We brought a few bottles of our first batch of homebrew to Jaime & Andy’s Beer & Brats party on Saturday night. It was a hit.
But Sunday it was back to the homebrew grind. We washed out 2 cases of bottles in preparation for bottling the Red Ale. The dishwasher cycles took a little longer than we anticiapted, so we decided to wait until tonight to actually bottle. We sampled a little while it was on its way from the fermenting bucket to the bottling bucket. I think we have another hit on our hands.
The really exciting thing about this is that so far we’ve been buying kits and following instructions. I’m reading a book right now that gives you ideas for how to be more creative as you learn the process and learn why things are how they are and it won’t be too long until we doing crazy fun stuff with the brew, just because we thought of it. I’m already talking about adding coffee to the next stout in an attempt to recreate that great micorbrew I had at the Old Harbour Brewing Co in San Juan.
Here’s some other random CWC news:
The grass needs to be cut and leaves are all over the place
The HD channels are now working and we can watch MNF in HD
The Next Computer debate has begun: media center pc vs laptop
The laundry room shelves are back on the wall – but a different wall this time
We’re fattening up SCSI for Thanksgiving Dinner
The first batch has been carbonating in bottles for the last three weeks. Today we had taste number three of that batch. We decided it was pretty good and possibly ready to drink. Of course, since this is our first batch, we don’t have much frame of reference. So just to be sure that we’re not jumping the gun, we put half of the bottles in to the fridge to chill and enjoy this week. The other half of the batch will carbonate for another week to see if we can tell a difference.
We also moved the currently-fermenting second batch from its first stage to its second. There was about a quarter inch of sediment left in the bottom of the first stage bucket. The volumn of liquid in the second stage also dropped from 5 gallons to about 4 gallons.
We’ve spared you the pictures this time. They were all turning out about the same and it’s hard to brew beer, have a homebrew AND take pictures at the same time.
* WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM ID 1998 *
We closed on the house September 21st, but we didn’t show up with the moving truck until October 10th. To mark the date, I’ve uploaded some pictures of the kitchen, which just may be the least-changed room in the house.
Happy Camp Willow Creek Day!
See? I don’t even have to tell you we had a good time.
This year we went Eastern Caribbean with ports of call in San Juan, St. Thomas, St. Martin, and Nassau. We went on Navigator of the Seas, which is the same size/class ship as Explorer and laid out almost exactly the same – hence few pictures of the inside of the ship. We went with our usuall dive/cruise buddies, Heather and Aaron and Aaron’s brother Ryan also joined us with his friend Angie.
San Juan was great. The port is in Old San Juan and therefore that is where we spent our day. Heather, Aaron, Ryan and Angie opted for a guided walking tour of the historical city. JDB and I stopped in the information center and got a free map. We walked the narrow old city streets, stopped in a small shop for $1 beers and ultimately ended up at the same fort – El Morro – as the guided tour.
Our beer-brewing buddy from back home happened to be on a business trip in San Juan the same day we were in port. We found a cool-sounding brew pub right near the docks and tried to meet up there. JDB and I found the place just fine around 5pm. We started with a sampler and each picked a beer we liked – mine tasted like ice coffee. We held off on ordering food as we figured we’d wait for George. An hour later he called and said he was on his way, so we had some more beer. An hour after that he called and said he can see our ship, but can’t find the pub, so we had some more beer. An hour after that he called and said he missed the exit and had to turn around, so we had some more beer. An hour after that we tried calling him and the cell phones weren’t working, so we had some more beer. Eventually, we had to get back on the ship, so they wouldn’t leave without us, so we skipped dinner and headed back to the pier – hence the parrots (they seemed like a good idea at the time).
When we got back onboard, we found out just how cool our waiter, Hasan, was. Heather and Aaron told us to hurry to dinning room because he had saved us some of that evening’s desert – chocolate cake. Once we got there, he asked if we had eaten. We said, “no” and he came back with a big plate of chocolate cake AND a big plate of giant shrimp. MMmm.
Tuesday we went diving in St. Thomas. We dove a wreck & a reef from the same anchor spot which was kinda cool. The dives were a little rushed though since the dive shop had another group going out at 12:30pm and were in a hurry to get back to the pier.
Wednesday we went hiking in St Martin. It was gorgeous. We hiked about 3 miles on a rocky mountainside overlooking the Atlantic Ocean at the edge of the Caribbean Sea. We saw cacti and mountain goats and butterflies. The midpoint of the hike was a rock beach in a cove where the crash of the surf sounded way more relaxing than those cds you buy in Brookestone. After the hike we went to the downtown shopping area and discovered Guavaberry Coladas and Good-ass ribs.
The last stop was Nassau – been there, done that. It was kinda rainy, but we walked around a bit and Heather and Aaron showed us the Queens Staircase. Check out the pictures, there’s probably some stuff I forgot.
Yesterday we put one of the sample bottles from the first batch of CWC Brew into the fridge. Today, right around kickoff, we had our tasting from a nice frosty mug. Pretty good. We’re going to wait until next week and try another sample, but I really think it might be ready to enjoy next week and not the following week, as we originally anticipated. Either way, we’ve got to try to save some for the 21st to share at Jaime’s beer & brats dinner. MMMM!
Today we also started a batch of red. My choice. It was a lot more fragrant in the wort stage than the stout was. Its also a lot lighter in color. We’re doing a 2-stage fermenation this time (which more or less means we wait a little longer to put it in the bottles) which I think is going to be good for two reasons. one, the flavor will have some more time to develop and two, there is a lot more sediment in this wort than there was in the last and I think moving to the second stage will clear it up a good bit and make the final product more appealing.
Another change we made this go around was liquid yeast, per a recomendation from the shopkeep. As usual, we’ll keep you posted,
This weekend marks week number 2 in bottles for the first batch of CWC Brew. We had a taste test last weekend and it wasn’t nearly carbonated enough – we also forgot to chill it before tasting. This week we expect it to be better, but we don’t expect it to be ready to drink until next week or the week after.
Although the first batch isn’t quite ready for consumption, we plan on starting batch number 2 this weekend. JDB went to the supply store today and this time, I tagged along. It was pretty cool to see all the options available. I picked a red lager for the next batch and JDB picked an English Brown for the 3rd.
We got a book and also some advise from the shopkeep. We’re going to try a few new things this time, like a liquid yeast and 2nd stage brewing. We’ll let you know how it goes.
The cruise pictures are uploaded, but there are two catches. 1) It was getting late, so I am not done with labels and captions, so you may just have to wonder what the heck is going on in some of them. 2) The other cruise pictures are still over at skurtz.com, so for now, the new ones are also.
nevermind.
Well, we’re back. We had another fun trip cruising the Caribbean and of course I have a ton of pictures. Unfortunately, we decided to do some “spring cleaning” on the computers today and so I have to get everything reinstalled before I can upload those pictures. It’ll just be a few days, so check back.
