Perfect Brew Day

With yesterday not only being a day off for me but also an amazingly sunny paid holiday I couldn't think of anything better to do than brew a beer! So I got out to Bob's and got the fixins for a second batch of Liberation Pale Ale on Sunday and also dropped off the Wit Bier, Stout and Sunset Wheat for the Pudget Sound Pro Am Competition. And speaking of competitions I got my score sheets back from the Oregon Competition. It made me really realize how valuable entering competitions really is. There was actually 4 score sheets for each beer and each judge had different words of advice and different perspectives of each of the beers. I find it as a great opportunity to see what a refined pallet can have to say in terms of how to improve the beer for better future enjoyment. This really boosted my desire to enter competitions, even with beers that I don't think are good (the reason I entered Tiger's Blood). Because I guess I just used to brew and drink whatever and if it was good I'd try to snatch a ribbon out of it. But using judges as guinea pigs works too, hahaha



Here's the new note taking white board I got too! I think it'll help me keep everything straight. I also got the ribbons with the score sheets from the Oregon comp! That's a second and third that I'll add to the wall tomorrow!!! WHHOOOOO!

Back to brew day though, it went great! I had planned on getting down to the space at around 9 or 9:30 but of course stayed out too late the night before and didn't even wake up until noon. Crap. BUT I got down there and started at 12:30 and was actually done by quarter after 5! Everything went exactly like it was supposed too, with the exception of actually getting a better efficiency than usual! In this pale I added some munich for some malty goodness and upped the cara pils in hopes of getting a nice big white head in the beer. I also, instead of 3 big additions of hops at 60 minutes, 20 minutes and flame out, added small amounts of hops in several additions through out the boil. In the first liberation I noticed there was a huge space in flavor and aroma between hops and malt, so I'm hoping this will balance and even everything out alright :)

As far as other beers go I gave a glass of the Saison to a friend the other day and her face instantly went a skew. "what's that taste?" she said and continued to smell and taste it. "Coriander? Seeds of paradise? Esters? Pepper?" I asked. "No....It's something really familiar...." she replied. "Well, I used a hose to take the water to the pot which is somewhen detectable" I tried to say, but as soon as the word 'hose' left my mouth she said "THAT'S IT! HOSE WATER!" Which made me seriously hopelessly glad that Bob's jaw nearly fell off when I mentioned I was using a hose to get water to my pot. Now I get it straight from the faucet inside so as not to track that hose water into the beer. Yuck. I kegged the stout though finally. I caved and got the expensive wrench and got the keg all cleaned out.

So that's all for now! I'm hoping to keg the oatmeal stout later this week and maybe try and bottle twelve of them too. I tasted it today when I checked that gravity and it is Very good. I'm thinking I might take this keg down to the NHC since it's the same recipe as the normal stout just with oatmeal. It'd be GREAT on nitro.

~CHEERS

Sweet

I got down to the space today to drop off a few new additions, rack the oatmeal stout and keg Black Hole. Included in the drop off was a portable electric grill and two small pots for boiling bottle caps and priming sugar for when I bottle beer at the space. That'll be nice. I also dropped off some random tools and magazines and a new radio. The new ribbons went on the wall too to keep me encouraged to make clean balanced beer and continue my great ribbon collecting quest!



Unfortunately, I for some reason don't have a 7/8 inch wrench with the star like end for disassembling and cleaning the new kegs. So, I went to a hardware store where they didn't have a used one and new ones were 16 dollars. The cheap guy from Poor Man Brewing Company decided to settle for the dollar fifty socket instead. Of course though, the socket wasn't deep enough and I didn't get the intake or dip tube out to clean. I guess I'll be hitting the hardware store again tomorrow then and I'll be able to keg Black Hole in the afternoon before work.

I got the oatmeal stout racked over though. It actually tastes crazy different from the normal Black Hole. To my surprise, even though I used only one pound of oatmeal as opposed to the two pounds of flaked barley I usually use, the gravity of this beer was higher by about 7 points! When I racked it today it was insanely sweet with a very pronounced roasted character. It's completely obvious to me now how flaked barley adds the creaminess. I think it will be quiet delicious! That's what I truly love about beer, you change one small thing and you can get a completely different but equally delicious concoction! Here's to experimenting and exploring!

