Deer season beer...

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andre the giant

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OK, Deer season in Missouri starts Nov. 12. I usually go out to the boonies with some relatives of mine, camp out, drink beer, sit around the fire, go out in the woods and shoot a lot of pictures. (I seldom see any deer.) I was thinking of taking my brewing on the road, and brewing a batch of beer out in the wilderness.

I have the ingredients for a German Pilsner and it should be cool at deer camp, 35-55 degrees. Most of the logistics are pretty easy. I'll bring everything with me, water, equipment, ingredients, etc. It should be similar to brewing at home with the exception that I won't be able to chill the wort. Nature will have to do that. Then it's a matter of time before I have "Deer Hunter Pilsner" ready to drink.

What do you think? Stupid idea? Great idea?

Also, how would the name "Deer Hunter Pilsner" translate in German? For some reason I keep thinking that Hunter=Jaeger <sp> Maybe its a throw back to all those times I "threw back" Jaegermiester. :drunk:
 
andre the giant said:
I'll bring everything with me, water, equipment, ingredients, etc. It should be similar to brewing at home with the exception that I won't be able to chill the wort. Nature will have to do that.

Bring some ice in a cooler/tub. You can chill it that way.

andre the giant said:
What do you think? Stupid idea? Great idea?

Sounds like a great "man's man" brewing session! Fun!

andre the giant said:
Also, how would the name "Deer Hunter Pilsner" translate in German?

'Hirsch' is deer in german (add an 'e' to the end for plural). 'Jaeger' is hunter.

You are making a "Hirshjaeger Pils".


-walker
 
... OR ...

you can use the word for "stalk" (pirschen) instead of "hunt" (jaegen) and have Hirschpirscher beer.

-walker
 
That sounds SWEET. I think the pros outweigh any cons on this one.
 
If you're used to brewing outside that sounds pretty good. Personally, I just love having my kitchen sink handy. One side for sanitizer and the other to rinse stuff. Of course, all of your hunting buddies will ask where the finished beer is.

Our deer season doesn't start until Nov. 19 here and we only get two weeks. :mad: I have a choice to go to southeast Oklahoma where I seldom get a deer or to northwest Oklahoma where I almost always get a deer. but since my family is in SE I usually end up there. It's all about the extracurriculars for me, also.

Have you ever seen Escanaba in da moonlight? Every deer camp person needs to see that movie!
 
My Hirschjager Pils is in the fermenter. The mash and boil went well. Temps may have been a bit below normal on the mash, but not enough to worry about. It took hours and hours to cool off. I finally pitched the yeast and put it in the SUV. The temp stayed around 60 degrees. I haven't seen any airlock activity yet, but then again, the grommet on the bucket lid sorta self destructed so I don't think its airtight.

All in all, it was a good day, a hell of a lot better day for brewing than it was for hunting. There was a pretty good wind, so you couldn't hear anything, it was cloudy and threatening to rain the whole time, and the forest was so littered with acorns that the deer didn't really have to forage much.

We'll see how the wilderness brew turns out, in the meantime, my campmates requested that I join them for turkey season, and brew a batch of beer then too. (and bring a bunch of the Hirschjager pils with me at that time.) I see how they are....
 
Reh are specifically Roe deer, but I don't think Andre is hunting those kind!

Roe deer are interesting beasts... shedding antlers and all.

-walker
 
It's elk season here. Don't know if I can make an ale that big!

Natural cooling is a real drag, unless you have a stream to set the bucket in.
 
Good to hear the brew session went well and didn't rain, or have the forest animals attack in the middle of brewing or something.
 
Sounds like a plan for the next time I go trout fishing. And the creek will make a great wort chiller. Nothing like a few thousand gallons of cold water flowing to cool it down real fast. What's german for trout? :confused:
 
Walker said:
Reh are specifically Roe deer, but I don't think Andre is hunting those kind! Roe deer are interesting beasts... shedding antlers and all. -walker

I just wanted him to have other options. I know I drank some Rehbrau's when I lived in Germany.

