Category: hobby
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Tower of hops
Riding my bike to work this morning, I spotted this towering pillar of hops growing in the community gardens just off Atwood Avenue. Some enterprising homebrewer is making the most of his garden plot! Wish I knew who he was so I could ask him how to tend a hop plant as successful as this… Read.
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brewing up an ESB
Another brewing day. This time I’m trying to brew an ESB, which stands for either extra-special bitter or extra-strong beer, depending on who you ask. I’m going to go with extra-strong, but only because I was careful to cut back on the bitterness. My Darling B doesn’t like bitter beers and I want her to… Read.
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splooey
This evening I found the batch of beer I brewed yesterday standing in a puddle of its own puke. Sometimes even beer itself has trouble keeping beer down. I’d loaded the beer – wannabe beer, really – into a great big glass bottle that should have had enough room in the neck to hold every… Read.
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PGGB?
Bottling Day! The second all-grain batch of beer is in bottles: six bombers and twenty pints, a respectable haul. Still not sure what to all this batch. I’m not very good with names. It’s the batch that was supposed to be Centennial Blonde ale but I forgot to halve the recipe, so it’s a little… Read.
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Centennial Blonde take two
Brewing Day! This will be my second try at brewing a light ale called Centennial Blonde. I brewed a batch of this about a week ago but forgot to halve the recipe (I was making a five-gallon batch versus the ten-gallon batch the recipe was written for), ending up with a powerfully strong soup that… Read.
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foamy
Monday night we went to a concert in the park and didn’t get home until around about nine-thirty, so I didn’t have time to work on my newest beer-making gadget until last night. Harmonious Wail came to Monona to play a free gig in the park. If you ever get the opportunity to see them,… Read.
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ferm chamber?
Cleaning crap out of the basement today, “crap” being stuff that I’ve been hanging on to because I thought it might come in handy one day. It becomes “crap” the day I trip over it or have to move it out of the way one too many times. Today, one of the items that became… Read.
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Centennial Blonde Ale
Brewing the last batch with the new brewing equipment went much more smoothly than the first time. If nothing else, I spilled a lot less beer, thanks to an afternoon I spent the weekend before with a guy named Charley. I watched him connect a hose from the mash tun to the pump, then connect… Read.
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brew day!
Guess what I brewed a batch of today? Still trying to figure out what I’m doing. The gadgets work fine, it’s the process I’m still trying to get hold of in my brain. I got nearly everything right today, except for one small mishap with the hose connections. What a mess that was. The one… Read.
This Is Drivel 