Congratulations to Ernesto and Pam!!!

A great couple, and great friends.

Inspired by a BYO magazine recipe for a Mountain Dew Beer, I made this for their wedding. Ernesto is a Mountain Dew drinker, you see.

I was honored to not only brew, but to make ribs and also officiate the ceremony.

3 gallons Mountain Dew poured into fermenter

boiled:

2.5 gallons water

4lbs. Munton's light DME

1/2 oz. Cascade 45 min.

1/2 oz. Cascade 10 min.

pitched:

Safale 05





It was a love/hate reception. About a third of those who tried it hated it immediately and the other two-thirds said it was really interesting and then proceeded to empty the keg.

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Mead Day 2008

2 August 2008

H.A.M.S. club held our part of National Mead Day at Rasher Tierney's.

The other mead guys, John and Jim, tend to be more traditional than I: they usually heat or even boil their must. They were heading up our Mead Day, so that's what we did.

I did not intentionally overexpose the photos, but it does kind of give the feeling of HOTNESS. It was a very blistery day. I really like mead, it's my favorite, so I'm going to suggest we do two club Mead Days: one on the standard 1st Saturday of August and another in February. We can do a no-heat mead indoors in August and a heat or boil mead outdoors in February. Florida brewing is necessarily different from most of the rest of the country due to our climate.


John brought this commercial bottle of "Orange Blossom Honey Wine". It was pretty well colorless and tasted like a simple syrup. He and Jim and I all brought some of our own and they were better by far!
The owner of Rasher Tierney's is a really good guy. He accomodates our somewhat rowdy group really well.

Misty and John passed out samples of our meads. They were well recieved and allowed us to evangelize about this, the greatest and most ancient of adult beverages.
Here's a blueberry melomel (melomel means a honey-wine with fruit added) I was working on just before mead day. It was not quite ready for mead day, but I cold-crashed the yeast out of a bottle's worth and then topped up with citrus wine. I'm happy to say that just about everyone liked it:

May or June 2001, in black and white

Shortly after Devin came home from the hospital:

Possibly the best photo I took with our "original" Canon Elph APS camera (even though my focus is off a touch).

Very handy little camera, but it was quickly overtaken by digital technology.

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Twins (unindentical)

Though you can't tell in the picture, these wines were nicely cleared up. They are the 2nd annual citrus wines put together in January. The one on the left was aged on orange blossoms from my pruning at the spring equinox. The floral aroma is overpowering even though, as you see, there isn't really that much in the way of flowers in the jug- maybe an inch in the bottom of the gallon. I have since bottled some for later and split the remainder into four containers: two left as they are here, and two of each of the same with oven-kilned orange wood in them.

As I said, the floral aroma was very strong so I am considering blending what I bottled of that one into an orange blossom mead when it's ready to bottle, just for a little extra varietal character.

As the orange wood was drying the smell was very sweet and almost honey-like. I can't wait to see what they age into.



Fermented and aged from New Year's Day to the Vernal Equinox; split between flower and no flower until the Summer Solstice; split between flower, no flower, flower with wood, and no flower with wood. To age until the Autumn Equinox and be bottled for tasting around the next new year.

but... I read.... to my kids... but nobody gives me beer for it...

Free beer for men who read
7:00AM Friday August 01, 2008
Organisers of New Zealand Book Month are offering free beer to try to entice blokes to read books.
To promote reading as a "manly" activity, organisers have invited fathers and their sons to an evening of male bonding over sports, adventure and literature.
When they arrive at the venue, the Auckland Town Hall, the guests will also get a free beer - but only if they produce identification.
The evening, entitled A Word in his Ear, will be held on Friday September 5.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10524694

I can't get the beer (damnit!) for reading, as we're in the wrong country, but most recently we've been reading "the Children of Odin". I ordered it online with gift cards, thanks, Mom!

1994 doesn't seem so long ago, really...

I was in a photography class when Misty and I met. This print was a composite of two negatives: one photo I took of a bear at the St. Louis Zoo and one she took of me leaning in the car window. It struck me one day that we were in the same pose, the bear and I, so I thought I'd play around a little. I liked it, how 'bout you?

All Grain II update III

You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get a good picture through the glass with a bunch of condensate and kreusen all over the inside of it. This is what it looks like tonight:

Anyway, it looks like it's turning into beer at this point. At the pub social, it was theorized that perhaps the dry hops' antibacterial properties managed to keep whatever the weird stuff was from taking control. Sounds good to me. So the photo is through a clear spot in the wall of the glass surrounded by kreusen and is still a little out of focus, but in the middle on the left side you can see the nice bready yeasty normal thing happening.

Here's another photo attempt from earlier today:

White Balance

This will teach me to learn what the heck I'm doing before I do it, huh? I had the white balance set for the incandescent lights we were under, but I used the flash (hiding it behind a piece of paper to keep the glare down).



I went with a few fellow H.A.M.S. club members to a pub social at Sarasota Brewing Company. It was a pretty cool place. Not too much going on, a few families eating dinner together and a few patrons sitting at the bar. Then there were the beer geeks in the corner. I mean us.

I swear they didn't have blue beer. Stupid "white balance".

a pint of Maibok:

There seemed to be a distinct lack of head on the beers in general. We couldn't pinpoint why. The Maibok did lace the glass, though.

My tasting notes:
I really liked the Maibok the most even though it was a bit hoppier than I expected. Overall Vince (the brewer and I believe to be a fellow H.A.M.S. member) did a great job making big and well recieved batches of beer. I passed around my sampler of Sunset Red for everyone to try because I thought maybe something was wrong with it. Apparently all that was wrong is that I just didn't have an appreciation of the style (I don't really care for that style) because even though not everyone who tried it liked it nobody thought there was anything wrong with it. Anyway, that one aside, I was really impressed. As you'll see if you click on my notes to enlarge them, I thought they did a great job describing their beers. I tasted each before reading the descriptions and was kind of at a loss when it came to writing notes because much of what I noticed was already typed up for me.

All Grain II update II

Sorry about the quality of this picture, but it turned out to be the best of the lot from last night. There's a bit of condensation on the inside of the carboy and that proved difficult to work around.

Still odd looking, but not quite as weird.

All Grain II (update w/pic)

That potentially wild-yeasted beer:
This is what it looked like prior to racking. I tasted it and noticed nothing out of the ordinary. We shall see.

Sunday started by looking like this: (sorry, I realize looking at the picture now that we need to wash the van)




And ended like this: (on the ride home)

With all this in between:

Some of Misty's relatives from Indiana were in town- Anna Maria Island to be more specific, so we went out to visit.

This poor umbrella just had the hardest time staying upright:

Pelican:

Self-portrait: (I'm not in the sand because I was seeking the shade after my Independence Day sunburn)

Kevin: (16 and cool)

See, the hardest time:

Lindy's pic-a-nic blanket:

Our poor sunburnt Devin, playing 'neath the umbrella:

Zack, Trey, Nick, and Kevin (left to right): (it's been a few years since they all saw each other, but they hung out on the beach and played "ladderball" like a bunch of guys hanging out at the beach)
I was not able to to get any good pictures of Lauren as she stayed out and under-water most of the afternoon.