Saturday, July 2, 2011

Brew Day - July 2, 2011

Today was another blistering hot day in South Texas.  My assistant brewer and I put together 2 brews in one day.  A 3 gallon recipe called a Bourbon Barrel Porter and a 5 gallon recipe called AHS Flanders Brown Ale (strong ale).   It was a successful brew session with no major issues probably due to the fact that both recipes were primarily dried malt extract.  We decided to leave the malted barley and the mash tun in the closet until our next brew session.  Check the videos we made today during our brew session.  Don't worry have a homebrew!




Friday, April 22, 2011

Brewing Session - April 22, 2011

So, today I planned on brewing an American Hefeweissen from a recipe that I had previously made. The only change was, instead of making 5 gallons, I planned to make 10 gallons. Well, that was the first problem of today's brewing session. I only had 4 lbs of white wheat as opposed to the 8 lbs called for in the recipe. I just placed and order with Austin Homebrew Supply (AHS) and forgot to order more wheat. Duhhh! So after we finally got started I decided to only brew a 5 gallon batch. After mashing in and a 1 hour rest, I proceeded to dump the mash tun from the 5 gal cooler into the lauter tun with the false bottom. A fast pour and poor aim, resulted in about 25% on my mash on the floor of my garage! Boooo!

After cleaning up that mess, we finally finished brewing after 8 1/2 hours. Cody brewed a Belgian Ale and everything went pretty smooth for him. As for myself the rest of the brew session went, OK, but I didn't hit my original gravity or 1.046 and fell short by about 10 pts.  Oh well, maybe it will taste good anyway, right!

Here is a short video clip of my setup followed by a few pictures taken by my wife, Julie! Thanks for all the support! Love you!




Sunday, April 3, 2011

A Night at the Brewseum - Homebrew Class

This Thursday, April 7th, I will be doing a Homebrew presentation to a sold-out crowd.  This is an event that will precede the 3rd annual "Night at the Brewseum" - a beer festival here in McAllen at the International Museum of Art & Science.  The wife and I will be attending the actual event as guests, but I'm pleased to be doing the class/presentation on Thursday night.  Anything you aspiring homebrewers would like included in a class like this?  Let me know!  Comments welcome... and check out the link for more info on the event: