March 2013 Blogging

Well, you may or may not remember that February was the first month in forever in which this blog did not break its "page view" record. March recovered nicely and blew past the record.

And since I know you're dying to know what people have been looking at most, here are the top 10 most viewed blog entries for the past 30 days.

Arvada Beer Co.

Arvada Beer Co. is one of the tons of little Denver-area breweries that have popped up in the past couple of years. Shamefully, I had not visited them until this past weekend when I had to drop of my 2013 National Homebrew Competition entries*.

According to Google Maps, Arvada Beer Co is located a mere 12.6 miles straight North of my house, which is less than a half hour drive. Heck, I should be able to ride my bike there in around an hour.

5600 Olde Wadsworth Boulevard
Arvada, CO 80002

I had never been there, but I felt sort of like I knew Cary and Kelly Floyd, because I hear them about once a month on my pod-casts of the Colorado Craft Beer Show, which I listen to every week. Turk and the Gubna currently broadcast once a month from Arvada Beer Co.

Denver Breweries

I came across my Beer Drinkers Guide to Colorado map the other day. If you are unfamiliar, it is much like the map they are selling here: http://www.beerdrinkersguidetocolorado.com . It is a real cool full-sized map which lists every brewery in Colorado.... or at least it listed every brewery in the state at the time the map went to the printer.

It also has a ton of information and lots of coupons. They say over $250 in value.

Mine is the 5th edition, and has significantly fewer breweries in it than the current 6th edition. Based on the ridiculous number of breweries that seem to be opening every month round here, I have to assume the 6th edition is woefully out-of-date already too. I know the couple who put it together tried to include breweries that were on their way .... but still ... there is no way a map like this can be up-to-date.

In case you didn't know, Colorado has lots of breweries. Lots of these breweries are in the Denver area, and I am sad to report that I have not been to most of them. Actually, I have been to a pitifully small proportion of them.

Brewing Helles in a Hand Bock-sket

I brewed Helles in a Hand Bock-sket Saturday. This was my 5A. Maibock/Helles Bock beer for my goal to expand my brewed recipes to at least one beer in all 23 BJCP beer categories. After finishing up this Maibock, I now only have 7 more categories I need to cover.

I got a much later start than usual for a brew day. Until around 9 AM or so I had not decided whether I was going to brew Saturday or Sunday. As I usually get started before the sun comes up, this brew day felt sort of weird.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

It might just be that I am a geek, but I love this song ...

Alcohol

This past weekend, I was looking at the "insights" section of the SheppyBrew Brewery Facebook page (please go like it if you have not already). I was shocked to see a big jump in the numbers of people "reached" and "talking about this".

Looking through the posts on the page for the week, it was easy to see that the article from 9 news.com, Suits: More water, less buzz in Bud, Michelob beer is what got most of the attention. You can go ahead and read the article if you want. The gist of the article is that Anheuser-Busch is defending itself from class-action lawsuits which accuse the company of watering down its beers.

The Problem with Mr. Beer

I am a fan of Mr. Beer.  I have made no secret of the fact that I started home-brewing after receiving a Mr. Beer kit from my sister for Christmas of 2008. I got hooked so quickly that my wife got me a second fermentor for my next birthday which was less than a month after brewing my first batch of beer.

If you look back in the SheppyBrew Brewing Calendar for 2009 and 2010, you will see a crazy amount of brewing, all done in Mr. Beer fermentors. By my count, over those first two years, I did 62 batches of beer at 2.4 gallons a pop. I started with the super simple Mr. Beer recipes. I moved to other extracts with steeping grains and then to partial mashes. Finally, I stepped up to all-grain brewing . All of this in the Mr. Beer fermentors.

The streak is broken

Every month since May of 2011, this blog has gotten more and more page views. February did not have more page views than January, so this epic streak is now over. Part of me is relieved that this happened. The streak was unnatural and creeped me out a bit. According to the average views per day, had this been a 31 day month, the streak would have continued. If it were a 30 day month, we still would have missed it.

If you feel like reviewing the magic ride, feel free to read through the posts at http://blog.ericshepard.com/search/label/Blogging. As it turns out, February comes in 5th all-time behind Oct 2012 thru Jan 2013.

For what it is worth, March is off to a great start.

Beer Audit

Here it is ... time for another month's "The Session" (aka Beer Blogging Friday).

This month's topic comes from Adam at Pints and Pubs. He wants us to take a Beer Audit of our beer cellars. What is in there? What does it tell us about our drinking habits?

I encourage you to read his post: The Session #73 Announcement: Beer Audit. for the nitty-gritty details around his topic. I'm sure I wouldn't do it justice if I tried.

Ok ... so if you are already familiar with this blog, you already know what a nerd I am. I hope those "first-timers" of you who might come across this blog post won't judge me too harshly. It is interesting to me that Adam says that he takes stock of his beer supply a couple times a year, because I know at all times more or less what beers I have in my "cellar". Of course, it sounds like I have less beers in mine than Adam has in his.

5A. Maibock/Helles Bock

Well, if you have been following this blog lately, you know that SheppyBrew's 2013 brewing goal is to expand our resume of beer styles. I want to have at least one beer brewed of each of the 23 BJCP beer style categories. After Khazad-dûm Brew Day, I now have 8 more categories to brew. (see SheppyBrew Styles)

My next category is 5. Bock. I've decided to do a 5A. Maibock/Helles Bock.

Like all Bocks, a Maibock is a big malty German beer. It is lighter in color than other beers in the Bock category, and is usually associated with spring-time. (Mai means May ... as in the month of May ... in German). Generally speaking the Maibock can be drier and more hoppy than other styles of Bock, but it is still a malty sweet beer overall. It should be smooth and clean. Alcohol warming is acceptable for this 6.3 – 7.4% ABV beer.

