The Blizzard of 08 is done!

We had a nice Christmas break with 12 inches of snow falling in the Beaverton area. This is considered a TON around here. We all survived - although some co workers had a tree fall on his house and another guy had a branch break through his wind shield while he was driving!

Shawn transferred Ms. Sally to the secondary fermentation on Sunday. Now we wait 4 weeks. Then we bottle - should be on track for middle of February!

Mustang Sally Fermenting

We spent Sunday afternoon in the usual brewing-day fashion - brewing good beer, drinking good beer, watching Ravens football on a plasma TV, and grillin' steaks. Does it get any better? I don't think it does.

Mustang Sally went into the primary as thick as molasses. She's blub-blubbin' as I write this. We've got a monster on our hands, here. We'll need to be real patient for Sally, as she's going to take longer than her pale brothers to deliver her goodness. We gotta slow that Mustang down.

But when she's ready, oh man, she's gonna treat us right. Hey, make your own jokes, friends!

Expect Mustang Sally Imperial Stout to be ready to drink in 6 to 8 weeks. Expect a chocolately goodness you simply won't find in a commercial beer. Expect something amazing.

-S, very much jealous of that Russian River field trip

Happy Holidays!

For Thanksgiving, Jenn and I drove down to Northern California/San Francisco area. We had a great time. While in SF, we visited with a friend - thanks Paula!!!! - saw the Golden Gate bridge, went to Chinatown, and rode a trolley all in one day!

We also stayed in Santa Rosa, CA - home to one of the best breweries in the country - Russian River! We had a great time there. The pub was pretty cool and the people were friendly. We brought back a bunch of shirts, glasses, and beer! Go Pliny!

In order to survive the winter months here in the rainy Northwest - Shawn and I are going to brew an Imperial Stout. Mustang Sally Super Stout will begin this afternoon. At 10% ABV- this monster beer should be awesome and will definitely keep us warm!

Super Bee Wheat review - plus other news

The president of my company gave Super Bee Wheat a pretty good review. He really liked it and wanted more! He said it was a great beer to eat pizza with!

In other news, Jabba the Hop is in Shawn's fridge and should be ready by now. He is away until the middle of November, so we'll have to wait to try it.

I got a new beer book for my birthday that has some awesome recipes in it. My next beer will be an Imperial Stout. The book also had a recipe for a Double IPA from the brewer that makes Pliny - so we will definitely make that sometime!

Jabba the Hop

We bottled Roid Rage 2.0 yesterday -which I am going to call Jabba the Hop. There are a lot of cool label ideas that we can do with that one.

The smell and taste of the beer was really awesome. Super fruity and really good. This will be the best beer so far!

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