Whatcha Cookin?

I said that when we moved to Texas, I was going to make the switch to all-grain brewing and upgrade my equipment, and I did- sort of. I had a full 3-tier system in mind when I said that, but limited storage in our apartment meant that I had to do something different. After a little bit of research, I opted for the Brew-In-A-Bag Method instead. All I needed was a big ass pot, a propane burner, mesh bag, and a paddle, so off to the store I went. This is when things got interesting. Anyone from the South knows that these items, minus the mesh bag, are also needed for crawfish and/or seafood boils. Crawfish season was already over when I was buying the stuff, so the guy in line behind me at the register got curious. The conversation went something like this:
Guy: "Whatcha cookin?
Me: "Beer"
Guy: *laughs*
Me: "Seriously, I homebrew"
Guy: "Oh, you can do that?"
Me, trying to pay and get out of the store: "Yup, it's fun. Have a nice day."

Next step was to go to the homebrew supply for the mesh bag and ingredients. It was August, so I was buying stuff for the 2nd edition of our anniversary brew, 9 Year Itch. This was my 1st visit to the (only) shop in my area. They had everything I needed, and it was a good experience so far, so I decided to ask for advice. My last regular shop was a great place to ask questions and get tips and they never made me feel stupid for asking, so why should this place be any different, right? HA!
Me: "This is my first try at BIAB, any tips for me?"
Store Employee: "Yeah, don't do it." (Really?!)
Me: "I have limited space, so this is pretty much my only option for all-grain right now."
Store Employee: "That's too bad. Your efficiency is going to be really low. I would suggest getting a mash tun as soon as you can."

Needless to say, I walked out of there a little disappointed. When I got home, I turned back to the good old Internet and homebrew forums and found a ton of pointers! (Not all HBS stores are created equal, my friends, but that's not the point of the story.) Flash forward to brew day. We decided to set up by the pool, which is close to our apartment, but far enough away to satisfy the 10-foot rule for open flames at the complex. August is HOT in Galveston, so as the day went on, lots of people
passed through the pool area. Almost every time, we ended up in a conversation similar to the one I had at the store:

People:"Whatcha cookin?"
Us:"Beer"
P:*cue laugh* "Really? Is that legal?"
U: "Yeah, take a look."
P:"Oh wow, that's cool!" Or "Well if you need a taste tester, I'm in Apt #___" *Wink, wink, awkward laugh.*
 (I joke about it, but I really love people's reactions, and you know I love talking about beer and brewing to anyone that asks.)

The brew session went well, and we made it to the waiting period. Now, 9 Year Itch is a big beer at an estimated 9% ABV, so I expected it to take some time. I didn't expect to learn a lesson about stuck fermentation. I check my numbers at 2 weeks and 3 weeks in before I bottle, just to make sure fermentation is over and my target has been reached. Well, after 4 weeks, my gravity readings were still the same as week 2, and way too high for the beer to be considered done. Back to the internet, and it was confirmed- fermentation was stalled, but there was a way to start it back up again! All I had to do was add more yeast, Saison yeast to be exact. This strain is a monster and will eat any fermentable sugar in the wort, even if conditions are less than perfect. 2 weeks after adding it to the carboy, my numbers were right where I needed them to be, and it was time to bottle. Well, due to the extra samples I took before I realized fermentation had stalled, as well as the extra trub  from the 2nd yeast addition, I lost about a gallon worth of beer. Did I factor this is when I was preparing the priming sugar? Of course not! In fact, I used extra because I wanted it to have the high carbonation levels characteristic of Belgian beers. Luckily, I didn't get any bottle bombs in the batch, but the majority of them were gushers. We have learned, and instructed everyone who got a bottle, to open the bottle over the sink and immediately pour it into the largest cup they could find (so much for proper glassware). I'm also lucky that none of these issues affected the taste in a bad way, there was just less of it to enjoy. The beer was still delicious, and we are down to our last few bottles.

The moral of the story: brewing comes with its share of challenges, but it's always worth it in the end. And that's why I love it.

CHEERS!

Did You Miss Me?

I'm finally back! Last time we hung out, I was getting ready to move from California to Texas with my Coastie husband. Well, let's just say our move turned out to be much more . . .eventful than we had planned. It started off with the discovery that our travel trailer (and home for the next few months) had been stolen from its storage space. Along with that came all the fun of changing plans, filing police reports, dealing with insurance, and deciding what the hell we were gonna do for a place to live when we got to our destination. 

With everything that was going on, I was worried that 9 Year Itch wouldn't be brewed on time to qualify as our anniversary beer, because who wants to brew beer in a hotel room? After going through plans B,C,D,E, and F, though, we finally got into an apartment and brewday was only postponed by 3 days, mostly due to the heat. I'll give more details on that in my next post.

So here we are, 6 months after my last post and 5 months after arriving in Galveston. In that time, we've managed to have some actual fun in between all the crap we had going on. We've brewed 2 batches of beer (3 if you count my little 1 gallon batch of ginger beer), attended a 3-day beer fest, several Oktoberfest celebrations, reestablished our status as regulars at our favorite bar, and visited a few breweries that popped up since we've been gone. Clearly, I have a lot to write about, so the posts should be a little more regular now. Thanks for being patient while I got my shit together!

