TastyBrew.com | User Journal

By Tom Fries on Jul 1st 2005, 3:29 am	Permalink
Hey Matt, Ya never know..... I was adopted at birth..... I have a few more brewing "events" I'll tell you about over a beer sometime.

By Tom Fries on Jun 27th 2005, 5:26 pm

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Had a little bit of success, a little bit of failure and a bit of frustration over the weekend.

The success; Tapped a very nice IPA and Pilsner. The Pilsner is crystal clear. It used the Moravian Pilsner malt and Wyeast 2002 Gambrinus yeast. The IPA is CJ's JPA recipe from the green board

The failure; Tapped a Weizenbock that is just awful. It is really sour. I think that the ferm temp got too high. It might be a dumper.

The frustration; Brewed two batches yesterday. A California Common and Rob's Mogul Madness clone. The Moguloid turned out fine. Things were going well with the Common until one of my immersion chillers sprung a leak. I did not notice it until it had filled the pot back up to 7.5 gals. So I scooped out the hops and fired the burner back up. Another hour boil. Then when it came time to pitch the yeast, I accidently pitched the 1050 Mougaloid starter into the Common. Grrrrr. Luckly I had a nice jar of CL-50 that I ended up using for the Moguloid.

By Tom Fries on May 11th 2005, 6:31 am	Permalink
Well, we are back from our trip to Eugene. 1570 miles, 45 gallons of gas, 3 gallons of beer and about 12 new friends. We had a great time meeting all the Eugene brewers at Denny's for the Big Brew. We are already planning our next trip there. It will probably be around the end of June. Hope you get some sunshine soon.

By Tom Fries on Mar 21st 2005, 7:03 pm

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On our way home from a weekend trip in the wine country, we stopped off at the Russian River Brewery in Santa Rosa. Sunday is a good day to stop there as it is happy hour all day, $2.50 for pints. We brought along our growler for a refill of Pliny the Elder. With lunch, Teri had their Damnation which is a pleasant Belgian style Strong Golden Ale. On tap this visit was Pliny the Younger. It is described as a Triple IPA. The specs on this are an OG of 1.098 and an ABV of 11%. IBU's were listed as "Gobs". It was too hoppy for Teri, but I found it quite nice. You do not ever realize that you are drinking an 11% beer. I was tempted to fill the growler with the Younger, but stayed with the more sane 7% 100 IBU Elder.

By Tom Fries on Mar 1st 2005, 7:38 pm

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Back now from a two week vacation. Lot's to catch up on both at home and on Tastybrew. Kegged up three batches last night. One was the RyeIPA. This was the inaugural batch in the conical I got for Christmas. I learned that I need to make the batch size about a half gallon larger then normal to compensate for losses. The RyeIPA very tasty. The other batches kegged were an Imperial Pilsner and a Bock. They were put into the beer fridge for lagering. I had to take out the Pilsner and Helles that were in there to make room. Both of those were half empty. Hum.... I was not going to tap those until summer... :/

I took the book Radical Brewing with me on the trip. It's an interesting read, although I caught myself dozing off several times while reading it while lounging by the pool.