I asked a guy who's in Asheville for their Winter Warmer to pick me up a sixer of Bell's Hopslam. He said he got the last one at Bruisin' Ales.

Any of you had it? I'm not a huge fan of paying $15+ per sixer and would rather just brew my own if its something that incredible.

Also, I was messing around in my kegerator this morning, dropped my screwdriver, and completely shattered the 3L flask that had my starter of the Yorkshire Square yeast I was planning on using tomorrow. So sad.

Sucks about the starter. Hopslam is expensive but it's a mighty fine beer. Im not sure if there's a good clone of it out there either.

Hopslam is amazing. I usually only pick up 1 sixer each January since its $20/6 after taxes, but its well worth the money.

here's my review of it:

poured from bottle into a tulip. Pours a solid orange color with a nice and small head

Rich and aromatic with aromas of hops, pine resin, citrus aromas with some spice

Excellent feel with good flavors, but there is a slight bit of booziness on the end. Very good flavors of hops, pine resin, citrus and booze flavors on the back end

This is what I'd more expect from a hopslam. I had an "aged" one from tap a few months back and it was very boozy. this one is very fresh (12/29/11) and tastes like i would expect.

4.5/4/4/4.5/4- 4.08

It's good, but it's something that I only really drink when it comes out and all I ever want is a few bottles. A 6 pack is too much for me. I think there's better DIPAs that are more readily available

Thank you, RDH, for finally saying "Bell's" Hopslam. For a good while in this thread, I was confusing Hopslam with Hopwhallop, I think from Victory, which I reviewed ITT a while back and didn't really like, and I had no idea why everyone loved that mediocre beer so much.

Yeah, Hop Whallop is a Victory beer, and surprisingly, one of their few beers I don't find overhopped!

Brewed the ESB yesterday, I'll post a TR with pics when I can.

On the whirlpool rest now, looks like I'll knock out about 10.5g of 1.050 special bitter. Has a nice color to it.

Please post TR!

Next decent poker bink & I'm gonna cough up the 1 k GBP to buy enough Brewdog shares to get the freebie abstrakts sent to me. Plus the discount at their brewpubs.

Easily the best commercial brewery in the UK AINEC, imo.

cardsman,

my buddy wasn't able to find the booth map from last years winterfest, and it doesn't look like the BGofI has updated their site either. I'll be there from 3 until i cant walk straight, so shoot me a PM if you are there and we can meet up. That's also assuming i'm sober enough to remember to check PM's

Ha ha will do. Trying to sweet talk the wife into watching my daughter....if so, I'm there!

So we brewed the ESB this weekend. It was a chilly day, overcast, air temp 19 degrees when we started, and there was half an inch of sleet from the night before. However, there was no wind and when the propane burner was on, it was pretty pleasant, really. We really encountered no issues this time with the exception of a few floaties in the boil where our screen didn't do its job, but only a few and they'll settle into the bottom of our fermenter as far as I can tell. At any rate, we went for a thin mash due to the air temp, mashed in a little high, at 154, but quickly settled in at 152 after a stir.



The mash held temp really well, which is something we've struggled to maintain in our last few batches. To keep temp, we wrapped the baby in swaddling cloths, lying on a deck bench.



We use a cement pad for the propane burner so as to not set the deck on fire, which I think is pretty good preventative maintenance when it comes to a couple of guys having several beverages. The flame and heat left a pretty interesting pattern in the layer of ice:



We may have miscalculated somewhere, not sure, but we only pulled 9 gallons from the mash plus sparge, so we had to get a couple more gallons of sparge water and I milked the mash tun as best I could. Pulled off 11.5 gallons finally. Hit 13.3 Plato, which I think will be just fine. Here's our first bucket pulled, nice color to it:



Boil was uneventful as well--a nice, easy, non agressive boil. Here's my brewing friend, his scarf is from Belgium, he and his wife went to Brussels last spring on a last second whim and visited Cantalone.



