This past weekend was my bachelor party weekend, which brought several of my close friends and family into town for some celebrating. :-) It was great to see them all in one place for a couple of reasons. For starters, it marked the first time I had seen a few of them in a few years. Additionally, it was really fun to see my buddies from all the different phases of my life – my family, Theresa’s family, childhood friends, college friends, and friends from around where I live now – in one place, having fun together. It really reminded me of how blessed I am to have so many loving people in my life! :-)
After everyone rolled into town on Friday, we got together for a couple drinks then went to a great Phillies game. The Phils lost, but it was still a very well played game. Afterwards, we went back to the hotel room where a bunch of my friends were staying, put on our drinkin’ boots, and did some damage on the alcohol supply of a well-stocked room of beer and liquor. It was really great to just hang out and catch up with my friends and family who made it down for the weekend!
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| Some homebrews and a taste of the homeland (a.k.a. Labatt Blue Light and Saranac) |
After shaking off the dust from the night before, the original plan for Saturday was to head out in Philly for the day and hit up a couple brewery tours and some great brew pubs throughout the city. Hurricane Irene had other plans. Because of the threatening hurricane, we ended up just hitting Iron Hill for lunch and the out-of-town guys ended up leaving a day early. It was a bummer to have the weekend get cut short a little, but it was still awesome to be able to see so many important people in my life and at least spend a day with them! Thanks to everyone who was able to make it down for an awesome weekend!
The rest of the weekend was pretty much dominated by Hurricane Irene. As expected, we did lose power around 10pm Saturday night until early afternoon on Sunday. However, other than that, we made out pretty well – no major damage or flooding to our apartment or cars. Overall, it ended up not being as bad as I was expecting.
Now it’s time to settle in for a pretty relaxing Labor Day weekend. Most of my weekend will consist of hanging out with Theresa, brewing a beer (an adaptation of Charlie Papazian’s recipe Cherries in the Snow), bottling a small batch of mead, making another small batch of mead, and playing some Mass Effect 2. Should make for a pretty solid low-key weekend.
Hopefully be posting again soon with some brew day notes and tasting notes on the two pale ales and the stout that I brewed recently. Until then, stay classy.
Song of the Day: “Layla” by Eric Clapton
Beer of the Day: Southern Tier’s Pumking
Hey John, sorry for being totally off topic here, but I just got the fantastic tasting Lake Placid Ubu Ale from my beer of the month club and I found your comments about brewing it through a google search.
ReplyDeleteI've been homebrewing about 2 years and am a big fan of English style ales. I would really like to clone the Ubu Ale, since I cannot get it here in the Midwest.
Starting with an extract version which reportedly came from an old BYO magazine, I adapted it to all grain and adjusted for my experience with English pub ales for 5gal:
9lb/70.9% Golden Promise Malt
1lbs/7.9% Carastan Malt
1oz/.5% Amber Malt
1oz/.5% Chocolate Malt
1oz/.5% Brown Malt
1lb/7.9% Wheat DME
.5lb/3.9% Barley Flakes
1lb/7.9% Dark Candi Syrup
1.5oz Fuggle 60 min
1oz Cluster 20 min
1oz Mt. Hood 1 min
WYeast 1028 London Ale
Any recipe hints or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. My email is available on my Blogger profile.
Thanks!
Hey Muddy Mo,
ReplyDeleteI think my recipe was based off the BYO recipe (not sure though, I don't have the magazine that it came from anymore). Mine came out pretty well, but the one thing that I was advise is to be patient and let it condition for awhile. There's a lot going in the grain bill and it needs a little time to mesh together. There isn't a whole lot that I could add since this was only my sixth beer I brewed and was still just following recipes pretty blindly at the time. My friend Jeff also recently did an all-grain version of Ubu - if he reads this post, perhaps he can give you a little advice. Hope this helps! Let me know how yours comes out! Here is the extract recipe that I used:
-1lb Briess Pilsen Light DME
-1lb Briess Bavarian Wheat DME
-6.6lb Briess Golden Light DME
-1lb English Crystal Malt
-1oz Chocolate Malt
-1oz Black Patent Malt
-1oz Fuggles (40 min)
-1oz Cascade (20 min)
-1oz Mt. Hood (0 min)
-1 packet dry ale yeast (probably Notingham or something similar, but I would use the London Ale that you have listed)
Note: I think there were a one or two substitutions and quantity rounding based on the availability of ingredients at the shop that I went to.
Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated!
ReplyDelete