If you've got an electric stove, yeah, it's going to suck.

I actually got a propane cooker today, figured I might as well. I'm probably going to get an immersion chiller as well...ice bath has been serviceable for like 2.5 gallon extract boils but cooling down 5 or 6 gallons or more is going to be a different story

Drank PlinyTheElder's SMaSH beer last night. It was delicious. Had some friends over so we ended up splitting it four ways.



My notes on it were that it was extremely American hops smelly with a burst of tropical scent added to it. Thought I could make out some melon in it which was great. The taste was not a let down from the smell. Very hop forward with tons of citrus and tropical. The Golden Promise lended a slightly sweet malt profile which I think worked quite well with the Citra. PtE had mentioned that he thought it might be a bit thin but I thought it was actually well done with the body. About medium bodied, no dryness, and the bitterness was really smooth and worked perfectly for the style. Extremely good beer, would drink more.

I also picked up a brewing buddy yesterday. We were going to get a boy of the litter and name him Barley, but all the boys were claimed so we got this sweet girl who we named Marlo. She's almost 9 weeks old and half German Shepherd, half Black Labrador.

As Wraths said, we met up at a local brewery Swamp Head while he was driving through and swapped beers. I had his DIPA the other night which I believe he said was brewed with Ahtanum hops. I've never had these before, so it was a new experience.

Nice looking beer. Two finger head which dissipates slowly leaving a creamy lacing behind. Aroma has a nice damp, dank hops. Balanced with some sweet malt backbone. Taste is similar to aroma. Hops his hard and have a sticky dankness to them but a nice malt backbone comes through and balances the beer. Slight alcohol taste and another flavor I can't quite place, maybe the yeast? Nice brew overall.

And nice looking pup there, brewing buddies are the best.

haven't put the full notes in, but some quick impressions of some brews I had this past weekend.

I finally started digging into my pipeworks stash. To give a slight bit of background, pipeworks is an insanely small brewery that just started up production here in chicago back in march. They brewed test batches for 2 years before doing a full release (i'm guessing family helped them out financially as they didn't have any other jobs at the time).

Right now there is no flagship brew for them. They do things in small batches but do rotate their beers and bring out updates releases on them. They really listen to the customers on how to better the beers, so on each subsequent release there has been tweaking to the recipies.

Sadly my dumbass didn't pony up the $100 back in march to become a "friend with benefits." I'm already grossly regretting that as FWB get first dibs on their releases and they are now brewing beers solely for FWB members. C'est la vie.

They did most of their financing through kickstarter and other means. They are on a complete shoestring, but I've been very impressed with what they have put out so far.

I had the Glaucus (Belgian IPA) and the Quintessential (American Wheat Ale). The Glaucus ****ing ruled. Around 8% abv and full bodied, but absolutely zero booziness to it. Smooth with good spice flavors to it. I also really enjoyed the Quintessential. There was an herbal element to it that I really liked and worked for me.

They are only available at like 5 or 6 stores in Chicago. They self distribute, so they only send their brews to places that they have relationships with. I'd normally scream about Pipeworks, but there is just way too little to go around, so it will be a quiet shout on my end. They're probably the most exciting brewery in Chicago right now (and I say this with all of the love I've given revolution here) as they will probably stay very small. I have little doubt that they will turn into *the* cult brewery of Chicago as it's already starting to happen.

If anyone is interested I'm more than willing to ship when the weather cools a slight bit

Interesting.

There is a brewery near me that is less than a year old that has a similar founding fathers type program. The price was around $400 though so I said maybe some other life.

Drinking some zombie dust right now. 3 floyds is definitely one of my favorite breweries. Went to dark lord day a couple years back, not a fan of the actual beer but the whole "festival" was a great experience. Tons of micro brewers and home brewers setting up stalls to sell their wares. Bonus: Bus ride from one of the best CB bars in Chicago, there and back!

So I'm getting into rinsing my yeast to help cut down on costs. So I rinsed my yeast last night and I think I did it a little wrong. I took my yeast cake, added some boiled (then cooled) water then swished it up good and dumped it into sanitized jars. So now I have 5 jars of 80% clear liquid (beer?) with 20% settled yeast, no trub because there wasn't much hops. I think I should have let it settle before moving to the jars right to get a purer sample of yeast? So my question now is when I want to do a batch, do I just add the yeast from one of these jars? Two? How do I know?

The Mr Malty pitching calculator has a "yeast slurry" selection.

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

Im startting to get away from yeast washing actually. On my last 4 batches Ive been doing something other than washing to lower costs and reuse yeast.

I make a starter for every batch no matter what, so I have been letting my starter finish out completely on the stirplate then refilling (sanitized of course) the yeast vial that my yeast just came in sealing it and sticking it in the fridge. I'll date it and by the next morning I have a WL vial that is half full of thick viable yeast. I will post back results as I get to the 4th-5th generations of these strands but on the second generations Ive not noticed any difference in the yeast as far as flavors, flocculation, attenuation goes.

Haha that's actually a really easy, awesome idea.

if anyone from Dallas wants to go to lakewood brewry's first ever tour and get 4 beers for $12 along the way here's the link to tickets. 50% chance i go!

I kind of just went of a huge spree in the last week.

I got:
Stuff to convert my cooler into a mash tun
50 foot immersion chiller
larger brew kettle
propane cooker
full-size refrigerator for lagering and lower temp fermenting (terrific shape, $75 on craigslist!)
another fermenter bucket

I figured that if I was going all-grain, I might as well go all-out.

Welcome to the addiction

I always liked fresh dark lord, big, well hopped stouts were always my thing though.

I recently had an 08 darklord (I have about 5 of them left, from the only time I went to DL day) and I didn't love it.

It's been "aged" in 50-65 degrees since I got it, so it should be relatively well kept, but it was quite thick and sweet, not what I like in my stouts.

(tbh, I shouldn't be aging imperial stouts given my taste preferences, I just happened to have these still sitting around, going to ebay and/or trade the rest for stuff I might actually enjoy more)