STOPper NO! - Averting Disaster

Today I decided I'd do two brews at once.  My thinking is that one is a cider and simple enough as it's mostly just prep work and the other a lovely porter.  I figured it would be a simple thing to do and while it was easy, a slight mistake was made at the end I just barely averted a disaster :)

Bye Bye Good Brewer

It was a sad day when I heard the news, yes that is correct my friend Daniel has closed up his lovely little shop here in Livermore and the Good Brewer is no more.   With our local shop gone what is a Livermore home brewer to do???

Kegging

It's been awhile since my last post, but seeing as I am brewing up a new beer I figured it was time to update the blog.

Over the holiday's my wife bought me a kegging system, so now I'm upgrading from bottling to kegging.  The only problem is that I have a small "dorm" sized fridge which won't work to keep the kegs cool.  So, I'm on the hunt for a cheap fridge that I can use to store the kegs as well as have some shelving room for bottles. I've been scouring craigslist and freecycle looking for the fridge.  There are options available on craigslist, but nothing that I quite want - side by side, large ones, overpriced, etc...  My problem is that I've got a spot in my garage where the fridge will go, so the dimensions have to be right.  I guess I could go buy one....

Carboy up!

Lucky me, for fathers day my wife got me $80 in gift certificates to my local home brew store - www.goodbrewer.com.  So I decided to buckle to the home brewers pressure/"snobbery" and invest in a 6.5g glass carboy for my fermenter to replace  my bucket fermenter, cause you know 50% of the home brewers claim you need to be in glass carboys for the best brewing.  I only bought the fermenter, so I'm still racking to a bucket.  Why, you might ask?  Simple I felt I'd replace one to try it out, while using the balance on my gift certificate to purchase ingredients for a new recipe.

Diving into All Grain Brewing

In my first post, "starting to brew at home", I talked about what my next potential equipment and strategies would be.  Suffice it to say, I did not follow the "plan", but instead dived into trying out all grain brewing.  As I did a my research on the web from google to youtube and the various home brew sites, I started to get an idea of the all grain process and what I would need to get into it.

Wort Chiller - how hard can it be?

Up until now I've been using ice baths to cool my wort, but recently I acquired a wort chiller as a gift, so I decided to use it on my latest batch.  You would think that using a wort chiller would be a simple process of 10-15 min left in boil put your chiller in (mine is an immersion) so it sterilizes.  Once boil complete, turn on the water and watch the temperature drop...   Ha...  Wouldn't you know it I made several rookie mistakes that I will not repeat (lesson learned) and I hope nobody else repeats.

Beer and Weight Management

If you're like me and are a big fan of dark heavy beers then you too are best friends with the inevitable beer gut and spare tire.  I'm sure I'm not alone in saying, it's time to ditch this bad boy and there is no way I'm going to quit brewing or drinking my beers...  

So how does one go about it?

Tap 25

Recently I visited Tap25 in Livermore, CA.  I must say this is a great place to hang out and have some good beer on tap and/or to try out some different beers via their paddles, for the wine lovers out there this is the equivalent of a flight at a wine tasting bar (4 4oz beers).

Starting to brew at home

For my birthday a few years back my wife bought me a home beer brewing kit from The Good Brewer (http://www.goodbrewer.com/), since then I've brewed 3 malt extract beers - an Oatmeal Vanilla Stout, an IPA and a Coffee Stout.  As you can tell I'm quite fond of darker beers and so is my wife.  Since I've started my brewing en-devours there are a few things I've learned...