Brewing Day!!

Thomas and I brewed 10 gallons of witbier in 2 batches and I put my ESB in a keg this afternoon. The witbier recipe was a partial mash. We modeled 5 gallon like a traditional witbier with hints of coriander and orange and made the other 5 gallons as a basic wheat base for a Lambic style that we are going to add fresh raspberries in the secondary. I'm hoping the one of the two is a high enough caliber to enter into the fall brewing competition. I used iBrewmaster to to figure and track my recipes,  I just  can't say enough about how much I love that iPad app...

Our next project is making a mash tun and adding a ball valve and thermometer to the brew kettle. Then I should be all set to brew all grain! I'm very excited about this!!

A New Brewers Ball Game

This weekend marks a lot of new advances in my brewing system. I'm upgrading my brew kettle to a 7 gallon from a 3. I'm moving from electric to gas for my brewing. AND I'm kegging my first beer this weekend. We are going to brew 5 gallons of Belgium Whitbier and then, take out a few ingredients and tweak a few others and make the same recipe for 5 gallons of a Lambic style beer. Basically the idea is to take the same base recipe and make two totally different beers out of it. Besides the 18 websites that I dug info out of , I basically wrote down all the specs of both and started poking around. I used iBrewMaster to take all the info I had collected and organize it into a recipe that looked  like what we were shooting at!! Sunday will be a big day for us!! As you can see by the picture its about time to get some going!!!

talk to you all again soon!!
Keeton\


Many cool new pics to follow....

IBallz to the Rescue!

Beer, baseball, and technology are pretty much my life. Granted there's a little more to me than that but... And they all go pretty well together, I can watch a game while taking notes on my iPad and enjoying a frosty beverage. The only problem I've ran into with my iPad has been in transportation. I have been known to be pretty hard on my gadgets so I'm always looking for the best way to protect my little investments from, well, myself. I also use the iPad for brewing and keeping all my brewing information with iBrewMaster. So being that the iPad goes with me everywhere, my picking of a proper case was extremely important. After being totally unsatisfied with three cases I have purchased over the past 6 months, I ran across the iBallz page. It looked to solve some of the issues that I was having with the other cases I didn't like. I think what really sold me was the modular feel of it. You can use just the "ballz" to protect the edges and incase of dropping or spillage around it (very handy when brewing). Then for an extra layer of protection they sell cases that work with the ballz and are made to where there's no fumbling and taking everything apart just to use it. I was extremely impressed of the quality of the case. It far exceeded any other case I have purchased at a fraction of the price. If you have an iPad you really need to try this system. The picture above was from the coffee house yesterday with the iLid case folded behind it. And I just went to the website and they have everything on the site on sale which means everyone I know will be getting them for Christmas. Great job of a high quality product at a very reasonable price.

Discovery's New TV Show, Brew Masters

On November 21 2010, the season premier of Brew Masters series premiere, Host Sam Calagione, head of Dogfish Head, takes fans around the world looking for the right ingredients and recipes. His book, "Extreme Brewing" teaches you to not fear taking a chance on something different. I highly recommend the book and look forward to the show!

A random Hello!

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology thanks for stopping by! I have always wanted to visit Hong Kong, a fascinating place! I hope you found what you were looking for on my blog, if not, and you want to fly me over to Hong Kong,  I'll be happy to meet with you!

The Brew Is Brewed

My Winter Snowman Ale is Brewed and fermenting as we speak. Mainly Light and Amber malt was used along with some Chocolate and Belgium grains. I steeped the grains for about 15 minutes longer than the recipe called for. It boiled for an hour, Irish Moss was added at 15 Min left and Spices (Cinnamon, allspice, and ginger) were added at 5 Min left.  Original Gravity was 1.080 on the dot and 24 hours after pitching the yeast, I can barley keep the trap full. It's blown twice tonight. I'm going to to let it run dry and give it a week after racked with some new sugar just to kick it a little and then bottle it. On Monday I'll have all the brew numbers plugged into my iBrewMaster App and be able to post all the specs on the brew.   I'll update this as I work the brew.

I also racked both Mead brews and the Cider. Both Meads were given another 1.5 pounds of clover honey  and the 3 gallons of cider got half a pound of brown sugar. All three are chirping along and loving the now sugar.

New Toys for Brewers!

for $8.99 I just started playing with the new iBrewMaster iPad Edition 1.4. I haven't played with all the toys on it yet but From what I have found so far is it's a 4 out of 5 stars in my book. if you have an iPad and you brew, you'll enjoy parts of this program, or at least 9 bucks worth of it. I'll post pics later once I can show how it figures out all your calculations.