformly.

-I boiled a new beer last night. After the Lemon Wheat, I wanted to get back to my core brewing interests, so I brewed the hoppiest IPA I've ever made. I used four ounces of hops, and I'm going to dry hop it with two more. The initial gravity reading was 1.054, which means this one is going to have a higher ABV than usual. Very nice.

I also used a yeast starter for the first time, but I'm going to save that for another time. Thanks for reading!