RIBBONS

Well, over a month after the competition I finally got my ribbons from the Vegas Winterfest! I got a blue first place ribbon for the stout, and red second place ribbon for the IPA, and a big yellow third place best in show ribbon for the stout as well! I also heard back from the competition in Albany, OR and got third for my stout and second in the fruit beer category for that delicious Sunset Wheat! (results are here:
http://www.hotv.org/pdfs/2009_OHF_Results.pdf) Unfortunately, when I went to Oregon this past weekend I couldn't get a train or bus back from Albany to Portland if I would have gone to the comp, so I wasn't able to actually go down and hang out. Portland was a blast though! I went to Rogue and got the beer bread and a Chipotle Ale, then hit Laurelwood for a delicious sampler (the workhorse IPA was a delight!). I also hit up lucky lab where I was please to see they were doing a beer called "Malt Bomb" I believe, which was a malty beer that they were making every new batch with a different yeast. I had the one with Scottish ale and it was great! The best place I went though was Amnesia. It was up in north Portland and had the most back yard comfortable feel. It was a very modest little building with about 5 or 6 beers and a small BBQ menu. The seating was all outside under canopies and the food was all made on a small back yard grill near the seating. I was told they do this all year round! The food looked delicious and the beer was great! Their pale ale, Dusty Trail, was 100% Maris Otter and Cascade and was quite a delight.

I did end up brewing black hole again on Wednesday, and in true new space fashion I made an interesting flub. When I went to Bob's I got to talking as usual and after I had crushed my grains I completely forgot to get my flaked barley. So, naturally I realized this about 5 minutes into the mash (It looked a lot thinner than usual) and I didn't have anyway of getting to Bob's with in a reasonable time. So! With a little advise from Bob and the luck of having a breakfast joint in the little industrial area where the space is, I was able to buy 2 pounds of Quacker Oats and add about a pound 20 minutes into the mash! hahaha, which is making this my "oatmeal" black hole!

The second batch of black hole (the one that wouldn't boil, which still makes me mad) went into the secondary tasting about right. I had the same boiling issue with the oatmeal black hole, but was able to get a boil, after like 2 and half hours grrrrr, thanks to a suggestion from Matt. I was able to get a piece of aluminum used for roofing and wrap it around the burner as a wind breaker.

So, tomorrow I'm going back to the space to clean out the new kegs really well and put black hole into one of them. I'm hoping it will turn out alright and I can use this to take down to the National Homebrew Conference. If it doesn't taste right I might be able to brew it again on monday and still have time to have it ready.

I also got my tickets to the Great American Beer Festival yesterday! I went last year and had an absolute blast. I met up with 2 of my best friends from high school there, and we decided to make it a yearly get together and have talked 4 more of our best friends from around the country to meet us there too! I'm super excited.

I suppose that's all for now! I'll be brewing again on monday. Hopefully a Hef or the Pale Ale as long as black hole comes out alright. I'm also hoping my ribbons from the Oregon fest and the NHC will be in soon so I can continue my never ending mission to make beer that myself, my friends, and my family can enjoy while collecting as many ribbons as possible!~

RIBBONS!!!
~Kyle

EXCITING!

They posted the results from the first round of the NHC and Black Hole took second place in the northwest region! I'm completely overwhelmed and pretty severally surprised! I'm more excited then the first time I saw Jurassic Park! Wow. Here's the link to the results: http://www.beertown.org/events/nhc/first_round_northwest.html I check it almost everyday as a way of pinching myself to make sure it really happened! So that's out outrageously exciting.

In other beer news I did end up bottling the wit bier and it tasted great coming out of the fermenter! I could already see improvements over my last one. I noticed in my last beer I, out of habit, added some whirlfloc which causes the beer to clear up where as a traditional white beer gets that foggy like whiteness from all the proteins and haze so I didn't use any fining materials this time and also didn't use a secondary fermenter. I also cut back on the coriander because that stuff can realllllly take over. And I also decided that I'm glad that I used the Trappist High Gravity yeast because I think how dry that out of control yeast made it will really add to the crisp refreshingness (that's a word) and give the esters and spices the main stage.

