As I mentioned earlier, brewery activity has slowed lately. I brewed up a 2 gallon batch of Dogfish Head 60 Min clone, it's dry hopping right now and will be ready to bottle in about a week (I can't wait!). That basically came about from brewing withdrawal. I put the porter on the gas to carbonate and it's coming along. I think it's too young still as it is very sweet. Served at just below room temp it's not as bad, more of the roasted flavor comes through. But being that this is a rather big beer...

jacksonbrown

Not much has been happening since Teach a Friend to Homebrew day. In fact, I've taken those few weeks in between off as there's lots of beer aging away, waiting for a keg to free itself (well, it can't do it alone, I'll help). I transfered the ten gallons of Amber Rye to secondary fermenters and added Polyclar, a clarifying agent that helps eliminate evil chill haze.
I'm also getting ready to make my first lager, now that the cold has come. But my fermenting fridge is in the garage, and it's...

jacksonbrown

Saturday, November 1, was teach a friend to homebrew day. I only had one friend over who had never brewed before, and one who does partial mashes. The day had it's glitches with a mill that wouldn't crush the grain at first (turned out to be a loose screw), and a way missed OG (1.043 instead of 1.053). But we still ended up with ten gallons of beer, albeit slightly different from what we had set out to brew (Southern Sky Amber Rye). I used this batch as an opportunity to try a brew with two different...

jacksonbrown

I was supposed to brew a Summit SMaSH (single malt and single hops) this weekend, but ran into some obstacles. Saturday started off great. A friend from work got us free tickets to the Badger game against Illinois. Another friend was working the beer tent, so we got to drink for tips only. Great seats and a great game! Badgers finally won their first Big 10 conference game of the season ('bout freaking time!). Went back to the beer tent after the game, met Wendel the Miller Hight Life guy, got some...

jacksonbrown

Well, nothing too even about it. I have one tap that seems to want to give off a hell of a lot more foam than the other and I don't know why.
But that's neither here nor there. Some updates have occurred. The stout I brewed a couple weeks ago had an OG of 1.057, which is just about perfect in my opinion. It took me some time to decide on which yeast to use for that brew. I had read in BYO that a London ESB Ale yeast would work very well, but then had some reservations about it's low attenuation...

jacksonbrown