 Wanna see pics of our adventures while waiting for the next post? Click here to go to my Instagram profile.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

A few days ago, I was driving to Reno to attend a wedding, and saw some Budweiser billboards that left a bad taste in my mouth. One said "Not A Fad," the other, "Not Overdone." It seems that the Super Bowl ads they put out for the last two years didn't satisfy their need to continually bash on the craft beer industry, so they've decided to continue the shit talking through billboards.

Normally, I wouldn't let things like this bother me, but they're talking about something I'm passionate about. Craft beer is anything but a fad, and it sure as hell is not overdone. The craft beer industry is a place for creativity and constantly pushing limits. It's not for sissies, as Budweiser insinuates in their ads. We know what it is to "brew the hard way." There are a lot of failed experiments and stories of things gone wrong, especially in homebrewing. Craft beer is also a very supportive industry, from what I've seen. Brewers collaborate with each other, promote each other, and celebrate each other. A fair share of them are buddies that started as homebrewers with a dream, and worked hard to get where they are today. Most homebrewers wouldn't think twice about sharing tips and tricks with others.

So to Budweiser, I ask- why the hate? Sure, you're a huge macrobrewery and proud of it, but you had to start somewhere, just like the rest of us. I know you get bashed on by beer snobs, too. That's no reason to target an entire industry. Not all of us judge (or even care about) the beer choices of others. Everyone is free to drink what they want. So why not take a note from your booming competition and show some class and support, rather than alienating yourselves from a great bunch of passionate people?

By the way, you readers may have noticed that I didn't include any pictures or video links to the ads in this post. That was on purpose, because I don't want to help spread their message any more than I already have. If you're really that curious, though, a quick Google search will show you all you need to see.

To end on a positive note, I had the opportunity to taste yet another one of those so-called "overdone" craft beers at the wedding I went to. Props to Great Basin Brewing Company for their Wild Horse Ale (altbier)! I only wish the keg would've lasted long enough for me to have more than one serving.

Moving Sucks

 My husband and I have moved around a few times during the 8.5 years we've been married (one of his occupational hazards), and it always sucks. The packing, the cleaning, the hours of driving, searching for a new place- it can get old quick. This time, there's an added (but welcome) complication, and it's name is homebrewing. Why does it make things complicated? I'm glad you asked . . .

Complication #1: It makes me feel like a hoarder.

One of the things I'm usually pretty good about is not accumulating too much stuff, because I know it'll all have to be packed up eventually. I also try to purge the house of unneeded items at least once per year. Those things kinda went out the window when I started brewing, though. It used to be that all my equipment fit nicely in the little cardboard box the kit came in. Then came the upgrade: a huge 6.5 gallon glass carboy, bottling bucket, several cases of empty glass bottles, various tubes, siphons, funnels, bottling tools, you get the point. I ended up commandeering one of my husband's shelving units in the garage, then eventually traded that one out for something bigger when the cases of finished product and our growing stash of cellared beer didn't fit on the small shelves anymore. When it came time to start purging, I knew my brewing space was no exception. Remember those cases of empty bottles? The logical part of my brain said, "Why are you going to lug all those empty bottles across the country? It's stupid, just get rid of them." The brewing side of my brain said, "It took you weeks of saving and hand washing bottles to build up this collection! Don't throw them, you'll just have to start over again. You'll use them eventually, anyway." After the silent panic attack, the logical side won, and into the recycle bin they all went. I'm not gonna lie, it hurt a little to let them go. And while I'm pretty sure I'm not an alcoholic, I sure as hell looked like one after throwing out about 48 bottles at once. That eliminated some of the load, but I still have about 2 cases of home brew (if you want to take some off my hands, let me know) and a case of beer from assorted breweries that do not distribute where we're going (you can't have any of those, sorry) in addition to all of my equipment. I wasn't willing to purge anything else. It takes baby steps, people.

Complication #2: Moving awakens my OCD tendencies

I've heard enough horror stories about moves gone wrong that it makes me picky about the things that I let the moving crews touch. You never know what condition your stuff will be in when it gets to the other side, or if it will even make it there at all, so anything that I can't bear to lose gets packed neatly into plastic bins and comes with us instead. It should come as no surprise that when we got word of our upcoming move, my first thought was, "There's no way I'm letting the movers touch my brewing equipment!" Not only is all that shit expensive to replace if it gets broken or lost, I was a little skeeved out by the thought of my clean and sanitized stuff being touched by multiple hands and collecting who knows what kind of microbes in that dirty moving truck. Nope, I was going to take control. If I packed all the stuff very carefully in a clean bin and brought it with us, the only person I could blame if something went wrong was myself. I bought the biggest bin I could find at the store, but thanks to the bulky shapes of the carboys and bucket, it didn't all fit. So I ended up with a big bin, a smaller bin, and a few cardboard boxes. Add this to the 2 or 3 bins of other stuff from the house that I don't trust anyone else to touch,  and it's pretty safe to say our vehicles are going to be packed tight! So much for not accumulating too much stuff.

 Complication #3: I CAN'T BREW!!!

This might be the worst one of all. It's like an itch I can't scratch. I have a growing list of styles and recipes that I want to brew and can't, because everything is packed away. Sure, I could unpack everything if I really wanted to, but the logical side of my brain is in control right now, and it says no. On top of that, operations will probably still be on hold for a few months after we get to our destination, since we will be living out of an RV until we find a house. I'm trying really hard to stay strong. Hopefully, I'll be back up and running by our wedding anniversary, so I can work on  9 Year Itch! For now, I'm living vicariously through others via Instagram. Leave me your username or follow @drunkenborrachobrewing if you want to support my efforts  ;-)