Well we are back at it after a long long hiatus. Began brewing an “AARR IPA”. Here are some photos. Oh and we were able to get our new logo online

Brew Session:

Well Max and Tom were at it again – except this time I was able to make it. If I make it I take pictures heheheh. Anyways they were up to a Belgian Pale I believe. If I am wrong, I am sure Max will update the post as necessary.  Pictures up to mashing…I had to leave after the second rest

“I Am A Craft Brewer” is a collaborative video representing the camaraderie, character and integrity of the American Craft Brewing movement. Created by Greg Koch, CEO of the Stone Brewing Co. and Chris & Jared of Redtail Media…and more than 35 amazing craft brewers from all over the country. The video was shown to a packed audience of 1700 craft brewers and industry members at the 2009 Craft Brewers Conference as an introduction to Greg’s Keynote Speech entitled “Be Remarkable: Collaboration Ethics Camaraderie Passion.”

Visit the IAACB page at Vimeo here

Oh and I saw this…..looks like people are waking up to the fact that they are drinking horse piss for the most part.

Beer Wars

• American Craft Brewers Week – Craft Brewers Get Public to Sign Declaration of Beer IndependenceWhile Celebrating American Craft Beer Week (May 11-17)
• Seattle Beer Week – May 7th – 17th

More to come… been busy this last month settling into new job and helping out with family items.

I like to think of this link as sparging for dummies.  For a while I had a big misconception on how this whole sparge thing worked.  Any ways here is a good link to a no-frills way to do your all grain batches:

http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/

Rob

• 2008 Craft Beer Sales Figures Announced – Looking good for the craft brewing industry and not so good for those beers that make “great taste”.
• 2009 Beer Style Guidlines Released – Now don’t call me a cynic but these “updates” almost seem like a software update
• Philly Beer Week 2009 – Now TBH I would have thought Seattle would be the host of a “Beer Week” worthy of internet news!
• Big Brew National Day – In 1988, May 7 was announced before Congress as National Homebrew Day. The American Homebrewers Association created Big Brew as an annual event to celebrate National Homebrew Day not only in the United States, but around the world. Big Brew is held each year on the first Saturday in May.
• 2009 AHA National Homebrew Competition Registration – Register to enter your beers for competitions.

After running around the internet for the last few weeks looking for good stuff about brewing, I realized I was having to reperform those searches if I wanted to go back to them in youtube or some other video server. I decided to centralize all that “stuff” into a nice neat package here for my use. I hope you also find them useful. As stated on the Instructional Video page, none of these videos were made by me. Maybe at a later date, I will make and add some, but for now I am going to concentrate on gathering all the information into one spot. Hope it helps.

Rob

So…had to watch one of my new co-workers retire today.  MMCS(SS)(RET) John Renfro for the last week has been in one of those moods – you know – anticipatory, excited and anxious all wrapped up in one.  Well, let me start from the very beginning of this whole thing.  Last night I partied like I was 22 again.  And I had a good time…until I got up to go to work.  The whole morning I could think about nothing but to getting back home and crash out on the couch.  Well being that I wanted to be at the ceremony and wanted to see John off to a good start by going to the reception, I was pretty torn about my inner “id” vs what I should do as in the “right thing”.  After copious amounts of water and aspirin, I watch the ceremony, hurting, and then I ran home to change and head on over to the reception.  Now I had just shown up to this command so I knew all of 3 people out of the many that were there.  I kinda felt like the FNG.  Well John had a kegerator with a 1/2 barrel of bud light in it.  I watched people come up and pour their beers and talk about the kegerator and how neat it was and all that jazz.  Now I gotta say, it is pretty amazing how many people do not know how to pour beer from a tap.  After giving some tips, one of John’s neighbors came up to me and started talking about brewing.  I guess my boss Greg Pelton had told a few people I brewed.  Cool.  Well as we were talking, I was eyeballing a really nice shiny and empty keg sitting 5 feet away from me.  As John walked by I jokingly told him that if he doesn’t keep an eye on it, it may just roll with me on the way home.  We laughed and the really cool thing happened.  John’s neighbor said he had an old keg in his backyard he wanted to get rid of and that I could grab it if I wanted too.  Sweet!  Ya sure.  Well John’s other neighbor came up to us and heard us talking and said he too had a couple of old kegs he was trying to figure out what to do with.  Right there in one fell swoop I ended up with an HLT, MLT and a boil kettle.  I was doin the happy dance at that point.

So lesson learned…even if you feel like complete ass from drinking too much, always always always attend your redneck shitkicker wearing coworker’s retirement reception because you never know when you will stumble on one sweet deal.  Oh and always do the right thing

Rob

So as I am helping SWMBO with her business, I thought…what the heck is a decoction mash?  So I jumped on www.homebrewtalk.com and found this very informative video.  Hope you enjoy because I learned alot from it! (Edit: added second part)

Oh and while we are on the youtube brewing channel I found this for batch sparging…I have no idea how to batch sparge so this will help me alot!

Rob

(Edited to add 3rd portion of the decoction mash videos)

• Why you should use brewing software when brewing
• The legal transportation of hombrewed beer in Washington State – Senate Bill 5060
• Craft Beer rivals wine -  sour grapes are not my style
• The Longshot Competition and rules here.