Roid Rage Goes Secondary

Roid Rage 2 was racked to the secondary on Wednesday. Racking went smoothly, and the beer percolated happily upon being stoppered by the airlock.

This time, for the dry hopping, Greg purchased 2oz of Cascade and 2oz of New Zealand Riwaka, which is a souped-up Saaz variety. We don't have any experience with NZR, but as I opened the air-tight package, wow! It smells great - it's fresh, strong, and spicy. Anyone who likes Ninkasi Tricerahops DIPA will appreciate the grapefruit tones found in NZR. This may be one of the secret ingredients in the legendary Pliney the Elder...

Just my suspicion.

Expect RR2 to be bottled in about 7-10 days, and drinkable perhaps a week later.

-S

Roid Rage Version 2.0

We started a new batch of Roid Rage this weekend. We are going to enter it in a Homebrew competition sponsored by Bridgeport Brewing. The beer is due by the end of October, so we have plenty of time. Taking into account some of the comments we got from the State Fair reviews of Roid Rage 1.0, we decided to really kick things up a notch. We added a lot more hops. We were lucky to use fresh Nugget hops from my friends Jon and Cathy's "hop yard." We also used extra pale malt instead of pale malt. Hopefully, these things will make Roid Rage bigger, bolder, and better.

The Super Bee Wheat is coming along nicely. Every time I open a bottle, it is smoother and better. With all that honey, it seems to be taking a lot longer to fully bottle condition.

I started fooling around with the kegging system. I am going to make some old time sarsaparilla soda once I get everything figured out.

We had our bottle of Pliny the Elder. Only 72 bottles were brought up to Portland and the store was limiting purchases to 1 per person. It is awesome!! It is the type and quality we are striving for. Super hoppy, super bitter - but in a good way, just plain amazing. We are planning a road trip down to Santa Rosa, CA sometime in November.

http://www.russianriverbrewing.com/web/brews/plinytheelder.htm

Blue Ribbon Winning Label Design

We won the Label Competition at the State Fair. Many thanks to Pete for his fine work. The Roid Rage label was proudly on display with the blue ribbon next to it.

One cool thing was that we got to see the tasting notes the judges gave our 2 beer submissions. It was the first time we got professional feedback on our beers. We got scores of "good" for both. That is kind of like the middle of the road - not great - but not horrible.

I tried the Super Bee - it needs more time to get fully carbonated. The taste was not what I was expecting. I'm interested to get Shawn's take on the flavor.

Do you like your gut rotted out?

If so, you'll love Georgia Moon Corn Whiskey!

They sell this stuff at my local liquor store. $10 for a mason jar. It's more a novelty than a serious hard alcohol. Honestly, its not as bad as I thought it would be, but definitely not that good. There is really almost no taste, but you can certainly feel the burn. The smell is like bad tequila. I wouldn't use this for anything other than sticking a wick in it and having a nice camping lantern.

In other news...

We are getting ready to go to the fair this weekend. Should be good. Hoping for at least one Blue Ribbon. Also, Poison is playing that night - so with Brett Micheals in town - anything can happen!

We bottled Super Bee Wheat - should be ready by next week.

Shawn made some Cream Soda - I am anxious to try that!

"It's a Major Award!" - the Dad from A Christmas Story

This just in -

I received a call from the Oregon State Fair inviting us to the Awards Ceremony on August 30th.

We entered 2 beers and the label competition. She wouldn't tell me what we won, but she said we had a ribbon and a prize pack waiting for us.

So now we can definitely say we are "Award Winning" - at least in some respect.

Shawn and I were joking that before we were just 2 schmucks with bad day jobs, now we are 2 schmucks with bad day jobs and an award!

Now, it's up to the judges...

My beautiful and lovely wife, Jenn, drove down to Salem today to drop off the beer for the State Fair Homebrew competition. The awards are announced at the end of August during the fair, so we'll let you know how things go.

We are very excited. We entered the Roid Rage into the Imperial IPA category. We have no idea how many other people enter this thing - so it will be a learning experience. We entered the Band Camp in the American Pale ale category. We also entered 3 labels that our friend Pete did into the label competition.

I tried the Band Camp last night. It still needs a few days to fully carbonate. It has a nice color. You can taste the ginger. I'll reserve final judgement until later next week.

We will rack the Super Bee to the secondary this week for sure. We want to make sure the fermentation is at least 95% completed. Shawn said that sometimes with honey - it can be sneaky. You think it's done, but its really not. In that case it would leave the beer sweet - more like malty honey juice than actual beer.

New Company Logo Unveiled!

Many thanks to my friend Pete for his winning design. As advertised, Pete will get free beer for life. My sister, Heather, also contributed some design ideas. Thanks for all your support. Pete also made some 2nd generation label designs too. I will release those at some point in the future.