Brewing - Belgian Dubbel

A quick shot of my Belgian Dubbel burbling away. As expected, the Wyeast 1214 yeast took a couple days to get going, but when it did, look out. It has had a pretty much continuous burbling of the airlock since this morning.

Pretty basic recipe, with pilsener as a base, with additional aromatic, bisquit, special b, and caramunich grains. Also some raisins in primary. It came in a bit darker than a normal dubbel, at roughly 21SRM on the recipe calcs.

Brewing - Robust Porter

I brewed up a Robust Porter today, and after only two hours I had some excellent krausen forming. Likely thanks to the recaptured S05 yeast I salvaged from my last batch of Pale Ale. Pretty simply recipe, with munich as a base, and some chocolate, special roast, crystal 90, and some roasted barley.

Random Stuff

I've been spending time on Salty, so I haven't had much to report on. I've been hanging out for the past week with my better half recovering from surgery. That means I've been sampling numerous brews, watching quite a few movies, and tinkering in the garage.

Speaking of brews, I had my first bottle of a coffee stout I brewed about 6 weeks ago. I was pleasantly surprised. The up front coffee aroma is a tad too strong, but it really mellows out in the body and has a great stout finish.

I also sampled my first bottle of what I call "Hoppy Magnum Alexander." I used a Pale Ale Mr. Beer kit, added some Alexander pale malt extract, and did a long 60 minute boil of magnum hops, which have a high 13.5% alpha content. I've been using a simple program called QBrew to make up my recipes, and it is helping me keep track of things. It's also helping me to tinker with quantities to better match up what styles of beers should be, in terms of bitterness and color.

On an unrelated note, here is a quick picture of Salty, my C110 racer bike I've been building over on this blog: http://saltygarage.blogspot.com/



And yes, I need to rake the leaves. But with the wind blowing everyday, I've decided to let mother nature have her way with the trees first. If the leaves happen to end up all in the neighbor's yard, who am I to argue?

C'

Old Man River

I took the day off today to spend my birthday hanging out with my little Mexican. We ate, shopped, watched movies, and I drank and brewed some beer. Overall, a great day.

I made a good haul too, as shown below:

Yes, two pairs of New Balance shoes (thanks Craigs and Susan) two beer shirts (thanks Panama) and two CDs. One is a "Book on CD" of three different Ken Follet novels. The other is a Phil Collins greatest hits. Hells yeah. a 6-pack of brew was also in the mix, but those are chillin' in the fridge already.

This evening I started a brew for a Christmas Ale. It has some orange peel, cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin pie spice, and some Willamette hops for a 15 minute boil. It smelled super yummy! I'm hoping this will be ready for some Xmas sipping.

C'