I also got 2 more kegs which turned out to be a great idea. The guy I got them from apparently gets them straight through Pepsi (they are 5 gallon soda kegs) and so they're super cheap and he told me to hold onto his number and I could get more any time! Awesome, I have an empty soda keg dealer hahaha

Black Hole got brewed up on Tuesday and things didn't really go so well. First off I was going to rack the Le Saison Du Le Space over to the secondary on last Monday so that when I brewed on Tuesday I'd already have a clean primary fermenter to rack the stout into, but I ran into a good friend and we ordered pizza, played video games and drank Lagunitas IPA instead...oops. So the beginning of the day was rather hectic. I woke up early to get a good start and of course it was raining, windy and crappy out, and of course this coaxed me back to sleep. When I got back up closer to 11 Alli and I went out to lunch and I debated whether to brew or not and decided I might as well. I'm going to have to get used to brewing in the rain. I brew outside and live in Seattle, there's little I can do about it :) PLUS I totally scored at Joe's going out of business sale again and got a really nice 10 x 1o foot canopy for 40% off! So, I got all started around 1 I believe and the weather wasn't actually that bad. I was moving around a lot so it didn't seem that cold but there was a good wind and some sprinkles of rain. It was kinda stressful at first but I was able to get all set up, get the mash going, and get the saison racked with out any issues. I added the CaCO3 as well to see how that balanced everything out. Then I sparged out my 7 gallons and everything looked perfect. I began to get the wort heated up and then it just stopped. I think it was the temperature outside, or the wind blowing out the flame on my burner, or the heat escaping out of the pot with out a lid, or something but I couldn't for the life of me get the damn beer to a boil! It just hovered between 180 and 182 for nearly an hour and a half. So I finally got incredibly frustrated and impatient and found a piece of cardboard and put it on top on the pot with a rock, let it heat up to around 195-200 and just threw in the boiling hops and am hoping for the best. I'm not sure of the specifics on how not have rolling boil will affect the final beer. My guess is that it will be a more concentrated beer due to the 2 and a half hours it steamed off and I will get lower hop utilization because of that and because of the lower heat. In thinking about this I did actually upped my hop addition by about .3 ounces. I've got my fingers crossed and figure that if it doesn't come out all that great it will be a lesson learned and a perfect beer to join the saison as trial brews to enjoy exclusively at The Space. I took a few pictures, but can't seem to find my camera....

Something I think I forgot to add to the last blog also is that I made it down to Big Brew at Larry's! Well, sort of. Basically traffic was a complete disaster. Bridges were closed, construction, rallies through the street, parking lot like traffic. Everything went wrong. So I was able to be in a car for 4 hours and at Larry's for 30 minutes. I didn't see anyone I knew except for the guy who I believe brews at Georgetown who's name I can never remember. Impressive set ups though and it's ALWAYS nice to see the huge system in the back of Larry's brewing. It smelled soooo good.

So, it's bed time for this guy. I'm really excited about the competition in Corvallis and will be having a Black Hole brew day 2 on Wednesday. And if you're in the area I'm going to invite who ever to swing by and try my saison with me and maybe sample a few other beers as well.

CHEERS TO BEERS!





edit: I found my camera and here's the set up getting the strike water heated with the canopy-

Anxious

I'm in the middle of a million things and getting as anxious as ever! The last kitchen brew, Summer Wit Bier, is ready to bottle and I don't have any damn bottles. Well, I've got like 14 bombers and like 13 twelve ouncers but I don't thing that'll suffice. So, I'm thinking tomorrow about getting 3 more kegs so I can keep beer moving.

I also got the fixings to make a new Black Hole today and it looks like that's going to be put together on Tuesday. On my National Homebrew Competition score sheet the only real bad feedback I had on the beer was that it was a little roast forward which could be fixed with a little CaCO3. I looked into it and as it turns out highly roasted malts can add a slight acidity to the mash and the CaCO3 plays with the alkalinity of the water steadying out the Ph which could reduce the roastyness. Or at least that's what I got from it. Water chemistry is slightly over my head. A definite educational goal for the future. But the biggest anxiety that's coming out of all of this is that between tomorrow and Friday they're going to announce the winners of the first round of the National Homebrew Competition! I'm hoping with a 37 I'll have a good chance of moving on to the second round, but I'm nervous. The big things that I was worried about though are over. I actually entered (good job Kyle!) and even scored well!! (I get a sweet silver certificate for scoring between a 30 and 37!!) But wish me luck!!