And here I am adding the 20 min hops:



Here's the wort at flameout, we've put the chiller in and the wort got down to 66 degrees in short order, which is where we pitched....



Looking forward to finishing up and comparing notes with you guys!!!

Nice TR.

Mine is just about done, I'll probably keg it over the weekend. It's been in primary for 10 days now.

I sent Coff a few of my homebrews for him to taste and give me some feedback because I feel I'm having some off-flavors. He sent me one of his too and here's my review. I haven't done BJCP before so it's just my notes with no real score.

Coff's SMASH Marris Otter and Simcoe Pale Ale

Appearance: Slightly dark for a pale ale, but a pleasant looking tan-brown. Nice carbonation, about a half-fingers on the pour which stays around nicely. Little to no lacing.

Aroma: Light crisp aroma. Definite simcoe characteristics coming through. Some nice grapefruit and sweetness.

Taste: Light in body and very light hop character. Balanced malt backing. If you like simcoe hops, this is a beer for you. Well balanced.

Mouthfeel: Very well done mouthfeel. Goes down extremely smoothly with the perfect note of carbonation.

Overall: A very solid beer. No off flavors detected. My impression of this beer is a very light, deft touch went into making this. It is lightly but well hopped such that they are not overwhelming and meld nicely with the malt.

Here's a short TR of my brew day. It was a great day for brewing around 65-70F out the whole time. Started cleaning around 10am, mashed in at 11am, finished cleaning up ~2pm.

It was just me and the guy who got me into brewing originally.

Mash In:


Collecting Wort:


Pitching Yeast:


Fermenting (came in a bit high ~70F):


Only things to really note is that I had a stuck sparge for about 5 min that required clearing of the spigot. I did a FWH with an ounce of EKG's instead of at the 60min boil, used .25oz victory instead of special roast, and used S04 yeast. Other than that hit my numbers across the board, only lost about 4F from mash in to the step up to 168F which is nice considering the 100qt cooler and ~10lbs of grain in it.

Sierra Nevada's Ruthless Rye is pretty tasty.

Anybody going to this?
(apologies if I missed related posts)

I'd like to go, $20 for a 750 is a bit expensive though. The camaraderie and beer outside of Hunaphu's sounds fun though. I'll have to decide when it gets closer.

I'll be there. Hunaphu is hands down my favorite beer, easily worth the $20 IMO. I'll be in line early, let me know if anybody else is going to be there.

I will be at the event.

I transferred the ESB to the Keg last night, I think I noted this before but I was shooting for an 11 gallon batch over shot it by 2 gallons.



So I have been doing a few different things with all of the wort and decided to add one more thing last night. I had a little over 6 gallons in my normal ESB batch with Burton Ale yeast and can obviously only fit 5 Gallons into the keg so I transferred 1 gallon to a 1 gallon carboy and put it on 14 oz of oak chips, itll sit for only a few days then I will bottle it up.



FG was about 1.015, its dropped crytal clear already as you can see. Tastes great right out of the primary.



Part of my initial plan was to take 4 gallons of this wort and ferment it with 100% Brett, which I did. That portion has slowed down dramatically and has a nice dusty white pellicle, this one will probably sit for 6-8 weeks but it should be an interesting comparison.

I also happened to have the 2 gallons extra so I open fermented it in a Stainless Pot (I was out of fermenters so didnt have a choice) with some washed 1056 bc its what I had left. So I guess you could call that my control for which to compare all the other variations, that was bottled the other night.

So I'll end up with the following from one brewday.

-Standard ESB (Burton Ale)
-An Oak aged ESB (Burton Ale)
-A not so ESB with 1056
-A 100% Brett C ESB

Actually, it was 1.014.

Also, it was 1/4 oz of oak. Not 14 oz, lol

coff, I don't know how fully how brett interacts with other beers around it, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to isolate the batch with brett and the one w/o it. I love bretty beers, but in wine it can contaminate an entire barrel room

I have all my funky beers in the linen closet of my spare bathroom that nobody uses. Ive been pretty damn anal about that.