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.

Back from Belize and at it again

Just got back from Belize; it was a great honeymoon and I think it is going to be hard to get back into the swing of things. Although yesterday, I put the previously fermenting On Golden Blonde ale and Bellamy Amber ale into kegs. They tasted great and I think the adjustment in the water chemistry really helped. Both of them are a little more complex tasting than usual.  Sounds highfalutin, eh?

I also brewed another one yesterday, Busted Wing IPA...in honor of Jeff and his recent shoulder surgery. I had to use Simcoe leaf hops instead of the pellets I planned on and I didn't like that. Those damn Simcoe pellets are hard to come by! Something went wrong and it boiled down too far in the kettle (or my sight glass was loose) and I had to chase with water into the fermentor to get the volume and correct OG. You can always taste when a beer has been diluted rather than brewed to the correct gravity. It came out more like a pale ale than an IPA. I was disappointed, but it may still be a nice drinker. We'll see, it is fermenting now. I was thinking about maybe dry hopping it with Citra or Cascade, what do you think? I have a solid IPA recipe and next time I will execute it correctly, promise. Might have to sub out the Simcoe for a more readily available pellet hop...I was thinking maybe Bravo...not sure though. Maybe I was just out of whack coming back from vacation or maybe it was because my co-brewer was laid up. I'll let you know how it tastes when it finishes up next weekend!

Toured the Belikin Brewery right before we flew out of Belize. It's amazing to me that there is ONE brewery for the entire country...we're spoiled. The beer is your typical Central American fare...nothing spectacular, but a nice beach beer. By the way, the tour was a rip-off, $15 and 10 minutes long. Although, you did get all the beer you could drink in an hour...I tried to make my money back.

And Then There Were None

Yes, I knew this day would come. The taps runneth dry, my friends. On the same day that Jeff and I brewed two new beers, the last two on tap kicked. The brew day went great and was actually really easy to mash the second beer while the first was in the boil kettle. We brewed an Amber and a Blonde. I was happy how smoothly the day went considering I was up until 2:30 am the night before rewriting recipes and trying to get my brewery controller to work...whoops. I guess I should back up files before I update software. We fooled around a lot yesterday with water chemistry and we added some salts that I think will give the beers a little more complexity. Well, I'm off on our belated honeymoon to Belize tomorrow, so I'll let these beers bubble until I get back!

No beers on the board! Though, two new ones bubble away...