I'm also getting some beers together to send to a competition in Corvallis, Or. I'm going to Portland on the 15th to see No Age and found a BJCP competition in the town of Corvallis, where conveniently enough Alli's sister lives, on the 16th. The competition looks fun though. They're having a guest speaker (TBA), raffle and equipment swap. So that should be a good weekend. I'm going to enter Black Hole again (that's why I'm making a new batch, it was so good I sent most of it off! I WANT SOME! hahahaha) Tiger's Blood (I need some feedback) and the wheat beer. (I put it in the fruit beer category, we'll see)

Le Saison de le Space is being a crazy little guy as well. I'm still nervous as all hell about it tasting like hose water. The brewing water I used came from a 100 foot hose and just reaaaked of hose coming out. So I'm thinking in the future I'll use hose water to clean and haul water out by buckets for the actual beer. But the temperature issue isn't going to be as bad as I originally thought. The dial that managed the time allowed to have the outlets on seems to stay on for at least 48 hours and I discovered a higher setting on the space heater. I went to check on the beer today and it was off the thermometer and bubbling like CRAZY :) hahaha, It's going to be quite the trial beer.

As far as finished beer goes I'm reallllly enjoying this Imperial American Honey Orange Wheat which I finally desided to call "Sunset Wheat". The beer has a great carbonation with a wonderful yeasty haze and I just can't get over how pronounced the sweet orange is but more importantly how the malty wheat backbone reaaaly shines through! It's alcohol level makes it a late evening goodnight beer, giving it the name Sunset :) I also jumped the gun pretty seriously and cracked a Penthouse Barleywine. I got home from work last night and just CRAVED a barleywine. I can honestly say that's never happened to me before. I still have a couple Bigfoots laying around, but got curious about how mine was coming along. So I tossed it in the freezer, the cheaters way of getting a homebrew ready ;) and cracked it to an episode of SNL. All I can say is whoam. Which is a combination of the words "whoa" and "hmm". The color is beautiful and the aroma is full of cherries and alcohol and raisins and malt. The taste is a thick maple syrup sweet cherries with a touch of oxidation and alcohol. The mouthfeel is great with not too high of carbonation, but pushing it, and heavy and silky with a fairly surprising dry-ish finish with a strong alcohol flavor. It definitely has numerous flaws (the hmm) but is overpowered with different tastes I wouldn't have imagined being in there (the whoa) I'm excited to watch this one mature and make another this coming December!

So, I'm off to bed now. I just opened a second Sunset (boy it's tasty) and have a big day tomorrow with chores prepping for the competition and getting the space ready for a brew on Tuesday. Plus I need to get those kegs, a plane ticket for the NHC, a canopy to put over the outdoor brew space in the rain, a train ticket to PDX, bottle the Wit (somehow) and numerous other not beer related things (BORING!) hahaha

Until Next Time!

More things happening!

I got my score sheet back from the National Homebrew Competition yesterday! I only entered that stout (it's such a damn fine beer!) into the 13a category in the northwest region and I got a 36 from one judge and 38 from another giving me a 37! To qualify for second place you needed a score between 30-37 so I was just on the cusp to qualify for first! That's pretty damn good if I do say so myself :) They announce the winners who are qualifying for the second round by next week, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed! Man, I'm excited about that!

In other beer news I finally got the barley wine bottled. It tasted much different from when I last tasted it. The hops are all but gone, it seems to taste a little oxidized and it has an almost... soury aged taste to it that could be called pleasing.. but I think that now it just needs to get a little carbonation and mellow out in the bottle and it'll be a tasty brew

I also bottled the Imperial American Honey Orange Wheat beer! (that really needs a better name) about a week ago. I threw one in the fridge to try it cold with a little carbonation and it actually tastes awesome! It's exactly what I wanted. It's REDICULOUSLY hazing (nice job Wyeast 1010!) and the color of orange juice, smells of sweet orange with a VERY slight hop and malt nose, it's got a really pronounced wheat back bone (I was scared that wouldn't come through) and tastes, for lack of a better description, similar to a memosa! I think this is going to be a great summer beer. I'm not sure how I feel about how big I made it though. It went from 1.065 to 1.012 which puts it in the ballpark of 7%. I'm think with how easy it goes down this might be a little bit of an issue. hahaha

