Who's Brewing on New Year's Day... and who'd feeling sorry for themselves?

[Owly055]

Stayed home and went to bed at a reasonable hour last night, sleep through the new year. I've found that if I sleep through the new year, I never age.... stopped aging at about 35 when I discovered this amazing fact!! This year unfortunately I woke up at 3 min before 12, and I'm not sure I fell back asleep in time ;-( My neighbor woke me up when he staggered home singing and howling his head off at 3:15......... He's dragging butt today and looks 10 years older.

Last night I dived into Sailing Alone Around The World, by Joshua Slocum.... A true story about a sea captain, at loose ends at the end of the day of sail, after losing his ship and fortune, who sets off to do what had never been done before.... solo sailing around the world.... with the idea of reinventing himself as an author, the second of two books he wrote about real life adventures, the first being an account of sailing in a home built sailboat made in the jungles of Southern Brazil after wrecking his ship, an oddessy that covered many thousands of miles, carrying his wife and two children in a 3 masted home built 35 foot junk rigged "sailing canoe" as he called it. Clearly Mr Slocum found his calling, but he didn't live to write any further books, not being a young man.
Both books are available free on Project Gutenberg for you Ipad, Kindle, etc, and worth literally infinitely more than the price. Both were reprinted many times, and the boat he used on his escape from Brazil resided at the Smithsonian until the end of it's life.


I decided a little while ago that I just had to brew on the first day of the year, and did a bit of juggling to free up a fermenter.

I'm maxing out my 5 gallon BMB with a 4.5 gallon brew I'm calling Mosaic Especial. Projected OG at 75% eff is 1.053... expecting closer to 1.058. 4 pounds of two row, and two each of Munich 20 and malted wheat, half a pound of cane sugar. ABV will probably hit about 6%, IBUs 37, SRM 7.9. Hops are all late addition, 2 ounces each of Mosaic and Cascade and an ounce of Willamette, at 5 minutes, and an additional ounce of Mosaic whirlpool @ 160 for 15 min, an ounce of sweet orange peel at 10 min before the end of the boil, which will be 30 minutes.


H.W.

Oops........ I made a typo in the title and can't edit it ;-)

 

[lazarwolf]

Yes, We brewed today. We brewed 5 gallons of a beer that has evolved overtime for us. The beer we brewed doesn't have a name. We started earlier in the year with a zombie dust clone, and slowly evolved it. Lowering the ABV and increasing the bittering hops until we are somewhere between ZD and Pseudo Sue... It is dang fine beer.

We started at 10:30 AM and I was home by 4. (30 Minute Drive) 5 hours. But we also bottled 5 gallons of cream ale that is going to be magnificent.

 

[zmanzorro]

I brewed a Scotch Ale yesterday with brand new grain mill and Blichmann burner. The burner was so efficient, I accidentally boiled off an extra gallon!

 

[Owly055]

Yes, We brewed today. We brewed 5 gallons of a beer that has evolved overtime for us. The beer we brewed doesn't have a name. We started earlier in the year with a zombie dust clone, and slowly evolved it. Lowering the ABV and increasing the bittering hops until we are somewhere between ZD and Pseudo Sue... It is dang fine beer.

We started at 10:30 AM and I was home by 4. (30 Minute Drive) 5 hours. But we also bottled 5 gallons of cream ale that is going to be magnificent.

There isn't a recipe alive that can't be twiddled and improved..... If nothing else, your tastes evolve.


H.W.

 

[mauer_62]

just got done brewing and Irish Stout for St Pattys Day. it was 37 degrees outside but i still was brewing in shorts and flip flops. 5 gallons in and trying to reach my goal of 200 this year. Happy New Year to everyone

 

[Sailingeric]

Stayed home and went to bed at a reasonable hour last night, sleep through the new year. I've found that if I sleep through the new year, I never age.... stopped aging at about 35 when I discovered this amazing fact!! This year unfortunately I woke up at 3 min before 12, and I'm not sure I fell back asleep in time ;-( My neighbor woke me up when he staggered home singing and howling his head off at 3:15......... He's dragging butt today and looks 10 years older.

