Hello from Cali

[jrmorrill]

Hey Everyone,

My buddy and I just started homebrewing about two months ago and we are hooked! So far we have made five 5 gallon brews using malt extract kits from out local shop. Here's what we have made so far:

Already Bottled:

Hefeweizen
Irish Red Ale
Scottish Export

Bottling Tomorrow:

German Hefewizen
Blonde Ale


We have had a crap load of fun both drinking and making the beer! It's really amazing how you can make such a fantastic tasting beer so easily. So far I think my favorite is the Irish Red Ale but I am excited to taste the other two tomorrow!

I recently began researching equipment for our first All-Grain system!! I'm very excited to get one working so we can get some experience with All-Grain. I wrote up a rough outline of what we are going to do to build a very decent 10 gallon All-Grain system. In fact, I think I am going to post that somewhere on the forums right now to get some advice! Cheers!

 

[carnevoodoo]

North, South, Central?

 

[jrmorrill]

Nothern. I'm in the Delta region which is about 1.5 hours east of San Francisco.

 

[humann_brewing]

welcome, that blonde ale will come in handy this hot season

 

[jrmorrill]

Yes it sure will! The brewshop employee also helped me out by hooking me up with some higher quality yeast for it and some extra "sugary" stuff... I totally forgot what he said it was haha.

 

[BeerJorge]

The German Hefeweizen will be even better...

 

[jrmorrill]

I finished up all the bottling a few hours ago and wow the Blonde Ale turned out awesome! It was drinkable straight out of the fermenter!! I had a half-bottle left at the end and I shared that with some friends and family and everyone really enjoyed it The only odd thing is that it's a darker color than the hef... On the picture below the left bottle is the hef and the right is the blonde ale.

The German hef had a very powerful flavor. I detected some off flavors too but I think that it will mature in the bottle with some extra time. We had some complications with the hef in the first 8 hours after we added the yeast. The amount of foam built up so much that it exploded and shot the cap and vapor lock off!! Here are some pictures of the foaming.