A friend of mine who works for a distributor brought me a bottle of this stuff:

Tried it last week and enjoyed it. It was similar to a well-done lager style. Not usually my thing, but it just hit me right at the time.

Batch #5, a Pale Ale.


5 pounds of grains in the minimash.



Sparging the grains. Needed several gallons of 168F water, had to use one big pot and a tea kettle. Need a better setup. Prometheus, please help me here, we need to talk about mashing and sparging.



For the boil, I added everything (crystal 80, flaked barley, and all the hop additions) via the grain bag. Wort came out MUCH cleaner this way, should've been doing this all along. Brought it inside, twisted the ball to get it to drain out, then put all the spent hops and grains in the compost (dog proof, I know about the dogs-and-hops thing). The kettle gets surrounded by water and everything frozen I can find, including a bizarre half-bottle of coke. Where in the fuck did that come from and why is it in my freezer? It's got frozen mass, so in it went. Still haven't committed to a wort chiller yet.

I only do extract brewing in my apartment, no partial mash or all grain brewing, so I wouldn't be a whole lot of help.
Beersmith and other sites advise folks to use an insulated picnic cooler and an additional 2 to 3 gallon brewing kettle to do the partial mash.

I would like to get a wort chiller as soon as possible, but for now I use the ice bath system and ice blocks of preboiled water from fully sanitzed tupperware containers to chill my beer. I was told the ice blocks would be a safe way to chill my beer and add the extra water I needed to fill a five gallon fermentation bucket before I pitched yeast. I don't usually use a grain bag for my pellet hop, unless I am dry hopping a beer.

I read a tip to use a 3-gallon nested inside the 7 gallon, both on the stove top for the partial mash. The water in the 7 gallon heats the 3 gallon and its water, and insulates it from temperature swings. The advantage with that setup is that I could actually use a 3 gal steel pot for cooking sometimes, but I do not want or need a gigantic GOTT little league cooler.

Playing around with the new camera last night, I shot the last of my Wisconsin stash as I drank it on the couch. There was one lamp on, ten feet behind me, that has a single compact flourescent bulb in it, plus the tv light. Handheld (obviously) and in macro mode, it still came out really clear, I think. Very, very impressed with this camera. I need to horse around with it like this on unimportant shit so I know what to do when it matters more.

ATTN: YAIL BLOOR

Went by Hop City today and lo and behold, they now carry Green Flash beers and they also told me that Boulevard will be coming in the next 2 weeks. All their regulars and the Smokestack series stuff.

I picked up:

Bomber of Green Flash West Coast IPA
Bomber of Green Flash Le Freak
Sixer of Avery IPA (upon your rec)

Awww, man. Ripping up through Boulevard's offerings is gonna be a great month for you. Such a deep bench.

i picked a bottle of this the other day. i would've liked to have gotten a case with the recipes and vinyl but didn't wanna go that all in on something i hadn't tasted before.

I've had them before and liked them a lot. I have too many stouts, wild ales, and DIPAs and not enough lighter, sessionable beers for summer drinking. I've been trying to rebalance the supply lately and thought they'd fit the bill nicely.



To Øl "Sleep Over" Coffee Imperial IPA, Denmark 330ml, 10.5% ABV - $6.99

This is a collaboration between To Øl and Mikkeller. It is essentially their earlier collab, "Overall IIPA" with nutty aromatic espresso coffee added. Kind a hybrid between a DIPA, Black IPA, American strong and Barley Wine. Not bad and the expresso was interesting but not overpowering but don't think I'd buy it again for $6.99 for a 330ml. There just wasn't really any wow factor. I'm probably a tough critic for any DIPA or DIPA hybrid right now because I've been trying to drink down my stock of Pliny and Blind Pig so those are probably 2/3 of the beers I've been drinking over the last couple of weeks.

Yeah that's a tough act to follow

so gross.

Oh snap, I was just in there today to (finally) return the Oberon keg/tap from y'alls party. I grabbed a six of Smuttynose IPA, a couple of gluten free offerings for my chick and made a mental note that all the 12 pack cans (Brooklyn Summer, IPA, Lager; Harpoon Summer & IPA) are $14.99. I'm going to the beach soon and this is good information.

I gotta say, I wasn't really a big fan of Boulevard's The Sixth Glass I picked up in Birmingham. Looking forward to checking out the Smokestack series.

http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/new-belgiu ... er/175089/

I went to a tapping party for this last night and got some more New Belgium Swag. I wasn't really impressed with the beer. The high heat and humidity may have had something to do with it going down slow, but I was hoping for something a bit more funky. It was a disappointment to say the least, especially when we get so few Lost Abbey beers to try here to make a proper review of the collaboration.