Last night I dived into Sailing Alone Around The World, by Joshua Slocum.... A true story about a sea captain, at loose ends at the end of the day of sail, after losing his ship and fortune, who sets off to do what had never been done before.... solo sailing around the world.... with the idea of reinventing himself as an author, the second of two books he wrote about real life adventures, the first being an account of sailing in a home built sailboat made in the jungles of Southern Brazil after wrecking his ship, an oddessy that covered many thousands of miles, carrying his wife and two children in a 3 masted home built 35 foot junk rigged "sailing canoe" as he called it. Clearly Mr Slocum found his calling, but he didn't live to write any further books, not being a young man.
Both books are available free on Project Gutenberg for you Ipad, Kindle, etc, and worth literally infinitely more than the price. Both were reprinted many times, and the boat he used on his escape from Brazil resided at the Smithsonian until the end of it's life.


I decided a little while ago that I just had to brew on the first day of the year, and did a bit of juggling to free up a fermenter.

I'm maxing out my 5 gallon BMB with a 4.5 gallon brew I'm calling Mosaic Especial. Projected OG at 75% eff is 1.053... expecting closer to 1.058. 4 pounds of two row, and two each of Munich 20 and malted wheat, half a pound of cane sugar. ABV will probably hit about 6%, IBUs 37, SRM 7.9. Hops are all late addition, 2 ounces each of Mosaic and Cascade and an ounce of Willamette, at 5 minutes, and an additional ounce of Mosaic whirlpool @ 160 for 15 min, an ounce of sweet orange peel at 10 min before the end of the boil, which will be 30 minutes.


H.W.

Oops........ I made a typo in the title and can't edit it ;-)

Slocum's story is good, you should read Flirting With Mermaids by John Kretschmer, funny stories of sailing.

 

[ChasinABuzz]

I should've been brewing this morning but in my infinite wisdom, I forgot to pre-freeze my ice packs so now I'm watching football and waiting on water to freeze haha. I wanted to do a wheat ale but try some of the Hawaiian fruits we get here so I came up with this:

"Enlightenment in the New Year"
American Wheat Ale w/ Buddha's Hand, cracked Moloka'i grown Papaya seed and wild Lilikoi.

I'm hopeful, but also a newbie so we'll see how this works out hahaha

 

[DoD_Ales]

I brewed an English pale ale yesterday. Today, I bottled an altbier and transferred an Amarillo braggot to secondary.

 

[Owly055]

Slocum's story is good, you should read Flirting With Mermaids by John Kretschmer, funny stories of sailing.

Thanks for the heads up......... I love sailing stories, though I am especially fond of ones written in olde English dating from the days of yore. The Ipad opened up a world of titles from times long past... the stuff I truly love.......... Things you can't just go out and buy, but you can get free due to the efforts of many people to put these on line.

I've often felt I was born in the wrong century.....but who's to say this is the fist time around? We have the leisure and resources to enjoy the words of those who lived in an early era, to relive their adventures... without being lost at sea, dying of cholera, scarlet fever, smallpox, or simply infection from a wound I would dismiss as trivial today. We don't have to fight off savages, or face weather at sea that is a complete surprise, or have at each other with swords. Geronimo, Red Cloud, Chaka, and Dingane, Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan Torquemada, Salah ad Din, Rashid ad-Din Sinan and his Hashshashin etc..... are just names, and stories from our bloody past....... perhaps a glimpse into our bloody future...... history repeats itself. It is foolish to lament living in a "golden age"..... Live has been good and it has been easy in my 60 years....... but I've always been waiting for the proverbial "other shoe" to drop. Our way of life is a house of cards, if a very well built house of cards, like every "great society" throughout history it will collapse. I don't see it happening in "my time"......... But if there is such a thing as karma, we may face real hardship in the next life.



H.W.

 

[SMPress]

I bottled an APA on new years Eve, and was in bed by 2200. I was up and at it this morning brewing a Russian Imperial Stout. Its a Narwhal clone recipe, and am planning to put it on wood for awhile. This will be a beer that wont be drunk until next winter, hope winter doesn't skip us again next year, was in shorts today...

