Beer blog round-up!
There are a lot of beer blogs. I seem to stumble upon a new one (or new to me, at least) every day now. However, as I’m sure a lot of you know, there are also a lot of mediocre beer blogs. That said, the following is a purely subjective list of MNB’s all-time beer blog favorites. If you enjoy our blog (and you do), chances are you’ll like these guys too.
My Beer Pix: A newer blog out of California. Great mix of wit and knowledge. This husband/wife team LOVES local beer.
Stonch’s Beer Blog: Who knew England could produce writers? Stonch’s editorial style is fun to read ? and he’s getting into some bootleg homebrewing. His growth as a blogger has been very entertaining to follow. Even when he’s discussing some little English pub that I have no prayer of visiting.
Rooftop Brew: I don’t know why this is one of my favorites, but it is. Topics are very interesting (they brew their own beer!), and posts are never time-consuming to read. My only complaint is that they don’t post enough.
Appellation Beer: Stan should write a book. Oh wait. He already has. Two of them. His blog is always insightful in the ways of beer. I like to think of Uncle Stan as the Papa Bear of this whole outfit, though I haven’t told him that yet.
Hair of the Dog Dave: Dave’s “Resource for beer enthusiasts” is just that. Teeming with interesting beer reviews and industry news, his site is definitely worth a gander every now and again.
Holy roly-poly, Batman! There are leaves in my beer!
Monday we used the most loose-leaf hops (which is actually a flower) we’ve ever used during a boil. Usually we use a lot of hop pellets in the boil and reserve loose-leaf for dry-hopping. Things were going great. Joel was even keeping his nose out of everything so that the grown-ups could work.
So then we had to cool the wort and get it into fermenters. So… that actually posed a problem. See that strainer full of spinach-type-stuff? There were about four strainers of the same stuff in the beer. Holy flower power, Batman! There’s a clog in my pipe!
This is how we brew it
Last night we made another 10 gallon batch of our world-famous Swashchuckler IPA. If you’re curious to see how our brewing process works, take a gander at the following video. This is how we “sparge,” soaking the grains with hot water to extract the fermentable sugars before boiling them in that big stainless steel pot. You might see Joel pretending to pee in the grains. Pay no mind. He’s an idiot.
Brewery 2.0
The Brewery (Joel’s house) has been under some major renovations but we are pleased to announce that many projects have come to a close over the weekend. Included in the list of v2.0 upgrades are the following…
Kitchen 2.0: Sports a new countertop, sink, stove, microwave, bottle sanitizer (otherwise known as a dishwasher). This facility will be used primarily for beer refrigeration, bottling, and priming sugar preparation (if Jonathan remembers to add it).
Kegerator 2.0: We actually came out under-budget on our kitchen remodeling so I went out and bought a kegerator fridge this weekend (my wife is out of the country…and hopefully not reading this). I still have to add the taps on top of it but for the time being we at least have beer on tap up in the kitchen (instead of the basement) and it allows the basement cooler to be used for fermentation. I have the Roundhouse Pale Ale and Base Jumper Double IPA on tap for Monday. Do come by if you’d like to give them a swig.
Grain Mill 2.0: I disassembled our beloved grain mill this weekend and made some modifications that will hopefully help our slightly low extraction rates. Basically I cut a new plate that goes from the feeder into the mill…hopefully this will make sure no un-milled grain is able to slip through.
BrewShelf 2.0: Okay, so there wasn’t really a BrewShelf 1.0 (it was all over my basement floor) but with the new steel rack on casters we should be able to easily roll it up the driveway for brewing and then roll it back to the basement when we’re done. All supplies will be right at our fingertips!
The Dogfish Head of the South
Whilst washing about 200 bottles last Saturday, Jeff, Joel and I participated in another segment of what has been an ongoing MNB discussion: what kind of brewery should we be?
We’re early enough in the brewery creation stages that we can still shift gears fairly easily. And this is something we will continue to wrestle with as we concoct our brewing schedules and formulate our recipes. While the marketing will (hopefully) communicate who we are, it all has to be backed up by the beer.
So, long story short, we stumbled upon this notion of being “the Dogfish Head of the South.” Dogfish Head is a Delaware-based microbrewery that we all admire. I don’t think their marketing is all that great, but they definitely make up for it in their beers. They have some killer “old faithfuls” such as their 60 minute IPA, but they also aren’t afraid to experiment, and many of their beers have a unique twist ? a hoppy apricot beer, a raisin-infused Belgian, an IPA/brown ale, etc.
We don’t think Dogfish Head is the most accessible of breweries (you can’t just name a beer “Raison D’Etre” and expect everyone to get it), and since part of our mission is to educate the Bud-drinkers of the world about good beer, we would like to bit more user-friendly. So… a slightly more accessible Dogfish Head.
We would appreciate any of your comments as we try to pull our thoughts together on who we should be. At this stage everyone has a lot of influence. Ultimately we want to be YOUR brewery, so let us know what you think.
Beer, brats and Wesley Snipes…
The beer is on the table. The brats are on the grill. Wesley Snipes is on the screen. I’m living the dream.
Note: Sierra Nevada’s Summerfest is… not that great. As far as lagers go, I guess it’s pretty good. I just don’t like lagers.
“I don’t want no trub, a trub is a guy don’t get no love from me”
…unless that trub happens to be Trub Wortwurst, in which case trub is a guy who gets TONS of love from me. Why? Because “Trub” AKA Robert has won our monthly pint glass drawing. It’s actually less of a drawing and more of a “ask a co-worker to pick a number between 1 and 63.” And lucky number 51, Trub Wortwurst, is the winner.
If you haven’t signed up yet, make sure to. Anyone who is already on our mailing list is automatically entered into the next month’s round. And no, you don’t have to be a blogger to win. You just have to have a name and an email address.