How I Brew
Finally got a section detailing How I Brew put up. It has details about all my proceedures for brewing and even has a sample data sheet for recording all my critical numbers. Hope this helps a lot of you out. I've had a LOT of questions and requests for something like this.

- posted by Jeff @ 2:15 PM

 
Rogue Brewery Visit
I just spent some time with my wife, Sarah, on the Oregon Coast for our 5th wedding anniversary. Much to my surprise, we were staying in Newport, Oregon. Yes, the SAME Newport that is home to Rogue Breweries!!!



Anyway, we stopped by for lunch and a tour, but the tours didn't start until 4PM, so we just had lunch. Still, it was VERY cool. You have to walk THROUGH the brewery to get to the gift shop and the bar area upstairs, where they have a good pub and some great tastings of the Rogue labels.

You would NEVER know it, driving by, but nestled in the old run-down building on the warf, is a great pub/eatery and some very good brew. The tastings were great. Can't say I particularly liked the chamomellow (made with chamomile flavoring) or the chipotle flavored brew, but Dead Guy is always good, and I really liked the flavor of the Shakespear Stout.
- posted by Jeff @ 8:08 PM

 
Black Butte Porter - 20 gallon
Well, I just got 92% efficiencies on my Black Butte Porter 20 gallon brew. I'm not sure if it is the concentrated 15 gallon mash (literally overflowing the mash tun as you heat it from 130'F to 155'F and the liquid expands) or if it is the new grain mill and the great crush I'm getting out of it, but the last two brews have been phenomenal on efficiencies.

I did 20 gallons on this, and am keeping 10 gallons. I'm going to try the old standby 1099 in one carboy and experiment with a drier 1318 London Ale III yeast for the other. I've had the 1318 in someone else's, and it was not too bad (certainly different). Oh, and my Moose Drool is almost GONE!
- posted by Jeff @ 9:46 PM

 
Plans...
One thing that I really liked on one of the pages that I saw, was sort of a step-by-step break down of how his brew day went (critical temps, what went where, etc). I think I'll try to add a Brew Proceedure page that just sort of shows how/what I do. May save me answering a lot of questions all the time in the emails I get.

Oh, and I'm almost out of Black Butte Porter. Seems like it has the PERFECT OG to make it be my next 20 gallon brew from a single mash session!

Jason also picked up 10 pin-lock Coke style corny kegs for $10 each last Friday, so I'm taking 2 of them and getting some quick flare pin-lock taps for them to potentially put in my fridge if I need to. That way Jason and I can swap kegs once in a while if we need to.
- posted by Jeff @ 7:41 AM

 
Smells like baking bread
It really adds up when 20 gallons of brew is bubbling away making alcohol. I love the smell of brewers yeast working away on that sweet nectar! I put in two blow off tubes on the most aggressively filled carboys. Looks like the worry over only pitching two 125mL XL Slap packs in 20 gallons is over. Things sure do take off well when you pitch in a well aerated wort. I've noticed my krausens go up significantly and my lag times drop a LOT ever since moving over to using pure O2 to aerate my wort inline on my CFC.




- posted by Jeff @ 7:56 PM