 

[Eamster]

Brewed a kolsch and Kegged a California common. Went to bed 8pm New Year's Eve. But up at 6:30 am to brew. Maybe a sick kid had something to do with it. Maybe I am just getting to old for the whole staying up scene.

 

[Owly055]

I bottled an APA on new years Eve, and was in bed by 2200. I was up and at it this morning brewing a Russian Imperial Stout. Its a Narwhal clone recipe, and am planning to put it on wood for awhile. This will be a beer that wont be drunk until next winter, hope winter doesn't skip us again next year, was in shorts today...

good for you!! I logged brew 73 of 2015 on the 29'th and brew one of 2016 today.

I would be happy to share some winter with you....... We have had relentless cold snowy weather all of December, unbroken by our usual Chinook winds that break it up every couple of weeks. Snow has been knee deep or deeper in my yard for many weeks now....... I've been spoiled by the mild cycles between the cold cycles for many years now.

I well remember the coldest winter in recorded history here.... 1978 / 1979, when the
snow kept piling up and the wind blowing month after month, and zero was a warm day. The day before hunting season the first really cold weather hit, along with snow, and it never thawed until April. I worked outdoors all that winter, and the snow packed so hard we drove over fences, and we seldom took the chains off our 4x4 pickups. I lost a brand new pickup that year when it dropped through ice at a creek crossing many miles out in the hills, and the temps were pushing -30. It was a matter of trying to get the pickup out, and perhaps dying out there, or walking out to the nearest real road 15 miles away, and surviving. Surviving was more important of course, and we were never able to get to it before the spring thaw...... the flooding destroyed it. The bank and the insurance company were NOT happy with me. I saved a man's life that winter who had broken his back when felling timber........nobody knew he was there, and I could hear because I wore extreme ear protection running cats and skidders........nobody else did and they were all deaf. A buddy and I were skidding a short distance apart on D7 cats. I waved my themos at him (late afternoon) indicating I had coffee left, and we got together to share the last cuppa........ Shut the machines off for a few minutes, and I heard what sounded like faint screams in the distance......Denny and I were the only people out there that day as far as we knew, but we fired up and head in the direction where I had hear the screams. Half a mile away in snow nearly 4' deep, we found the man who had been lying in -10 temps for a couple of hours. Denny went back to the tool truck where we had a radio and called an ambulance, and made a road to where the man was laying. 90 minutes later, the ambulance, a 4x4 van type ambulance, chained up on all 4 wheels showed up.... We had to plow 10 miles of road with the cats just to get it in...... every day we plowed our way in and plowed our way out...........If you haven't experienced it, let me tell you..... you don't want to!! I was young and tough in those days........ 23 and absolutely indestructible as we all are at that age...... I wouldn't want to go through it all again!!! White Sulphur Springs, Montana......... A great little town with great people, and one I still love, though it's been many years since I lived there............ I only lived there one year, but I still have close friends there, though many have died or moved away.

Do you really want winter that bad??


H.W.

 

[ChasinABuzz]

I bottled an APA on new years Eve, and was in bed by 2200. I was up and at it this morning brewing a Russian Imperial Stout. Its a Narwhal clone recipe, and am planning to put it on wood for awhile. This will be a beer that wont be drunk until next winter, hope winter doesn't skip us again next year, was in shorts today...

I'm from Chesapeake but live in Honolulu now, I was talking to my mom about how we where both wearing shorts on Christmas hahaha. Crazy weather this winter for y'all I've been told huh?

 

[jwalk4]

I made a 60 shilling for a Robert Burns Day celebration on new years eve.

Didn't get a chance to 100% clean up before heading to a party though.

 

[SleepyCreekBrews]

No brewing today, but I did swap out an empty keg of Creekwater-420 APA for a new keg of Mosaic IPA. Happy New Year.

 

[jwalk4]

No brewing today, but I did swap out an empty keg of Creekwater-420 APA for a new keg of Mosaic IPA. Happy New Year.

Nice!

 

[SMPress]

Do you really want winter that bad??


H.W.

Well, I want some winter, yeah, 70 something degrees on Christmas is no fun!

