As I sit here, nearly a year from writing my 2012 goals, I’m struck how I can’t help but be disappointed by my year in brewing. I have accomplished a few of my goals, and a few projects, and made some investments, but I have not made enough progress improving brewing, process, or beers. I feel like I’m a closing in on a process, but have some coming process changes that will make it different once again.

This is a book I was looking forward to from the moment I heard about well over a year ago. Mitch Steele the head brewer at Stone brewing has been a guest on the brewing network quite a few times, and he also happens to be a member of Brew free or Die.
I’ve read the other two books published by Authors from Stone Brewing Company, so why would this be any different. The book has two main sections, the history of IPA to a vast collection of IPA recipes. Along the way manages to correct the myth of the origin of the name, and perhaps introducing a new one, alluding to brett in the original IPAs. There are lots of historic brewing statistics, to be honest, I mostly ignored them.

This is the first stout I’ve brewed, and I’m not really a big stout drinker, so I’m not sure this is a very qualified review this, but I’ll give it a go.
This is a very thick, rich stout. It has plenty of residual sugar, finishing at 1.018 will do that to you.

As you can see from the photo there isn’t much head.

I’m reviewing ‘the Original Carboy Cleaner’ and ‘the Original Keg Cleaner’ as I own both. They have made cleaning up after my brew days easier. Please note no one has paid me to say this or given me the product for review*. I did not however purchase them, as I received them from a family member as a gift.
The product is as easy to use as indicated in the tacky video on their website.

I finally got a chance to put the fresh Amarillo hops to use. When I picked up the hops at A&G homebrew I also picked up some DME. I had everything else on hand for a batch, except yeast, a slight oversight on my part. Thankfully one of my fellow home brewers from Brew free or Die was willing to share half a yeast cake of Wyeast 1968 London ale. This is the same strain of yeast I used for my first home brew.

I got the call that my hops were in September 5th. It’s now the 15th and I haven’t used them. They are still languishing in my fridge. This is a post about my dilemma with fresh hops. When I ordered them I was extremely excited to have ordered them. Now that they are over 10 days old in my possession, I’m a little less ecstatic.
In hindsight I don’t think I’d do this again, not this way it’s just not worth it. This isn’t a slam on the grower, the home-brew shop A&G homebrew, or wet hops in general, just that my particular scenario doesn’t seem to make any logical sense to use them. I need to invest in more shelf stable ready to use ingredients not extremely perishable ones.

As you start brewing there are issues with your process that will pop up from time to time, and you’ll have to figure out ways around them, or how to better deal with them. I’m a tinkerer always looking for a more efficient way, or method to make it better. The biggest issue I’m facing right now, is too little wort making it into the fermentor.
This problem started when I went full volume boil. When you are doing partial boils it’s easy, pour, and top up the carboy to the 5g mark. However, the last two batches have been full volume boils, the oatmeal stout and the alpha king clone (which I never wrote up) have had post boil volume issues. I ended up topping up the alpha king, but left the oatmeal stout at a higher gravity.

I’ll be up front when I receive a product for review, this…

I’m not going to lie my hop plants look terrible. While this has been a really good year for growing hops, I’ve only had so so success. This is my first year growing hops, so I didn’t expect much as the plants establish their roots. I also didn’t get them into the ground until late in the season, despite our warm spring. The old rhizomes I purchased last year didn’t sprout, so I purchased a new set of plants rather than rhizomes, Perle, Centennial, and Galena. Of the three purchased plants, the Perle completely died. The galena planting has done better, but the centennial is just now showing real signs of growth. I’m still hoping they will have enough growth established to withstand a New England winter.

One of the first DIY home brewing projects I undertook was building a immersion chiller. This is one of the easiest project you can do. My first attempt was a fairly sloppy mess. Because I wasn’t patient, and I didn’t have a good form to use to keep the coils organized. Also, I was trying to fit the cooler into a much smaller kettle, so I squashed it to fit. This past brew session while cleaning up, I decided to fix it up.