Radio Silence....

So its been a while, I've been busy just a crazy start to the year.  So I moved, made settlement on February 29th.
My last brew session at the old place was a Wee Heavy for a club project to fill a Heaven Hill bourbon barrel. It was also a chance for a lot of us to play with some Golden Promise malt.  From dry grain through fermentation that beer smelled awesome, huge bready nutty aromas, it was too hard to not eat some of the mash, it was pretty impressive.  I hated giving the beer away to have to wait for it.  I'll be waiting very patiently for that beer to be out of the barrel...VERY PATIENTLY.

New brew space(for now)

I finally unpacked the brew gear.  I threw this quick beer on on the 12th, Pete's Brown Porter, named after the guy who's recipe it was(except the hop additions that's me).  His beer placed pretty well in a local competition and tasted great, so I wanted to get something along that line into the fermenter.  The water around here is pretty loaded with chloramines, so some campden tablets cleared that up pretty well.  Of course I didn't have everything I needed to brew, no DME for a starter so a little under pitched, but fermentation went nuts even at the lower temperature.

Brown porter runnings

Finally made the call on when to bottle my 'Old Brown'(a play on Oud Bruin), Southern English Brown Ale that has been sitting with Brett. C. since 10/15/2010.  I figure 18 months should be long enough, so Sunday that beer will go into a bottle, I'm planning on priming with some apple blossom honey...we'll see if that makes any real difference.  I was talked into cracking the bung on the carboy when I was moving, the aromas coming off that beer are awesome.

My Berliner experiment, I'd call it more lambic-like at this point, is still moving along, I took a small taste tonight and its puckeringly sour and has a great Bretty aroma.  I've decided to feed it some cherries then age a bit of oak just before bottling.

And of course, with a new space comes new hop plants.  I actually got 3 plants from a club-mate.  I have cascade, nugget and sterling in the ground now.  I decided since its my space I could get a little more permanent with my hop structure.  I have two 'T' posts built from 12 foot 4x4 posts and 8 foot 2x4 cross beams.  They weight a ton.  I sunk them two feet down and still felt like they were a bit tall so I cut them down by 1 more foot, so they are 9 feet tall by 8 feet wide.  I haven't tied my lines on them yet, but the plants aren't all that big(yet).  The old plants are still in the ground at my old place and growing well, apparently they are almost 2 feet tall already(crazy weather helps).  I'll let those continue as long as I can keep them there; everyone like the vines and the smell of the cones, besides they are a hell a of a plant to kill.