After a really busy weekend, I got a lot accomplished! On Friday, I brewed up that American Imperial Honey Orange Wheat I was so excited about! (I used a blow off tube thinking all the wheat would go crazy, but it was rather well behaved) I'm hoping it turns out okay though. After having a few Tiger's Bloods I'm losing my faith on honey in beer. I liked the thought of using it because it adds great fermentables and a residual sweetness, but I'm starting to detect a slight copper taste from it... We'll see. Also, I was going to try a batch sparge on it to see how my efficiency held up doing something different, but using 45% wheat malt I got a little scared about a stuck sparge and decided to just fly sparge as usual (change sometimes scares me). I used a half pound of rice hulls and everything came out fine, well except for the 55% efficiency. With the Wheat all brewed and settling I took off Saturday morning for Portland to meet an old friend from Santa Rosa! And upon talking to her, realized that Russian River is in Santa Rosa! I told her I would come visit her just for that, but she INSISTED that where she works, The Third Street Aleworks Brewpub, is exceptionally better. Hahaha. We'll see. Speaking of California I also got my ticket for the National Homebrew Conference this weekend! I'm really excited! No one from my homebrew club is going though, so I sent an e-mail out to the Impailing Alers in Kent and am hoping they'll have a gang down there I can represent Seattle with. Back to Portland though. I hit the big ones mostly (Dechutes, Rogue, Bridgeport) just because they were right down town or on Burnside, because that's mostly where we were. And I refuse to go to Portland with out having Rogue's beer bread. That stuff is amazing. At Bridgeport I had their seasonal "Fallen Friar". It was actually really good. It was a Abbey Style Ale that I thought tasted like a really smooth fruity trippel. At Rogue I had a sampler and tasted what everyone else got. It was all really good as usual. And at Deschutes I had the Night Rider Nitro Stout which is their Obsidian Stout on nitro with some kind of coffee from Bend, Oregon. It was very very tasty, but absolutely filling. Like a little coffee meal in a glass. I also read through most of Randy Mosher's new book "Tasting Beer". It's reallllly good! I recommend it to anyone who has any interest in anything about beer. He goes into the history (geographically and economically) how it's made, how to use your senses to enjoy it, a guideline of the styles including examples. Just about everything you need to know, spelled out very clearly. So pick it up!
Cheers!
-Kyle
1 comment:
Kyle, there is going to be a group of us from WAHA in FULL FORCE down at NHC. We will have a booth for club night, serving awesome beers, the whole 9 yards. There is a meeting next Tuesday at Tom Schmidlins house for everyone who is going and wants to participate. It's going to be off the hook dude. Check the WAHA site for details and directions or contact me.
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