Solstice Observed Brew Day

Back to work!  I think we called this Brewathon 2.1.  You can always check on Brewathon.com.  Shane made 55 or 60 gallons, it got a little fuzzy during some of the more chaotic times.  I made 10: a Biere de Garde, and a coffee stout that I will discuss in another post.  Dan assisted on all fronts, eventually settling into being the hotwaterkeeper.

Hopefully, we have learned some things about mashing double batches.  Mostly that if you are going to put 25+ lbs of grain and 8.5 gallons of water in a 10-gallon cooler, you're gonna need to put in half the water, then all the grain, then mix and add the rest of the water.  Note the dark overflow on the sparging Rebel Rye below:

At the end of the day, it was resounding success.  We had a couple bad kitties towards the end of the day, and a carboy went down, but that'll happen.  If we get much more efficient, it won't be homebrewing anymore, it'll just be brewing.

Oh, and by the way...

I won the beer trivia. 

Dark Beer Tasting

I went to a tasting tonight at The Rumpus Room put on by ilbmke.com.  The theme was "Dark Malts," and there was a pairing of homebrew made with and without dark malt, tasted side-by-side. 

We also tasted 3 Sheep's Baaad Boy black wheat ale, Aying's Celebrator Doppelbock, Brew Dog's Libertine black ale, Drie Fonteinen's Zwet.be sour porter, James Page's Casper white stout, Colectivo Coffee's Cortado stout, Evil Twin's Yin imperial Taiji stout, and Surly's Smoke. 

Smoked, Sliced, Fried Up

Beware the Ides of March, 'cause Imma fire up the grill!

Look at how smokey it is! So Smokey.  Unfortunately it is WAY too salty.  Next time around, I think I am going to do a wet brine cure, rather than the dry rub cure on this one (which kind of ended up being a salt-crust.)  When you fry this stuff up, it just concentrates the salt and it's almost inedible.  Or it would be if it weren't so fucking delicious.  However!  If you slice it and eat it raw (cool out, I cooked it to an internal temperature of 150 F, son) it tastes like the most delicious country ham I've ever had.  Holy F.

This will happen again, and more nearly perfect bacon will be the result.

3.1415926535

I made a pie.  It was not "for" pi day, but it happened to be consumed on pi day.  That is all. 

Dangit

I know I posted about the bacon already, but I flipped it and put herbs and black pepper on in today.  It's starting to get a little stiffer and a bunch of water had come out of it; nearly a cup from a 5-pound slab.  It looked so good I had to post some meat-porn.

Aw mang.

Parfait pour le Vinaigre

I have a new piece of equipment today, which is always fun.  This time it is in the form of a 3 liter Le Parfait Super Jar.  As you can see, it makes a quart jar look like a chump and is now the new home to my first batch of red wine vinegar.

The vinegar is all moving along well, and as much as ma femme likes it and likes having lots of different vinegars, she rightly points out that it's getting a little ridiculous.  Never fear, dear reader, I have a plan.  Vinegar seems like the kind of thing that can easily be corked and  bottled, then stored indefinitely and/or given away.  It just needs to be well finished and aged.