I don't mind grapefruit brews even though I have a fiery hatred of the actual raw fruit. A new craft beer pup just opened up near me that has a weekly rotating sour tap.

Had some delicious Hibiscus brews over the weekend.

Jealous? of course you all are.

I had some "eh" beers over the weekend.

Packaged up my first ever entry into a homebrew competition.  We'll see how that goes. 

what beer did you enter what competition?

good luck!

Competition? Nice.

What style?

Dominion Cup is the competition.  Entered under 13c, English Porter. 

With over 14 days left for registration, there are over 220 entries.  I'll just have to hope that most folks making porters are more interested in Baltic or American Porters.  Mine is a bit like Fuller's London Porter, but with a little more coffee flavor. 

I'm slightly concerned about my carbonation.  It has been fairly inconsistent from bottle to bottle.  I'm hoping I got lucky on the two bottles I submitted. 

do you force carbonate or prime with sugar?

Priming in the bottling bucket.  I usually put the priming mix in the bucket, then rack in so that the movement distributes some of the liquid.  Then I do some gentle stirring, trying not to aerate.  Must not have worked out on this particular batch. 

The other batch (same brew day, different yeast) carb'd fine.  Unfortunately, it wasn't the one that was picked by everyone doing side by side comparisons. 

don't know if you can do better than that.  surely the math would say if you have about the same amount of yeast and sugar mixed together, you would get similar carbonation.  unless temperature was different.  maybe some bottles sat in the sun or something?

Haha, nope.  All stored under same conditions in a reasonably well moderated basement. 

On the untappd side, the Berliner Weisse I had Saturday was actually pretty tasty.  I had to play a festival mid afternoon.  Burned up there, so the sour was a nice end to my day. 

Finally got around to an untapped profile, same name as on here

Welcome to the party. 

Welcome!

Friend request sent your way. Same name, just with more flavour.

Looks like I need to get busy, fortunately already have plans to go to founders brewery this weekend

Why wait until the weekend?

You have quite the catching up to do.

I am 51 unique beers away from 500.  It's a great moment in one's life. ... And I still won't have half of what another forumite has...

Had an apple beer from Unibrou last night.

Seek it out, it'll beat any cider into teary submission.

it does non it does

from Dublin, Ireland close to Christ Church...

so picked up my beer brewed at the Brewers Apprentice in Freehold, NJ. 72 x 22 oz bottles. 5 weeks to ferment, def. a Beglium yeast. Since they didn't have the clear sugar we used a dark one. looks and tastes a little like Chimay. its dangerously strong, the brew master calculated 8% but it seems to hit harder faster.

So, was it your recipe?  

gonna brew an Americanized version of a British bitter this weekend - like xb bluebird bitter.

^ what makes it americanized?

Probably the hops.

I would think so as well Tduds... unless Chigurh is planning on serving it in bald eagle skulls draped in USA flags.  That would be a good way to americanize an english brew, right?

I guess maybe I should have asked what type of hops.

I eagerly await the answer.

The brewers collective I help run in Portland finally had a good organizational meeting and nailed down some potential locations, so I'll be back on that soon! Look forward to updates in this thread on my alcohol-making problem.

On a related note: a whole evening of drinking homebrew tripel makes for one hell of a hangover.

hops and a low dry hop addition plus I am going to pitch an american ale yeast strain - not British, usually a bit cleaner, less diacetyl and esters.

mt hood hops for aroma and dry-hopping, EKG for bittering.  

I approve.

I gave one of my porters to a stranger over the weekend.  It's been the first person to try it that I have no connection with.  He said he liked it more than the Duck Rabbit he usually drinks.  No sure what style from Duck Rabbit he is drinking, but I'll take the compliment.  

working on my own recipe now, the brew was a modification, but not much....starting very rational - find a beer I like, start with clone, modify....

that is a good approach - there are a couple of books: beer captured and clone brews that I refer to often for recipe development/inspiration.  Lots of clone recipes on-line, but many are completely wrong so you gotta be careful there.   What are you working on a recipe for?

what does your recipe look like so far olaf?

i think you can put it together here and link to it

http://www.brewersfriend.com/

I planted some hops along my front-porch this spring that come from my home-brewing buddy's garden. Fingers are crossed that one day they will produce something worth using.

Rhizomes or seeds? You don't really want males, if you planted seeds. 

SenJohn, my buddy gave me a small potted hop plant he cut from his own stock... so I guess that qualifies as a rhizome? I don't know anything about plants.

It should be fairly easy to distinguish a male from a female plant.  The males should have small pollen sacks while the females will develop the hop cone that is seen in most pictures of hops. 

We have 3 first year vines in our garden. They are flowering but the flowers aren't very potent yet. The vines need to mature some more.

I just learned that female hop plants can turn into males if they are overly stressed. 

And I need to lay off the beer. Fall is more wine drinking weather anyways. 

There is a beer for all types of weather...

There will still be beer. Just displacing some activity with wine. My father-in-law makes wine and I just received a case. I will help harvest this year's grapes, which rolls in wine season. :-)

Non, you are correct.  Schwarzbier is appropriate, year round. 

So, a bit of a surprise:  I ended up winning the porter category at the competition I entered.  Haven't gotten scores/comments back yet.  But, I'm pretty excited.

In other news, the rest of us are still making great strides in catching up with our Untappd leader.  But he his holding his own.  More sampling must take place. 

I'm getting closer to that 200 unique brew badge.

Also, congrats Senjohn. I wish I could try one.

good work on the 1st place.

I came across some interesting beers this weekend - the ballast point homework series - cool concept where they brew/bottle a beer professionally and give you the recipe on the bottle if you want to byo.

That would actually be pretty cool to check out.  I don't think I've seen one in the specialty shop yet, though.  

We only see their sculpin and a few others.  I managed to get their California Amber on draft over the weekend.  Wasn't thrilled, but it was nice in comparison to the Yeti Imperial Stout I had prior to.  That was just dreck. 

amber ales are generally pretty wack - too sweet - too much caramel/crystal malts for my taste.

congrats on the porter!

Can't let this slip off the first page.

I was at my old favorite brew-pub (walking distance from my old place) on the weekend and ordered a pint of one of my favorites. I rated it a 4.75 naturally and was immediately re tweeted from the brewery.

New brew thrusday for all those badge chasers. Get your new brew in!