I also brewed up my Wit Bier a while back. Bob's didn't have any of the Wyeast Wit yeast though so I used Trappist High Gravity and holy crap! It was fermenting like crazy in 10 hours and at 24 blowing out of the bubbler! I put a blow off tube on it and the next day when I came home from work my apartment stunk like yeast! I'm thinking that'll be a delicious summer brew too :)

Well, it's time to go make some beer money.

~CHEERS!

Successful Test Batch!

Well, the test batch at the new place was scheduled for Sunday, but with exceptional weather and a day that Alli wasn't all that busy we decided to enjoy the weather and get some basketball playing done instead! So, the brew day was pushed back to yesterday. I worked in the morning so I didn't get to the place until around 4 and didn't get things set up and running until about quarter after. Then, after going through giant checklists of what all I needed to have to get the beer made, came to the realization that propane burners need fire to start. Duh. So in a pinch was able to go to the Ivar's (a specialty salmon restaurant that smells of smoked salmon 24/7 which makes that space that much more awesome) and steal a very large handful of match books. Finally then got the sparge water heating up at around 4:45. Everything seemed to be going fine until we realized that the 100 foot hose we have to run from the inside of the studio was backing up and spraying water all over the floor and leaking into one of the studios! We discovered it was from the nozzle we had on the end of the hose, so to solve that I now just have to run back and forth into the studio to turn the water on and off as I need it. After that things seemed to go great! I made the Saison from the Big Brew recipes (http://www.beertown.org/events/bigbrew/recipes.html) since I couldn't get out of work for the day of big brew. I did get most of the morning off though, so I'll still be at Larry's to check out everybody else :) So the mash went great. I got the strike water up to around 160 and got the mash going at about 151, which was about where I wanted it as I'm hoping for a very dry beer and lose about 3 degrees during my mash, but I was just happy that the brew day was outside in the sun! AND I was finally making a Saison. While the mash was going I started heating up my sparge water. I usually use about 28 quarts or so at around 180F. So, I filled my boil kettle with 28 quarts of water and when I put it on the burner with the thermometer in it it was at 35 degrees!! Fortunately, I realized later that since the hose is actually hooked up to a sink faucet it has a hot and cold setting and the hot is decently warm, next time hopefully this will shave some time off of heating water up. I didn't however realize this until after heating up the sparge water for this batch.... Which meant that when the mash was over the sparge water was at about 120F. At first this stressed me out, then I reached for the new issues of Zymurgy and thought "Relax, Don't Worry, Have a Homebrew" and just waited for the water to heat up while enjoying some fine reading in the sun. Unfortunately, at 165F I gave in and sparged with that. I also have a thing about not drinking until the chiller goes in, so I didn't have a homebrew. By this time it was getting somewhat late so usually when I drain my tun while fly-sparging I take it slow to try and extract as much as I can but with the sun going down I went a little bit faster. Once I got it in the boil pot I decided on a 60 minute boil instead of a 90 minutes boil as well. I was getting really nervous of cleaning all this stuff up in the dark in a place I had only been to twice before. When the boil finished I had actually cleaned up most everything and I tossed the chiller in. As I mentioned earlier the water there was near freezing so chilling the beer only took 25 minutes! I was verrry pleased with that. So I racked the beer into the carboy and carried it (I need one of those carboy handle things!) the very long distance into the space and pitched 2 packs of wyeast belgain saison yeast :) And now that I knew there are two different temperature settings I was able to clean everything in the near dead of night with warm (awesome) hose water. It made things a little quicker and easier.


All in all things went really well! As far as the ability to brew there I think it'll work out fine. My only real issue now is the fermentation temperatures staying in check and the effect using hose water will have on my beers. When I put the water into the HLT it just stunk like hose :/ I'm hoping that doesn't make too much of a difference.

