Updates, German Party and Mental Health Awareness.

Hello! It's been a while.

The reason I haven't been updating is because my friend took his grain mill, leaving me with a lot of grain and no way to mill it. I've also been pretty busy with work stuff, I'm waiting for some money so I can buy a new mill! I have a lot of good brewing ideas that I want to try, so hopefully in the coming weeks you will hear a lot more from me.

We did the German-Bratwurst-Beer-Party thing, it was a lot of fun. I had the two kegs of beer that I made in the last posts: German Smoked Ale, and the Dunkel. Both of them turned out great, but the winner was definitely the Dunkel. As my first lager ever I did not expect much, but damn it tasted good. Subtle vanilla, toffee and bread. Being poured at room temperature gave it this amazing soft mouthfeel, and it had a dark amber colour. It was incredible. The smoke ale was pretty nice, but predictable. Super smoky and hoppy, really nice.

Here are some pictures of the night!

This is the Soup that I made: Graupensuppe, a traditional German barley soup. I made the base soup vegetarian to cater for the vegie friends I have. We baked a bunch of brats to put on top of the meat eaters bowls. It was delicious.

Here are the kegs, pretty simple gravity fed faux cask setup. I primed the kegs and let them naturally carb over a few weeks. I also swapped the inlet and outlet dip tubes so that I could pump small amounts of c02 into the air bubble at the end of the keg to avoid oxidization, and a small dip tube for the outlet. It worked alright, next time I probably wont bother with the c02 chargers and just let oxygen in, we finished the kegs off so it wouldn't have had any effect on the beer.

The first pour of the smoke beer was pretty cloudy. It had much more sediment than the Dunkel because of fermenting temps and hop amounts.

We still drank it though.

The Dunkel... Ahh the Dunkel. What a beer. It was really, really good. Completely clear, ruby red, and tasted like vanilla beans on buttered bread.

Here are some pictures of people enjoying themselves:

And here's some photos I found the next day:

All in all, it was a great night, everyone had fun, got drunk and had full stomachs. Success!

And finally, it is mental health awareness week. As someone with first hand experience to what drugs can do to someone's life, please drink in moderation, as much as I feel like I am promoting it. Making beer is fun, share it with people, but if you feel like it is getting the better of someone, talk to them. And if you feel like it is getting the better of you, let someone know.

Cheers,

Oscar

Build up to the biggest brew day of my life.

In the next couple of weeks, i am going to undertake some crazy, crazy brewing things.

Here's the plan:

I'm going to host a German sausage fest at my house, we are going to source some awesome kransky and bratwurst, probably smoke them and eat them with home made sauerkraut. To go along with these, i am going to make 2 beers, a Rauch-Ale and a Munich Dunkel Kellerbier, inspired by this recipe from the golden days of Brewing TV.

Both beers i am going to use the decoction method to brew, the Rauch-Ale will be single decoction with a mash out and the Dunkel will be TRIPLE DECOCTION.

Not only am i completely terrified of decoctions, i am completely terrified of decoctions.

The other thing is that i will be serving them in corny kegs which i am converting to casks. They will be cask conditioned, low carbonation, and served at ambient winter temps.

And lastly, i will be getting my brother, who works as a video technician for Penguin Books to be filming the whole thing, with detailed instructions on how to do everything (including how to make sauerkraut!).

So stay tuned, this is going to be fun.