Welcome to the Brewhouse
The Portlandia Beer Tour 2012 was awesome! Okay, so that is not an official event but my friends and I made it one (for us.) This was an event, three months in the making; spurred on by a typical Friday night beer session. Someone in the group thought it would be a good idea to get a few friends together and head down to Portland to visit a bunch of breweries and brewpubs. I wish I could take credit for the idea but I quickly embraced it, none the less.
What a very disappointing morning. I got up early to brew ten gallons of vanilla creme ale only to be turned away. I even setup everything last night, filled my pots with water and preheated everything so that I would have a running start this morning. Well, I plugged in my control panel, flipped the switch and saw that my temps held within 20 degrees of where I left them last night. All looked promising and then ten seconds later, the LOVE temperature switches (the red LED boxes) went dead and several of the other indicator lights light up out of sequence. CRAP!
Last week, I decided to treat myself to a quick stay at McMenamin’s Edgefield in Troutdale, Oregon. When I say quick, I mean quick. I was there for less than 16 hours.
After a little more than a year of planning, designing, budgeting and engineering I finally fired up the new brewery and brewed a batch of HAHB – An IPA today. It has been a lot of fun doing this project and I could not have finished it without the help from a couple of friends and I picked up a few new skills along the way. I learned a bit about stainless steel welding, electrical, plumbing, construction and various other types of fabrication. You can see tons of other pictures in the photos sections of this site.
The All-Grain Evangelist is one of my newest favorite blogs and this writer does a pretty good job of keeping content fresh. He is definitely a model for where I want to be. This guy appears to be a complete renaissance man and he shares his views, mostly about beer. However, he sprinkles in other thoughts from time to time.
I just received an email from Beer Advocate today that had some interesting Thanksgiving Beer Menu Suggestions. The recipes come from a site called The Home Brew Chef. The Roasted Garlic IPA Mashed Potatoes look very interesting. I am definitely going to have to try them. Brewing and cooking are just two of my passions. I found The Home Brew Chief website so interesting that I added it to my Blogroll as a permanent addition. I hope you enjoy it as well.
One of my most interesting projects this summer was building my rolling kegerator (pics here). I love tackling new home brew projects and this one was quite enjoyable. It was inspired by a magazine article in Brew Your Own
I opened my mailbox today and received my last issue of ‘Beers of the World’. After 25 issues this publication has called it quits due to the tough economic times. It is a sad day. Thank you Sally Toms for all of the great issues produced under your watch. I will miss your magazine.
Summer went by way too fast however, I had time to enjoy some great summer beers. During the summer, I usually enjoy great IPAs, Pale Ales and an occasional Cream Ale. Over the past few months I made several batches of my own IPA recipe, a couple of batches of a Mirror Pond clone and started perfecting a Vanilla Crème Ale. Now it is time to start focusing on Fall and Winter Beers. It is scary to think that Christmas will be here before we know it and home brewers always need to think ahead when it comes to seasonal beers.