It's funny how the only time I ever plan on following a recipe word for word with out saying "I don't like that addition" or "I think this would be better in it" is Big Brew and this year through a little stress and hustle I still didn't follow it very closely. I didn't use any orange peel because I ran out of time, cut the boil time, cut back on the coriander, mashed at a lower temp, hahaha. So I'll be dubbing this "Le Sasion De Le Space" and have it only in a keg in the space for anyone who wants a taste :) Speaking of the space, here it is in it's beginning stages:

*Notice the unopened bottle of Saison Dupont that it got too late to drink last night, and Le Saison De Le Space all cuddled up in it's blanket*

Future "The Space" will have a giant white board for note taking, a shelf of cellering beers, a chest freezer for lagering and future kegeratering, and much much more!

Putting things together

Well, we got the keys to the place (name pending) and signed the lease giving us the OK to come and go as we please! I got to look around a little bit more and am weary of a lot of little things that I know is just me over analyzing. The room seems to be a little brisk which might be hard for those german and belgium beers that summer loves so much; the electrical outlets (except a few low watt ones in the ceiling) are all on a timer nob, like the ones you see on hot tubs so a temperature controlled fridge for lagering might be a challenge; it looks like i can probably run a hose out side from the sink on the inside and be able to brew outside but I'm worried about having it rain on my days off when I'd be brewing; I'm not sure how exactly to set up a gravity fed system since the part that under an over hang is on a pretty serious incline; and lastely I'm worried about how to transport beer around once it's bottled or kegged. I'm thinking storing them there wouldn't be the best for carbonation because of the lower temperature, but we discussed maybe just hooking up one of those kid carrier things that drags behind a bike to my future bike and running beer like it's my child hahaha. I'm sure we can make it work though. I bought a propane burner yesterday at Joe's going out of business sale. It's a 60,000 BTU burner and I realized when I went to Bob's this morning it's the same one he has for sale (he seemed bummed out when I told him I got it for 65 bucks, I guess it was quite a steal) which I didn't even realize at the time. So, that's one more step towards getting out of the kitchen brewery. But until then I'm still brewing the the little kitchen! I just put the chiller into the boil for the last 15 minutes of a boil on my Wit Bier. It was fun because I got a bag of fresh coriander from a little indian spice shop and instead of putting them through a coffee grinder like is suggested, I just put 1/4 ounce in between some paper towels and went to town with a hammer! It was fun and smelled delicious. I'm drinking a Blanche De Bruxelles while waiting on the boil (I need out of this kitchen). I'm fairly disappointed in this beer.. To me it stunk like wine and tasted watery and somewhat tart and sour. But it sure looked pretty! ha. So, I better get to MY beer and start the water through the chiller.

Until Next Time!

The Brewery Begins!

Well, today marks a great day in my "brewery"s life with the rental of a 12 foot by 12 foot "art studio" at the Gasworks Gallery! Alli and I are going to split the studio where she's going to set up a little art studio for her screen printing and paintings and photo work, and (space permitting) I'm hoping to use this space to finally get a sort of brewery that isn't a kitchen brewery. The studio is basically under I-5 on Northlake. We can actually see Lake Union from the gallery! For those who are in the seattle area, it's RIGHT off of the Burke Gilman on 4th ave. There's actually a set of stairs from our front door up to the Gilman. The room we have has it's own lock too which as I've heard is a bonus in an art studio like this. The place is basically just a large warehouse that used to be an old saw factory? or something and a guy bought it and put up partitions, to make more little rooms. our room is in the basement with actual walls and on the north side of the building. The hope is that, being in the basement on the northside and having a cement floor, the temperature will be fairly regulated for fermenting that wonderful thing often referred to as homebrew. There's a nice big community sink that I hope will be able to have a hose hook up to it or something that I can run out to the front for brewing. I haven't had a chance to look around that much to work out the specifics, but I'm hoping things will look good so I can go out and get a propane burner and get to some serious boils!! (fiiinally!) When the current occupant is all out, which should be by wednesday I believe, we'll be able to finally start getting situated and get everything figured out. So, when that comes around I'll be back with some more, hopefully wonderful, news! In the mean time I'm enjoying my delicious IPA in some new glassware I picked up at some vintage store in Fremont. (notice the Space Needle out the window. I love my view. Chill haze, on the other side, I do not like)

~CHEERS!
Kyle

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