I am not as young as I once was, in my 20's, I was in a jeep everywhere, no roof or doors, any weather, snow was my favorite. I hurt more now when it is cold, but I still enjoy it, at least in small doses...

 

[SMPress]

I'm from Chesapeake but live in Honolulu now, I was talking to my mom about how we where both wearing shorts on Christmas hahaha. Crazy weather this winter for y'all I've been told huh?

I grew up in Annapolis, so just around the corned.

Yeah, it was over 70 on Christmas. It was colder today, but nowhere near cold. Do the seasons even change in Hawaii? I always pictured it as being pretty steady year round, except maybe for the rains?

 

[tagillis]

I had plans to brew today...but ran into problems with my new kettle. Hopefully tomorrow is a lot smoother.

No brewing today, but I did swap out an empty keg of Creekwater-420 APA for a new keg of Mosaic IPA. Happy New Year.

I haven't had a Sweetwater 420 since I lived in Atlanta. How's your Creekwater compare?

 

[ChasinABuzz]

I grew up in Annapolis, so just around the corned.

Yeah, it was over 70 on Christmas. It was colder today, but nowhere near cold. Do the seasons even change in Hawaii? I always pictured it as being pretty steady year round, except maybe for the rains?

Yea it's pretty much been 78 since I got off the plane in 2010 hahaha. Occasionally it'll dump a bunch of rain in February or get hot in the summer but it's pretty regular. I'm learning that it makes Lagering difficult though lol. Biggest season change for us is the wave action switches to North Shore in the winter and gets MUCH bigger.

 

[Owly055]

Yea it's pretty much been 78 since I got off the plane in 2010 hahaha. Occasionally it'll dump a bunch of rain in February or get hot in the summer but it's pretty regular. I'm learning that it makes Lagering difficult though lol. Biggest season change for us is the wave action switches to North Shore in the winter and gets MUCH bigger.

What island? I've only ever been to Kauai, and I loved it.......... other than what the white man has done to it. Our MO seems to be to destroy what we love and/or what is beautiful! I never got the opportunity to hike the Napali coast unfortunately, as I was not alone and didn't have the gear with me.......... I won't make that mistake again!

H.W.

 

[lazarwolf]

Today Im brewing up basic yellow beer. byb. And watching doctor who. and bottling, and cleaning. And tending to my lagers, to make sure they finish nice and crisp, with low gravity.

 

[ChasinABuzz]

What island? I've only ever been to Kauai, and I loved it.......... other than what the white man has done to it. Our MO seems to be to destroy what we love and/or what is beautiful! I never got the opportunity to hike the Napali coast unfortunately, as I was not alone and didn't have the gear with me.......... I won't make that mistake again!



H.W.

I'm on Oahu but we try to get off island when we can. I deer hunt on Lana'i every year. It's a blast. Nobody around for miles. It's really interesting everything that's going on right now with the pressure Native Hawaiians are putting on America to do right by them after stealing the country. I used to work for Kamehameha Schools here. I never knew just how crooked we treated Hawaiians when we took this land until I started there. Mind boggling how awful they were treated.

 

[SleepyCreekBrews]

I had plans to brew today...but ran into problems with my new kettle. Hopefully tomorrow is a lot smoother.




I haven't had a Sweetwater 420 since I lived in Atlanta. How's your Creekwater compare?

Some of my friends think its very similar, we dry hop it with Citra, so it's definitely close. but not identical. Either way, it's a very good APA IMO.

 

[tagillis]

Some of my friends think its very similar, we dry hop it with Citra, so it's definitely close. but not identical. Either way, it's a very good APA IMO.

Nice! I'll have to give it a try. So many beers, so little time.

 

[Owly055]

I'm on Oahu but we try to get off island when we can. I deer hunt on Lana'i every year. It's a blast. Nobody around for miles. It's really interesting everything that's going on right now with the pressure Native Hawaiians are putting on America to do right by them after stealing the country. I used to work for Kamehameha Schools here. I never knew just how crooked we treated Hawaiians when we took this land until I started there. Mind boggling how awful they were treated.

I'd love to visit Lanai............ The one island that isn't swarming with tourists.


H.W.