Coming soon to Counterbrew

So this is an exciting week at Counterbrew.   John and Beth had a beautiful healthy baby girl who they named... "Hoppy Mash Paddle"... just kidding this is a public blog, did you really think I would give out the child's name. Despite my best efforts, they did not name her "David, Jake, Mark Anthony".  So the writing and the editing is down a little bit this week, hope you all can cut us some slack.

In the brewery.

The KBS clone has been transferred to secondary on oak chips that were soaked in quality bourbon. This beer should be amazing.  Really looking forward to enjoying it by a fire place with snow falling out side.

The golden boy sour - remember the disaster batch from over a year ago?  Well it got hit with brettanomyces dregs from Boulevard Love Child series - it is ready for bottling.  The problem is we need to make a new wort to put on top of it, and life is crazy right now.   I may see if MA can brew on Sunday afternoon. Then we'll just bottle and pitch sometime next week.   We may make a simple partial mash.  (OK we are brewing a celebration batch next weekend.  While we do that I will brew a wort to go on top of the sour. Just a simple heavy adjunct wort with lots of corn and oats to give the brett something to work on over the next 6 months)

The Saison Brett is not quite ready yet - but it is getting close.   We are monitoring it and tasting.  At this point we are just waiting for that perfect flavor to develop.

Mark Anthony was a trooper last night.  He took the time to clean the brewery, and divide up the spoils of brewing.   Here is what we all got from recent brewing activities.

4 bombers each of Bourbon Barrel Quad
6 12 ounce Festbiers
3 bombers, 5 bottles of standard BDSA
10 pumpkin ales
6 bombers two hearted ale clones
4 bombers of  Karma Citra
7 grapefruit Sculpin clone

That is a lot of beer.  Just in time for the holidays.

Coming soon

Here is what is coming up for the blog.   First I am very excited to be doing an advanced series on Malt and mashing.  We will be joined by industry experts from Cargill to take a much deeper look at what makes malt taste the way malt tastes.  So many of you know so much about yeast and hops, but really next to nothing about the chemical composition of malt.  Does it matter?  You bet your mash tun it does.

We will also be doing two more episodes in the actual truth about yeast series with Kevin Lane of Fermentis.  The first one will be on maximizing attenuation, and the second on blending yeasts. Really exciting stuff.  So stay tuned.

We will also be getting back to brewing more beer.  There are some exciting developments on that as well, as we launch our new 10 Gallon BIAB Recirculating system.

So stay tuned, keep on brewing, and remember brewing is 45% Cleaning 45% learning, and 10% brewing.