Kegging TommyHawk and Grilling Steaks

The regular season is over for my Blackhawks. Tonight the playoffs start. The Blackhawks did finish with the President's trophy, which means they will have home-ice advantage all the way through the Stanley Cup finals.

The mighty Blackhawks will soon be opening up against the eighth seed evil Minnesota Wild.

SERIES E TIME (ET) #1 Chicago vs. #8 Minnesota Networks
Tuesday, April 30 8 p.m. Minnesota at Chicago       NBC Sports Network, CBC
Friday, May 3 9:30 p.m. Minnesota at Chicago       NBC Sports Network, CBC
Sunday, May 5 3 p.m. Chicago at Minnesota       NBC, CBC
Tuesday, May 7 9:30 p.m. Chicago at Minnesota       NBC Sports Network, CBC
*Thursday, May 9 TBD Minnesota at Chicago       CBC
*Saturday, May 11 TBD Chicago at Minnesota       CBC
*Sunday, May 12 TBD Minnesota at Chicago       CBC

I can't wait. Go Blackhawks!

Geocaching Bike Ride

My son making pancakes

It was a glorious spring weekend day this past Saturday. The kids told their mom that they would like to go on  a bike ride. Connor said he didn't want to go to the Cowboy Playground and didn't want to do the Waterton Canyon trail again. He wanted to go on a new bike ride. 

I decided to introduce the boys to the Highland Canal path. The Highland Canal is one of the Denver Metro's biggest bike trails. It runs from south of C470 up to Aurora, snaking along quite a bit. Depending on where I try to get the information, the total distance is anywhere from 48 miles to 71 miles.

Follow this link and you can see a map: http://www.denvermetrotrails.com/maps/highline%20canal%20trail.html

Of course the total distance does not matter that much. My wife and kids were not going to ride the whole thing.

I picked a little 7 mile section running from Writers Vista Park in Littleton to deKoevend Park in Centennial. Both these parks are right on the bike path.

Biking to Work

We are a one-car family this week. This is inconvenient. My work hours do not really correspond well with school and various other activities my kids engage in. Most days, my wife needs the car to get my kids where they need to be. My work place is far enough away that it doesn't really make sense for her to drop me off and pick me up.

The most obvious solution is that I can ride my bike to work. My workplace is about 15 miles away from my home. On a good day, my drive is a little bit over half an hour. With normal "rush-hour" traffic it can take 45 minutes. I should be able to bike it on my trusty hybrid in a little over an hour.

Brewing TommyHawk, doing Taxes

As far as I can remember, I have always left doing my taxes until the last weekend before they are due. This is partially because I know I always owe money, and I don't want to write the government a check until I absolutely have to. More to the point, though, is that I am a procrastinator when it come to doing things I don't like to do. I have always been this way and for the most part it works out very well for me.

Well, Sunday, in addition to being the day I had to prepare to file my tax returns, was a brew day. I had to brew TommyHawk APA (which is actually an IPA). Also, there was a BlackHawk's game I had to watch. Of course, Sunday I need to take the family to church as well.

So, it was going to be a busy day.

Will Drink in May

 Not too long ago, I facebook "liked" SheppyBrew's Helles in a Hand Bock-sket with the comment:

Kegging my Helles in a Hand Bock-sket #homebrew beautiful gold beer 7.5 ish abv. Will drink in May.

One of my facebook friends commented:

I like "Will drink in May" - I know what you mean but it sounds so decisive. Like an event, or a bumper sticker

Kinda like "will work for food," but not sad and needy.

Well, as you may remember (but quite likely don't), the SheppyBrew Brewery does have official brewery merchandise that we sell on Zazzle. Not very many people have ordered from the store (I can count them on one finger), but it is there in case the brewery ever gets fans who might want a hat or a mug or a stein or something else that says SheppyBrew on it.

More Grilled Chicken

I grilled another whole chicken the past Sunday. (see Grilled Chicken along with some of the links from that blog post). This time, I grilled the bird standing up as if it were a Beer-Can chicken, but I skipped the can of beer. According to "MeatHead" in Debunking Beer Can Chicken: A Waste Of Good Beer (And It Is Dangerous), this is the best way to grill a whole chicken (other than cutting it up in pieces).

Soaking in Brine

2013 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 .

It has been busy brewing quarter. As you may or may not remember, I decided to try to round out my brewing experience by making it my goal to have brewed at least one recipe in all 23 beer categories of the BJCP. At the beginning of the quarter, I had 11 categories left. After having brewed Sasquatch Hunter Altbier, Snowball's Chance Helles, Khazad-dûm Black Lager, and Helles in a Hand Bock-sket, I now only have 7 more categories (English Pale Ale, English Brown Ale, Porter , German Wheat and Rye Beer, Belgian Strong Ale, Strong Ale, Smoke-Flavored and Wood-Aged Beer ) to brew. See SheppyBrew Styles for additional information on this little project.

Biking with the Sheep

It was about a year ago when I reported that my youngest son had finally finished learning to ride his bike. Hard to believe it has only been a year. Very soon after that, he started asking me to get him a mountain bike. The little one-speed bike apparently was not doing it for him. He wanted a bike with multiple gears and hand brakes like the rest of the family. He always enjoyed riding his little bike, but thought it could be better.

The boy turned 8 on Friday, and we finally got him that mountain bike. He loves it and was very excited to try it out. We made the mistake of giving it to him very close to dinner time, and it took us awhile to get him back to the house to eat.

We let him decide what our family Saturday activity would be. He picked (not surprisingly) to go on a bike ride.

Finding Beer Balance

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

This month's topic comes from Bryan at This Is Why I’m Drunk. Bryan wants to know about "Finding Beer Balance".

He says:

"It’s a discussion I hope will offer a variety of responses as people consider their interests outside of finding the perfect pint."

Basically, I think he wants to know what us beer geeks do when we are not beer-geeking. 

Brewing Some Buckwheat BPA

I don't have a favorite beer. I drink way too promiscuously to profess one beer to be my preferred. My wife, on the other hand, does say that she has a favorite, and it just happens to be a SheppyBrew creation. As it is my wife's official favorite beer, it is the one beer recipe that I have brewed the most. It is also the beer I have experimented with the most.

The beer is called Buckwheat's Belgium Pale Ale , and I brewed it again on Saturday.

The recipe is pretty close to how it started. The recipe has gone from a partial mash to the old 2.5 gallon single infusion mash to BIAB to my bigger all-grain batches. I've experimented with different yeasts, picking based on my wife's blind taste test. But, basically, the recipe is still pretty close to where it started.

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.