Triumphs and Travesties in Homebrewing

As you may recall, I had been brewing up a storm in preparation for my wedding which takes place this coming Saturday. I made two batches of Honey Duvel, two batches of Kolsch, and a Grand Cru. In the end, both Duvels turned out to be straight up Belgian dubbels, which is fine but not what I’d intended. One batch of kolsch was delicious and I “accidentally” consumed most of it by August. Oops! I figured I would be bailed out by the second batch of kolsch, but how wrong I was. For the first time ever my beer didn’t turn out at all right! I guess I didn’t rinse the santizer out of the carboy entirely, because each bottle of beer tastes vaguely of sanitizer, and that’s just no good. At least the Grand Cru is what it should be!

But the surprise of the month was finding that the mead I started in February had finally cleared and was ready to drink. And what a fine drink it is! Clear, crisp, honey-hued, sweet and delicious! So we’ll be serving that at the wedding for sure. I’ll post some photos later.

This, along with the availability of gorgeous local blackberries at the farmer’s market, inspired me to start a batch of blackberry mead this weekend. 15lbs of local honey, a half-flat of local blackberries, water, and yeast. Such delightful simplicity!

At Wit’s End?

I hate to say it, but I think I’ve lost my taste for Belgian Wit style beers. I used to love the yeasty, bright, coriander and lemon flavors and aromas of the style, but lately I order a Wit and just don’t love what I’m drinking. None of the Wits at the Oregon Brewers Festival were awesome, and even the Allagash White I had last Friday at the Green Dragon fell flat on my tastebuds.

Luckily, there are lots of other beer styles to enjoy! Let’s just hope I can keep my Wits about me in the future.

Hops springs eternal

Finally, my hops is putting on some flowers! I already had to slay a bunch of the vines because the darn thing was taking over the garden. So far there aren’t a TON of cones coming, but it’s not bad. It looks like the hops season will be 2-4 weeks behind usual on account of the weird weather we’ve had this spring and summer. It didn’t stop plant growth, but certainly inhibited flowering. My guess is that I can harvest the cones in mid-September, at which point I may try making a green-hopped beer.

Have hops but don’t know what kind? Check out this photo-list from the Oregon Hop Commission! Yep, I’ve got Willamette even though the friend that gave them to me thought they were Cascade. I love that we have our own hops commission in Oregon. What a perfect place to live!

I wish I could blame beer, but…

…I can’t. I accidentally deleted all of my site comments thinking I was just moderating the new spam ones that had arrived. Apparently not so! Le sigh. That just means I need people to start commenting anew!

Water v. Beer

I received this important Public Service Announcement in email from a friend:

To my friends who enjoy a glass of Beer… and those who don’t. As Ben Franklin said: ‘In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.’

In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 liter of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria found in feces. In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop. However, we do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer (or tequila, rum, whiskey or other liquor) because alcohol has to go through a purification process of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting.

Remember: Water = Poop. Beer = Health. Therefore, it’s better to drink beer and talk stupid, than to drink water and be full of shit. There is no need to thank me for this valuable information: I’m doing it as a public service.