As for tonight, I tried this beer:
Upstream Brewing Company Brewer's Whim series
Brewery description: "Till the Break of Dawn Saison is named after and dedicated to the late beer enthusiast and musician Adam Yauch also known to fans as MCA. This Saison is delicately spiced with Lemon Grass, Lemon Verbena, and Rose Hips. Another addition to the unique flavor of this fabulous product is the special Upstream Brewing Company’s proprietary yeast strain that’s blend was custom developed by the Brewing Science Institute under the direction of Brewmaster Michael Hall. I hope you enjoy the unique creativity of this fabulous seasonal beer."

It was better than the last beer I tried from Upstream, and quite tasty. I thought the spices were a nice touch, and added just enough zest.

if by "nice" you mean "expensive"
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/130875

The hipsters are going to love this new beer from Rogue

Anyone have any recommendations for decent gluten frees other than cap'n's homebrews?

I've had them all, pretty much. I'll go look at what's out there and report back shortly, but Green's from Belgium is generally the best.

My quick thoughts on the ones I've had:

Redbridge: Tastes even worse than bud. Easy to find but not good.
Bard's: Probably the most "normal" of the cheaper lighter tasting ones. A good effort and not offensive, also easy to find.
New Grist: Not good, not as bad as redbridge but still not good. Wife hates it.
New Planet: They make 3 I think, a raspberry, a pale, and an amber. Raspberry was off-puttingly sweet and fruity, the pale had some hops so it was probably the most decent of the 3, and the amber was just thin and boring to the point of not being likeable. All of these are by normal standards very thin, light bodied beers.
Estrella Daura: This is pretty good, because it's made with barley and then they break down the gluten chains with an enzymatic process. It costs a lot, but it tastes exactly like a refreshing euro lager, because it actually is. Barley flavor can't really be faked very well.
St peter's Sorghum Beer: This is the green glass medicine bottle one. Disappointing thin and boring, for the price. better than swill but still not that good. Not worth the money, for sure.
Dogfish Head, Tweason Ale: As has been said here, it's thin and watery and tastes like strawberries. Really a let down.

____________

And then there's Green's. They have 3 varieties, and all of them are better than anything above, by a landslide. All three are pretty close to tasting like a decent belgian beer, but are not made with barley. I don't know what they're doing, but the style is suited for gluten free brau... yeast and sugar-derived alcohol and old world hops are so much of the total pallate that the missing barley isn't a huge problem.

Oh and the Alchemist in VT (makers of Heady Topper) apprently make cans of something gluten free now, and there's even a store in downtown Boston that got some. Haven't gotten it yet, need to.

I think things are going to get a lot more interesting for glutards in the next 3 years, beer-wise. More breweries are trying to make somethig that isn't a shitty also-ran, and then that new enzyme process that breaks the gluten down should get more affordable. I would fucking LOVE to be able to use it, if they sold to regular people. Make whatever you want, treat it, then ferment. Bang. Real beer, no reaction.

Thanks Cap'n...Have you or FIRSK MAKG had any of the Greens ones listed here:

http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2012/03/the-best-and-worst-gluten-free-beers.html

I saw a few of them in my neighborhood beer store but they were $7-8 each which I was reluctant to spend without knowing if they were even decent. I've bought New Grist, Bards and Reddbridge before for a friend who was visiting and had the leftovers. I thought they were an ok substitute for a bud/coors/miller but not really a substitute for a good craft beer. Don't know whether such a thing really exists or not. I've seen Estrella Daura before and didn't even realize it was a gluten free. Maybe I'll pick that up for Fem G to try.

We've had all three of those Green's, and they got them in the right order. The dark is First Mate's favorite as well. If you're going to buy one, buy that one. But they're all pretty good, and much much better than everything else I've had.

Estrella can't put "gluten free" on the US export packaging because the FDA forbids anything made with gluten containing ingredients to labeled gluten free, even if it is, in fact, gluten free. Confused the shit out of me until I read that. In the EU that same beer's label says gluten free.

Also that article lists Green's as coming from the UK, which is odd, because we saw their old brewery in Brugge and they were building a new one just outside town...? I am confused.

Three posts up.

Also, Widmer Brothers are making low gluten beers like that Estrella.

http://mobile.drinks.seriouseats.com/20 ... -beer.html

Ok, so Clarex then. Interesting. Again, we're just a few years away from soem sort of home brewable magic solution, I hope.

Fem Bloor asked me to grab her a couple of gluten free things since she has been experimenting with all that. Kraig from Hop City suggested the Estrella as a solid drinker (I was already looking over the Green's). I asked which of the Green's to get and he suggested the Amber based on the question, "How does she like her coffee?"

She liked it. Hasn't tried the Estrella yet but did try the Budweiser one when we out Saturday. We both hated it.

Also found out that a store selling growlers is opening here soon. About fucking time.