American Craft Beer Week!!!!!!!!

Who's ready for American Craft Beer Week? Another great video put out by CraftBeer.com and the Brewers Association. Get out there and visit your favorite craft brewery and bring a friend who has never been! Best week of the year...besides Christmas week. 

Labels?

I designed some labels to put on the beer that we give to friends and strangers! This way, we can hopefully start getting some honest and sometimes anonymous feedback. Friends' feedback is great, but as we all know, sometimes they sugarcoat their reviews. I am of the philosophy that compliments on the beers are good, but criticism is great. If you haven't noticed, there is a link on the sidebar of the blog where you can review the beers that you have imbibed from Lowell Brewing Co. I figured this is a good way to improve on the beers we make!

On a another note, the two Busted Wing IPAs were put into kegs on Monday and they should be ready to drink in a week or so. They both were reasonably tasty right out of the fermentor and I'm excited to see how they taste after a little bit of conditioning and carbonation. For now, On Golden Blonde and Bellamy Amber are pouring nicely and my parents are enjoying both of them...success! 

2nd crack at Busted Wing IPA

The man behind the name, Jeff. He's still brewing with me in whatever capacity he can. Here he helps out putting chilled, oxygenated wort into the fermentor.  It's amazing how much it helps to have another brewer to brew with!

My last attempt at the Busted Wing IPA didn't turn out so well so I tried it again a week later. I made this one with Magnum, Centennial, Bravo, and Cascade hops. I got rid of the Simcoe because it's not going to be a pellet hop that I can get all the time. It smelled and tasted good going into the fermentor! I also backed off the medium crystal malts and added a little more light crystal...the color on the last one was a little darker than I would have preferred. OG was around 1.072. I am in Seattle now, but when I get back, I should be able to see how it turned out. As far as the last batch of Busted Wing goes, I dry-hopped it with Citra hops before I left and that one will go into the keg on Monday along with Busted Wing II! think it will actually be a good IPA, not a pale ale, as I thought. The citra hops will give it a nice orange/lemon nose. The taps will then be full once again after this! This time, I really want to have a little party to serve the beer and maybe some good meat thrown in the smoker.