Category: beer

  • Batch #6 bottled!

    Batch #6 is bottled! I wasn’t sure I’d have enough time to bottle tonight, but I knew I’d have enough time to wash three dozen bottles, so I filled up the sink with warm, soapy water, got the brush down from its hook and got wet. There’s no way to wash that many bottles without… Read.

  • L’chaim!

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    Tasting day! It’s Batch #5 and it’s one hell of a lot more bitter than I thought it would be. I knew the Northern Brewer hops I used were high alpha acid, but I thought that, if I boiled them for just a short time, the brew wouldn’t end up bitter. Wrong. Live and learn.… Read.

  • fridayfridayfriday

    I couldn’t wrangle a day off from work today so I had to spend Black Friday at the office. Oh, darn. Black Friday is the strangest holiday ever; everybody spends all day Thursday gushing about how they’re thankful for the things they have, and then on Friday they trample each other to get more things.… Read.

  • thanks

    Oh yay. Two batches of beer going at the same time: a Belgian abbey on the left and a stout on the right. The abbey is Batch #6, the slow-starter I was fretting over for two days until I finally got fermentation kickstarted by giving it a warm bath. Now it’s got a heating pad… Read.

  • bubbly batch

    Same batch, eight hours later: I kept thinking about the head of kreusen building on top of the wort as I was trying to read myself to sleep last night. Finally, I gave up, got out of bed and stuck the blow-off tube down the neck of the carboy. Good thing I did, because the… Read.

  • LIFE!

    LIFE, DO YOU HEAR ME! GIVE MY CREATION … LIIIIIFE! Last time I used this particular strain of yeast it took a little more than twenty-four hours for fermentation to kick in. This time it took almost fifty-four, and I had to baby it. I thought it might be too cold in the basement for… Read.

  • Batch #6

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    Batch #6 is brewed and put to bed. Now to wait for the good part. Read.

  • Batch #5

    Bottling Day! This is Batch #5, which I had hoped would be a less-hoppy beer than any of my previous brews — “less hoppy” meaning “a beer that My Darling B would drink.” I cut the amount of hops in half so the brew wouldn’t taste nearly as bitter as the previous batches, not counting… Read.

  • oatmeal

    Oh thank goodness there is no place like One Barrel Brewing on the street where I live, I mean, I would really like there to be a place like this. I would even like to pick this place up all in once piece and drop it right around the corner from where I live but,… Read.

  • Hinterland Bourbon Barrel Doppelbock

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    On the advice of a friend, I bought a couple bottles of Hinterland’s Bourbon Barrel Doppelbock. Good advice. Even at the price of six ninety-nine a bottle, I was glad I made the extra effort to find some. And speaking of effort: Hinterland gave each bottle a little hipster cachet by dipping the cap in… Read.

photo of the author and the author's best friend