My fave pumpkin ale is Shipyard.

Also, kudos to the homebrewers making lagers! That was nearly unthinkable when I started. Seems like extra refrigerators are more standard these days.

yeah fresh hopslam is my favorite beer, hunaphu's a close second. oracle is pretty limited here in Minneapolis too. most places have a two 12oz. bottle limit, and the same for nemesis. i did find a place by my apartment with no limit on sales and quite a few bottles left. probably should have bought more.

Where did you find Nemesis 2010?

Regular customer with first pint of my new milk stout. He came in last night wanting to buy some so I poured him one out of the fermenter. Today he walked in while I was clearing the Amber Bock out of the line and just getting to the new, good stuff. Talk about perfect timing, huh?

Well it just came out as a pretty limited release this week, so most liquor stores in Minneapolis have it, but have a two twelve ounce limit and are selling out fast. i think most liquor stores here only got a few cases.

Last year I tried a whole bunch and liked the Post Road from Brooklyn best.

Post Road is easily my favorite pumpkin beer.

Tried Young's Double Chocolate. Not really impressed.

Sampled my most recent Brew last night for the return of the football, a PSA IPA. It turned out very well, very smooth and drinkable, I would like it to be a little more hoppy though maybe I'll mess around with the recipe next time. Head retention and lacing was a little weak, but with it being an extract brew Im not too surprised.

SG-1.046
FG-1.012
Attenuation-~74%
ABV%-4.6

I should have added the photo, even though its blurry as hell.

I get really exited at the cusp of a new season. I eat the same **** year round, but I am totally seasonal wrt beer drinking.

pumpkin beer. Dogfish, Smuttynose and the Weyerbacher Imperial would be my favs. I'll have to revisit the Post Road, I remember being underwhelmed. I like the Brooklyn Octoberfest a lot.

I had some Yuengling in Pittsburgh the other day. It's available all over the East Coast, but not in Louisiana. I liked it a lot and may try to have another glass or two during my travels. Also, Pittsburgh was surprisingly awesome. Beautiful place.

We've actually got that at Walmart here. One of the FEWWWW beers they carry. I've had it before at restaurants on draft, and it wasn't bad at all. May have to pick some up.

Brag: My local beer store carries about 6 varieties of Sweetwater. This makes me happy.


Beat: They carry no stouts besides Guinness.

Looks good. I can't taste it from here, but I'll take your word for it.

Do you dry hop your IPA's?


I'm attempting my first brew tomorrow. Have several guys coming over. We're going to watch the Georgia/South Carolina game, grill some meat, and attempt to brew some beer. Even if it turns out bad, it should still be a good day.

I'm from NJ (close to PA) and love Yuengling. I know a place they have it on draft for $1.25/pint. Yuengling is still also run entirely by the Yuengling family, nice story for a relatively large craft brewery.

Boston's breweries are Sam Adams and Harpoon (obv). They're ok but the Allagash one is Portland, ME is cool. Boston also has a handful of brew pubs my fav being American Craft.

Anyone here a Goose Island Sophie fan? It became my fav beer over the summer and is only about $8 a bottle.

I started aging a couple..next year they should be delicious.

Obviously Yuengling is local for me so its everywhere, the beer is so common in the Philly area that when ordered at a bar all you need to ask is "I'll have a Lager" thats all you need to do.

It was my HS beer so Ive moved on from it quite some time ago, but in most open bars in the area itll be either ML or a Lager. I take the Lager 100% of the time.

I dont, but I am going to with my next batch. I am thinking of trying a 60 min clone but may put it off bc the ingredients are almost $60 .

That sounds like a great time, football brewing and grilling? Sign me up imo.

Here's a 60m clone that I've made that is very good and cost nowhere near $60

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f69/dogf...extract-25709/

Thats actually the same recipe I had price out on Northern Brew, I was including shipping as well.

Are you on those forums? Have you tried the Ed Worts Apfelwein? I acquired an extra carboy so I may give it a shot. Its as easy as pouring apple juice sugar and wine yeast in the carboy and letting sit for 3 months.

Alright, here's my tl;dr home brew report. My first beer ever was a Fat Tire clone which was reasonably simple, except I had to steep some specialty grains which, I guess, would make it a partial mash? Anyway, here are my notes:

1) Steeped specialty grain from Northern Brewery recipe in 1 gallon of water for 30 minutes. Went over 170 (under 176, should've stayed under 170) for approx. 2 minutes twice. Poured into main cooker, added liquid malt extract (LME) set to a boil. Stirred until hot break.

2) After hot break, added bittering hops, set timer for 45 minutes. (Added 1/2 gallon water to main pot to make up for evaporation. Couldn't add to smaller pot, not enough room). Stirring regularly.

3) Added 2/3 of flavored hops with 15 minutes remaining.

4) Added remainder (1/3) flavored hops with 5 minutes remaining.

5) Cool wort to under 80 degrees F. Next time don't forget to pour the 2 gallons of extra boiled water into crock pot before cooling you idiot. Took forever to cool, had to go get extra ice, probably an extra hour. Not good.

6) Tossed back and forth 3 times between cooker and ferment bucket to aerate. Pitched yeast. Could not figure out how the damn gravity thing worked, so just lidded it. Wrapping the fermenter in a wet t-shirt and have a fan on it because my ambient temperature is a little high in the house, and I'm not spending extra money on a power bill at this point.

*If this turns out ****ed up, it's because my liquid yeast sat out for 4 days while I was on vacation because I thought I had dry yeast. It never got above 75 degrees, but I don't know if that's hot enough and long enough to screw it up. We'll see. Also, it took forever to cool it down, so nasties could've been introduced during this period.

Lastly, I've got a bung that I can't figure out how to work:



Similar to this. My hose doesn't fit it. It fits in my air lock thing, but I can't figure out the benefit to it, and since my air lock has a lid with holes in it for CO2 release, I left the cork in the box, much like those leftover screws when I'm putting together furniture.


Critiques, complaints and questions are welcome.

Congrats.

What I find most interesting, of course, are the pics and taste report of the final product.

So far this summer, I haven't been able to cool my wort below 85F or so, and end up pitching yeast somewhere between 12 and 16 hours after I stop the boil. If your sanitation is good you can usually get by with that, although its obviously not ideal. One extra hour I wouldn't sweat in the least.

If you got a kit with a carboy, the bung is for the carboy. The lid should have a hole with a rubber grommet, you just shove the airlock right in that hole.

Yea, ScottishPete is my name on there ... I haven't tried the Apfelwein though I did just try to make Hard Cider, which is almost the exact same process as you described

Have you tried http://www.brewmasterswarehouse.com before? You can save / load your own recipes on there and they'll mill everything together if you need ... sounds like NB has the same process, but I've had a lot of luck with BMW

I'm just about to start ordering bulk grains ... sounds like Austin Homebrew is the cheapest way on the internet? $53.99 for a sack of 2-row and shipping is free over $100 ... that comes out to like $1.08 a lb ... BMW sells their 2-row for like $1.20 so it'll take a long time to make a 15lb barley crusher pay for itself

Also, if you try BMW, enter coupon BBBYO on the checkout for any recipe you put together ... code is good for either 10% or 15% off

I do have a carboy, so that explains that.