Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Back in the saddle ???

OK, so some are disappointed that I have decided to not continue my blog. I didn't exactly say that merely that I may be taking a different approach to my blog. To be honest lately I've been focusing a lot on home-brewing and trying to learn how to play the guitar. I'm thinking however that my aspirations to be a rock star are quickly fading as I find that playing any instrument is just damn hard. That aside I am finding a new love for home-brewing and the natural step to things is to ramp up production. I found a good forum that has given me the courage to go "all grain" in my brewing techniques. For you non brewing savvy people there are a few ways that you can brew beer the technique that I have used for the last few years involves buying a sticky goo that looks a lot like molasseses (Malt extract) boiling this in water, adding hops, cooling, and finally pitching yeast into a vat of this stuff called "wort". While being a rather easy process it limits you in the recipes that you can produce (vastly more all grain recipes out there) and well I like challenges. After starting a thread called "To all grain or not to all grain?" on the home brew forum I quickly found out that maybe I have over reacted to the complexity of the "all grain" process. Home brewers all over the country were pretty admit about all grain being easy, cheaper, and allowing for a better tasting beer. I got a lot of replys from people that skipped the extract process all together and went straight into all grain from the get go, I also got a lot of ideas for new equipment that is both cheap and effective. Short of it is I'm going to give it a go. My last extract brew, hopefully, is currently in the fermenter (it's a coffee porter mmmmmm!!) and then it's off to all grain, I'll let you all know how it goes. Oh, one more thing bottling sucks, so I'm going the way of the keg, now all I need is a kegerator :).

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