Following a pretty nasty snow/ice storm, I was finally able to get to my local homebrew shop to pick up some ingredients. Within 24 hours I had 2 beers in the fermenter. This was crucial because I am now down to 1 beer on tap, 2 beers carbonating, and nothing in the pipeline.
First up was the next reincarnation of my Guinea Pig IPA. Due to a computer crash and some mismanagement of paper copies I had no record of my previous recipe. So I had to recreate the recipe to the best of my ability then make the changes I thought could help the next version. Unfortunately the homebrew shop did not have the hops I wanted to use so I subbed the zythos (more on this hop in a future post) hop for both amarillo and simcoe. I pitched the yeast before I went to bed and got together what I would need for the brew in the morning.
The second beer I was making was my first attempt at Mike McDole's Janet's Brown Ale recipe. I had a couple friends over who wanted to see the brewing process. It's always nice to have someone else around to mill 14 pounds of grain. This was the first time I had trouble hitting my mash temps. First I was too low then made adjustments to be too high and finally got it close enough. I ended up being slightly low on my starting gravity for this beer but everything else went smoothly. The difference in gravity shouldn't make too much of an impact on the finished beer.
Both of these beers are now bubbling away in the basement closet. The IPA took a little longer than normal to get started. I will be very happy in a few weeks when these beers finish and I can put them on tap after what we have now is drained during our yearly Super Bowl party.
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