Cowboys

To ensure that this blog doesn't just become a diary of developments in homebrew I'm going to give a bit of an account of last Saturday.

It all started out with a very loud Kath waking up early for TAFE and a very hungover me battling against the jack hammers pounding away in my frontal lobe. After surfacing around 10am I proceeded to muster up the courage to have some beans for breakfast and go back to bed for an extra hour of horizontal time. Eventually I got on my bike to ride down to meet Kath for lunch. Getting stuck in the rain was less than ideal but at least it meant that there was no sun. A beer over lunch proved good for the general feeling of wellness and I was back on my bike home.

I love riding through footy traffic as I get to watch everybody getting pissed off about sitting in their cars not going anywhere while I glide past on the pushy! I got home and brewed up brew 3. Soon after Kath came home and we cleaned up around the flat before getting ready to go out to the cowboy night at the Royston.

Em and Nath (our UK friends) met us at ours and we all wandered down in flan, boots and other cowboy garb. It was a tad weird in the pub as I almost got the feeling I was walking into the pub in Yea or any other Oz country town. A good night ensued which was followed by some late night Rage and potato gems!

I'll leave it up to Kath to talk about Sunday.

Home brew 3

Oh the sweet sounds of home brew bubbling in the night. Yes the third batch has kicked off after being set up on Saturday by a semi-conscious Dan. Yet to be named, this brew is a wheat beer which will hopefully be close to a Belgian wheat beer style with lots of coriander and orange zest added to give it a spicy and fruity kick! I'll keep you all posted on the developments but at this stage it smells great!

Home brew 2

Since the sound of the air-lock bubbling through the middle of the night has ceased and the specific gravity has settled Kath and I decided to bottle the second brew last night. The Church I.P.A. is going to be a rip snorter at an approximated 7.0% alc/vol. The bottling went smoothly and we managed to only have to label 3 of 30 bottles with the infamous pooh bear sticker. The pooh bear sticker is for the bottles that contain a lot of the dregs (only to be used when we can't find any other beer in the house!).

We also prematurely tasted some of The Church Lager (it's not meant to be ready for another two weeks), and it tastes remarkably like beer. In fact it is quite nice if we do say so ourselves. Good sign since it was tasted early and is supposed to improve with age!

Next on the list: wheat beer.

By the way, depending on our consumption rate I have estimated that after the next brew at any point in time we will have an approximated 60L of beer at our flat. This equates to 7.5 slabs in VIC-speak, or 7.5 cases in NSW-speak. Now that's a lot of beer!