Interesting article about some of Santa's reindeer being female:

http://petcaretips.net/santas-reindeer.html
 
Walker said:
Reh are specifically Roe deer, but I don't think Andre is hunting those kind!

Roe deer are interesting beasts... shedding antlers and all.

-walker


I don't mean to hijack the thread but I harvested many of those interesting beasts while in the UK. Interesting in that they have hardened antlers in the summer and shed them in the fall. I also harvested many, many muntjack deer. Now that's an intersting beast. Scare the **** out of you when the sneak up on you and bark.
 
From here, it'd be a bit difficult to shoot or stalk deer unless you when through a service that provides that kind of trip. Same for a driven pheasan shoot of duck/goose shooting.

I lived there and they have "real Gun Control" there. You have to apply with the local magestrate to obtain a shotgun permet and a much more detailed process to have a rifle or handgun where they inspect the place it'll be kept, limit you to the number of cartridges you can purchase at a time and restrict you to the property you can use it on. It's pretty entailed.

I was the Gamekeeper for the base Rod-n-Gun club while I was there. I had lots of special privledges.

If you went through a service, they'd already have all that taken care of and you would just use their firearms.
 
ScottT said:
From here, it'd be a bit difficult to shoot or stalk deer unless you when through a service that provides that kind of trip. Same for a driven pheasan shoot of duck/goose shooting.

I lived there and they have "real Gun Control" there. You have to apply with the local magestrate to obtain a shotgun permet and a much more detailed process to have a rifle or handgun where they inspect the place it'll be kept, limit you to the number of cartridges you can purchase at a time and restrict you to the property you can use it on. It's pretty entailed.

I was the Gamekeeper for the base Rod-n-Gun club while I was there. I had lots of special privledges.

If you went through a service, they'd already have all that taken care of and you would just use their firearms.
We've got it pretty good here as far as that is concerned. I've heard that it is even harder in Germany and other parts of Europe.
 
Update, I lifted the lid enough to get a look at the beer, (I usually primary in a carboy, but because of having to transport it 100 miles, and the fragility of a carboy, I opted to use a white plastic bucket with lid) there was a nice layer of krausen. It smells really hoppy, and very good. After the severe weather moved through Monday night, (6-8 inches of rain, funnel clouds, etc) the temp has dropped into the 40s. Perfect... Now I can put the bucket against the concrete wall of the basement and it will keep the beer in the 40's.

Brewing at camp is pretty fun. I'd recommend it.
 
ScottT said:
also harvested many, many muntjack deer. Now that's an intersting beast. Scare the **** out of you when the sneak up on you and bark.

Hell, just LOOKING at them can scare you if you didn't know what to expect. I went to a little zoo-like place with my son in California last summer, and they had a muntjac there. We walked over to it's paddock and it timidly walked over to greet us.

Then I saw that it had FANGS!

Holy Christ! I didn't expect that. It was a friendly little dude, but when you approach a 2.5 foot tall deer, the last thing you expect to see is fangs jutting out of it's mouth.

Here's a picture of a muntjac skull for those that aren't familiar. The muntjac is the one in the middle. Looks like a damn devil!

medium.jpg


edit: that skull on the left is a siberian musk deer. looks like a sabre tooth tiger to me.

-walker
 
Man, those things are wild. A quick google leads me to believe that they are cute little meat eating demonic deer.
 
The strangest thing about them is that they have openings on top of their nose so that they can breathe when the tip of their nose is submerged while feeding in wet areas.

Their bark is really loud. I'd be roost shooting pigeons in the woods. Sitting still, just waiting, then ROOUGH, ROOOOOOUGH! Man, I nearly crapped my pants more than once. These little buggers would sneak up on you and when the smelled you, they would try to flush you out with the bark. It's nothing like a whitetail grunt.

I've got a jar of those tusks packed away somewhere.

They are mighty fine eating though. About lamb sized and fed on a diet of oil seed rape, they're tasty little critters.
 
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