First Tasting and Two New Brews in the Can

Monday marked the brewing of the first beer I have brewed on my own and the first of two clone brews that I am doing this week.  I brewed up the Ruination IPA clone and everything went pretty smoothly.  Its sitting in my fermenter in my second bedroom bubbling away as we speak.  This was probably the smoothest brew yet (process-wise) - the final temperature was right in the proper fermentation range and the OG was right on the money at 1.075.  The one thing that I realized I have to work on is the initial steep of the grains.  I usually end up overshooting the proper steeping temperature when I am heating up the brew pot on my electric range.  If I can get the steep temperature to go smoothly, I will pretty much have the process down.  After the batch is done with the initial fermentation, I am going to dry hop it with another 2oz of Centennial hops for a few days, then bottle condition it.  All in all, I think this brew will come out very solid.

Tuesday was another brew day.  My buddy Keith and I brewed up the Ubu clone and got that into a fermenter.  Similar story - the steep temperature was a bit high but everything else was very smooth.  Should be another solid brew once we get it fermented and bottle conditioned. 

We also did our first tasting of our Tripel that we brewed up towards the end of November.  I was quite pleasantly surprised with this one.  Although it seemed more like an Abbey than a Tripel, it was still a really solid Belgian ale.  Very smooth and made you feel nice and warm inside. 

All in all, Mission: Solid Week of Beer has been a great success with two new brews in the can without a hitch, and good initial results on our first tasting of the Tripel.  All I need now is for my Stone Brewery glassware to get here tomorrow! 

Now its time to shift gears a little bit and get geared up for the holidays! :-)

Song of the Day: "Pardon Me" by Incubus (the acoustic version)
Beer of the Day: Fade to Black (Porter) by Left Hand

Let the Synapses Groove

Finally on break for the holidays!  Took Thursday and Friday off this past week and am taking all of this coming week off for vacation. :-)  I will also be working from home the week after that.  What does all this mean?  Johnny finally gets a nice 2.5 week break at home with Theresa for the holidays!

Thursday was Theresa's birthday so this weekend has been/is an awesome weekend with a good mix of hanging out just the two of us, hanging out with friends, and hanging out with her family.  Its nice to be home to celebrate with her!  Happy birthday baby girl!

Since this is also the busiest time of the year at work for Theresa, I will also have some time to kill during my time off at home.  So naturally, I'm going to fill the time with brewing a couple beers, hanging out with Abby, catching up on some stuff around home, and playing video games (mostly Halo: Reach).

I picked up the ingredients to do two new brews last weekend.  Both of them are clone recipes of existing brews - Stone Brewery's Ruination IPA and Lack Placid's Ubu Ale.  I'm really excited to try both out.  This will be my first venture away from doing brews from packaged kits where the ingredients are already paired together.  I figured doing a couple clones next would be a good stepping stone to transition to doing some original recipes.  Both brews will also get me to try out using some different techniques and ingredients that I haven't used before.  I'm planning on doing the Ruination on my own on Monday and cooking up the Ubu on Tuesday with my buddy Keith.  Tuesday will also be the day Keith and I do our first tasting of the Tripel we brewed up about a month ago.  All in all, should be an awesome week on the beer front!

This past week had a few highlights of its own on the topic of beer.  I watched a documentary on Netflix called Beer Wars - if you are into beer and have an opportunity, definitely check out this documentary.  Its about the beer industry and the struggle between the big breweries (Anheuser-Busch, Miller, and Coors) and smaller craft breweries, shown from the perspective of the smaller craft breweries.  Definitely an interesting film if you are into beer and the business behind it.  In other beer highlights for the week - I picked up and ordered some solid Stone Brewery products.  Picked up a bottle of Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale and Old Guardian (Stone's barely wine) last night and drank the Sublimely.  I was really excited to drink this bottle because it was originally brewed as Stone's 11th Anniversary Ale in 2007.  I had a bottle of it about three years ago when my friends Mark and Mike came down to visit for new years.  I loved this beer then, and I loved it when I had it again last night!  To go further with the Stone Brewery kick I have been on lately, I ordered a couple sweet glasses from Stone's website - they are supposed to get here on the 23rd - just in time for a Christmas gift to myself. :-)

This is one of the glasses that I ordered.  This one was designed for Stone's Vertical Epic brews.

Really looking forward to Christmas and New Years coming up!  Not making it up to Rochester for the holidays this year, but holiday get-togethers with Theresa's side of the family are always a good time!  Can't wait to see everyone and celebrate the holidays together!  New Years is also going to be awesome this year.  This will be the first year that Theresa and I will be going to a formal event for New Years - complete with dinner, dancing, champagne, and fireworks!  Should be a really good time and I can't wait to get dressed up and celebrate the new year in style!  It will be really fun to do something special this year. :-)

Anyway, that's all for now.  I will probably post a couple more times over the next couple weeks since I will be home the whole time, but if I don't post again before the Christmas ....

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!

As always....
Song of the Day: "Elias" by Dispatch (the live version from the All Points Bulletin album)
Beer of the Day: Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale by Stone Brewery