2020 Hail Storm Summer Saison (batch 259)

Summer Saison Time. Last Sunday, I brewed SheppyBrew's Hail Storm Summer Saison.

This is the 7th time I've brewed the Hail Storm Summer Saison.

Has it really been that long? I must really like saisons. I must really like the WY3711 yeast.

Yes. Yes I do.

I also had a pork shoulder in my freezer left over from a Sam's Club two pack. I decided to make that Sunday too.

I was up a little after 4AM to get started on the pork butt.

It was a little smaller than last time, but it also was not completely thawed, so I got started pretty early.

Father's Day Weekend 2020

Quite often, we go camping on Fathers' Day weekend.

I think that is because the father in the household really likes camping and gets sad that we don't do it as much as he would like.

This past weekend was Fathers' Day. And, we went camping.

This year, we went to a campground at Turquois Lake, which is just West of Leadville, Colorado.

It was very nice.

I took a couple days off work so we could make it a 4-day weekend and camp three nights.

Anvil Cooling to Lager Temperatures

I've been brewing quite a bit lately. 2020 is easily on pace to be my biggest brew year ever.

Cool.

That doesn't have anything to do with this post. But, I thought I'd mention it. Not sure why.

Anyhoo ...

Remember Latest on my Anvil Cooling System?

I made a couple of small modifications to my process of temperature control. Basically, I went back to pumping cold water through my Anvil Cooling System to maintain low fermentation temperature.

Blackhawk Black (batch 258) and Pork Butt

If you follow this blog, you may remember that I decided to brew one beer to represent each of the beers I had in my Colorado 6 pack years ago.

See Homebrew Colorado 6 pack if you need a little reminder.

So far, I've brewed Stone Soup IDA, which is a black IPA designed to be like an old Tommyknocker Beer, Hop Strike. And, I've brewed Foothills India Pale Ale, which was designed to be like Odell Brewing Company's IPA.

Next up on my Colorado Homebrew 6 Pack list was New Belgium's 1554 Enlightened Black Ale for which, I decided to brew SheppyBrew's Blackhawk Black.

To be honest, Blackhawk Black was never REALLY designed to match the taste of 1554, so I doubt that a side-by-side tasting will be as close as the last two, but I am interested to see.

So ... brew day was Sunday. I also had a pork shoulder to smoke, so I was up early to get that on the Weber kettle.

Update on Foothills IPA vs Odell IPA

Well ... my Foothills India Pale Ale is almost gone.

It didn't last very long. It is so delicious, and Shelter-in-Place means I am drinking beer.

Well ... I drank beer before Shelter-in-Place so I probably can't blame SIP.

But, anyhoo ....

As I'm sure you remember, Foothills IPA is designed to be similar to Odell Brewing Company's IPA, and I used the AHA Odell IPA Clone recipe as the base.

Thus, it makes sense that I would compare Foothills IPA to the Odell Brewing Company's IPA.

A couple of weeks ago, I did the comparison ... see Foothills IPA vs Odell IPA.

Colorado Strong Pale Ale (Batch 257)

With all the Covid-19 Shelter-in-Place and Safer-at-Home directives, the small local businesses all struggled to stay in business.

Colorado craft breweries obviously were affected.

Left Hand's Brewing Foundation came up with a fund raising idea to try to help local breweries ... The Colorado Strong Fund.

Basically, they came up with a recipe and bought ingredients for breweries to brew it. Several of the local breweries I visit signed up.

Seeing this, I asked if I could get a homebrew recipe, and the answer was "yes". I made a donation to the fund, and they sent me the recipe.

The recipe they sent included locally produced malts, hops, and yeast.

Of course, I made a few minor modifications, but for the most part stayed as true to the recipe as I could.

Because the idea is to raise a little money, I am not posting my recipe on the SheppyBrew Website yet ... but there is still a "recipe page" here ...

Colorado Strong Pale Ale

May Progress on #5000MilesIn2020

It's June. If not for the whole COVID situation, I would be starting my Great Cycle Challenge today.

But, with the whole COVID pandemic a reality ... the Great Cycle Challenge has been postponed until September.

I'll still be cycling quite a bit in June, as I still am trying to log #5000MilesIn2020.