2015 Q1 SheppyBrew Stats

As you may know, the Brewery likes to post quarterly updates on how much we have brewed. You can see all these updates (including the one you are reading right now) by following this link:http://blog.ericshepard.com/search/label/Brew%20Stats .

Q1 of 2015 was actually pretty busy at the SheppyBrew Brewery. I  brewed six batches.

• Arctic Vortex Winter Saison
• Snowball's Chance (in) Helles
• Gruntled Berry Weiße
• One Hundred Hoppy Brown Ale
• Ale to the Chief: Honey Ale
• Sasquatch Hunter German Altbier

Snowball's Brew Day

In 2013, when I did my little SheppyBrew Styles project, my Category 1 Light Lager beer was Snowball's Chance (in) Helles. The beer was a disappointment mostly because I bottled it and the carbonation was very inconsistent. Some bottles were practically flat and some were way too carbonated. I tried to fix some of the bottles by adding more priming sugars and that just made things worse.

The beers that were close to the right carbonation level were pretty good. I did enter this beer into a competition, and it did fairly well on its scoring, but I never felt I enjoyed the beer as much as I thought I should.

Obviously, I knew that I would have to brew this recipe again so that I could find out how it would be when properly carbonated. I thought I would have gotten to this re-brew quite awhile ago. I never did....

.... until this past weekend.

Everybody gets a certificate

If you follow this blog at all, or SheppyBrew's Facebook Page, or my twitter feed, or are just someone I have talked to in the past couple of weeks, you know that SheppyBrew's  Sasquatch Hunter German Altbier is now an award winning beer.

I won't go into the details on the 1st place winning beer here. If you want, you can read my posts "Kind of a Big Deal" and "Brewing for the Nationals". Feel free to shower me with praise and congratulations in any or all of the comment sections.

Lots of you know that I have been brewing since 2009 when my sister got me a Mr. Beer kit as a Christmas gift. Until this year, I've never entered a home-brew competition. I've been told that I should, and I always agree. Not that I necessarily expected that I would win anything. I mostly thought I should enter competitions to get objective feedback.

Brewing Snowball's Chance

As I mentioned last week (see 1D. Munich Helles), I was planning on brewing Snowball's Chance (in) Helles this weekend. I followed through with the plan Sunday.

Snowball's Chance (in) Helles  is a Munich Helles, a German light lager which I am brewing to take care of BJCP Category 1, Light Lagers (see SheppyBrew Styles). Of the Light Lager styles, the Munich Helles is the most flavorful with a significant, slightly sweet, somewhat rich malt profile.

Brew day started early. I was wondering as I dug my propane and burner out of the shed how many home-brewers have to use a flashlight as part of their brewing equipment. It is an important part of mine, as the sun is usually not up when I start brewing.

1D. Munich Helles

I mentioned not-to-long-ago that my 2013 brewing goal is to expand my resume of beer styles. I want to have at least one beer brewed of each of the 23 BJCP style categories. After my 7C Düsseldorf Altbier, I now have 10 more categories to brew.

Next up, is Category 1 — Light Lager. Specifically, I have decided to brew 1D. Munich Helles. A Helles is a light-colored German lager. It has a clean, slightly sweet, malty flavor with low to moderately-low spicy noble hop flavor and aroma. It is low in hop bitterness. It is low in alcohol and easy drinking, making it a great session beer. It is also one of those beers that will ease non-craft-beer-drinkers into more flavorful craft beers (aka gateway beer).