Three Sisters Park

I dragged the wife and kids out for a day-hike yesterday at Alderfer/Three Sisters Park in Evergreen. It was cold and windy, but for some reason the boys really had fun. My youngest could not stop giggling. Mostly, he just appeared to be having fun throwing snow at his dad.

Here are some pictures:

Still More @Untappd Badges 8

Wow ... it has been over 2 months that I've reported on my untappd badges (see First Month of Untappd and Running for Mayor @BallyFitness , and Some more Badges @Untappd , and Still More @Untappd Badges), and Still More @Untappd Badges 2 and Still More @Untappd Badges 3 and Still More @Untappd Badges 4 and Still More @Untappd Badges 5 and Still More @Untappd Badges 6, and Still More @Untappd Badges 7). Lately, the badges have come few and far between, so I didn't really have very many to share.

But, now I am up to 7 new ones since Still More @Untappd Badges 7 . Here are the badges I've earned since mid-December:

Khazad-dûm Brew Day

So, if you've been following my blog or SheppyBrew's Facebook page or my twitter feed over the past few days, it does not come as a surprise that I brewed Sunday. I have made no secret of the fact that I was planning on brewing "Khazad-dûm Black Lager". As I mentioned, this is the Category 4 representative of my quest to brew at least one all-grain batch in every BJCP beer category (see SheppyBrew Styles).

We got some snow overnight, so this brew day was in the garage. I got started around 5 AM and had the mash going by 5:30.

This time, I left the dark malts (Carafa III) out of most of the mash, adding them in with about 10 or 15 minutes left. I decided to try this because various guest on various podcasts say this keeps harsh roasty flavors out of beer. As my mashes are usually pretty long, this seemed like a decent idea to me, so I decided I would try it out with my Schwarzbier. I think next time I do a black IPA, I will use the same technique.

More on the Sour Pumpkin Wit

Do you remember me blending my my Rationalité Poison d'Ereeeek with my Whacko Wife Pumpkin Witbier? If you don't, no worries ... you can go check out my blog post at Blending the Sour Pumpkin Wit. Go ahead ... check it out ... we'll wait. You can continue reading this one when you get back.

So, I blended and bottled back in January. I primed with sugar just as I usually do when bottling. The 2-week carbonation period was over last weekend. I tried a couple of bottles this weekend.

On untappd, I called the combination Poison Pumpkin Sour Wit.

I like the beer.

4C. Schwarzbier (Black Beer)

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 beer style categories. After my 1D. Munich Helles, I now have 9 more categories to brew.

Next up is  Category 4 — Dark Lager. The sub-category I have chosen for this category is 4C. Schwarzbier (Black Beer).

A Schwarzbier is another clean German lager. As the name suggests, it is dark in color and has a decent amount of roast in the flavor and aroma. It is generally very balanced between the hop bitterness and malt sweetness. It can have a fair amount of noble hop character, although the guidelines say it should be restrained. The base has a nice bready Munich malt flavor.

Birthday Edition: Brewing QLC

Yesterday was my birthday. I don't feel a day over 43. Not bad.

This year, I decided to take PTO and brew on my birthday. I got this idea when Scott at SNB Brewing mentioned that he has did the same thing this year. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

And what better to brew on my birthday than my world-famous Quarter Life Crisis? Obviously, my life is over a quarter over now. It is closer to being 27%, but I am ok with that.

Brew day began at 5AM. I overheated the strike water a bit and had to add cold water to bring it down to the desired temperature. I went too low, so I added more hot water. Eventually, I got the mash more-or-less where I wanted it. This yo-yo style of getting to the right temperature probably is not the best practice for precision brewing, but I find it always works out fine.

Ground Hogs' Day in Breckenridge

My loving family decided to bring me up to Breckenridge for the weekend before my birthday. Breckenridge is a nice weekend getaway spot for us. We've developed a couple of family traditions there over the years. We go there just about every year for the Duck Races. We also go up there quite often to check out the International Snow Sculpture Championship. As far as I can tell, I've only blogged about last year's (see Beervertising and Snow Sculptures), but we have been several times. Breckenridge is just an easy town for our weekend get-aways.

And, this year, we got-away for the Ground Hogs' day weekend. (aka Sheppy's birthday weekend).

I suppose the Breckenridge Ground Hog saw his shadow (see how sunny it is below). Of course, if he was smart he would not have ventured out into the cold.

Some Family Pictures

Recently, I noticed that it had been quite awhile since I posted on a topic other than beer. I have done those monthly "look-what-people-are-viewing" posts, but other than those (which also do deal quite a bit with beer-related content), it has been a long time.

This blog started out as a personal blog and talked a lot about things the family was doing together. I think there are some readers who probably miss that. The last "kids" blog post was back in October (see Eric the Awful ), and of course that was about a home-brew that was based on a game I play with them.

So, now I am posting some pictures of the family taken since October or so.

January 2013 Blogging

January continued the  streak of increasing monthly record breaking page-views.
Blah blah blah can't continue forever blah blah blah

Et cetera.

Here are the most viewed pages over the past 30 days:

San Diego Super Yeast

Soon, I am brewing SheppyBrew's world-famous Quarter Life Crisis Hoppy Red Ale. My birthday is coming up, and my life will be almost 27% over. Obviously, this is a great time for a Quarter Life Crisis. I can't, after-all do a mid-life crisis yet.

If you've been following this blog long enough (or just followed the link above), you may remember that this beer came about after I received  Jamil Zainasheff's and John Palmer's book Brewing Classic Styles as a gift on my 40th birthday. It is a hoppy "West Coast" Red ... or at least that is what I call the style. Basically, it is hopped like an IPA, but is darker in color and more complex in the malt bill.