2015 Hail Storm Summer Saison

I brewed my Hail Storm Summer Saison on Sunday.

Hail Storm, is the summer version of my Seasonal Saisons series of beers. It is fairly hoppy, and its ABV is a bit on the low end of saisons stylistically. It is pretty light in color. Obviously, it is brewed in Summer. I will drink it in summer. Other than that, there is nothing really making this a summer saison versus a Spring, Autumn, or Winter saison.

It is pretty much the same recipe as last year's Summer Saision, except this year I used Tettnang hops instead of Styrian Goldings.

Mt Rushmore Pictures 2015

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may remember that in the summer of 2013, the Sheppy family visited South Dakota.

See Badlands National Park Pictures, South Dakota Six Pack, Mt Rushmore Pictures,

We did it again this year. This time, instead of meeting my wife's family, we met my sister and her family.

Of course when you go to South Dakota with a bunch of kids ... one of the things you have to do is visit Mount Rushmore. So we did.

McShepardSons on Independence Mountain

I placed what I hope will be the Sheppy Family's third geocache.

McShepardSons on Independence Mountain

It is currently submitted for review. The only thing that would prevent it from being published is any multi-stage caches that have one of the steps in the area. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing where all those might be unless I find every multi-cache that might be anywhere close to this area. I didn't see any multi-caches particularly close, so I think my chances are pretty good.

June in RMNP Part 2

It is my sister's birthday. Happy Birthday, Mrs. Bluefield.


Well, I told you in June in RMNP Part 1 to expect more pictures ... and here they are ...

Our second full day was one of hiking in the lower parts of the park, close to our camp site.

We started out down the Fern Lake Trail, on our way to Fern Falls.

Still More @Untappd Badges 20

From time to time, I share the untappd badges that I've earned. I can't imagine why you would want to, but you can look at all the posts (including this one) by going to the "untappd" label on this blog.

Since Still More @Untappd Badges 19, I've earned the following badges:

June in RMNP Part 1

This past weekend, the Sheppy family went camping in Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP).

Just as we usually do, we stayed in the Moraine Park Campground. It is a pretty good campground for family car-camping. There are lots of rocks to climb and great views to see. It is a fun place to stay.

One of the awesome parts is the view of Long's Peak. My pictures never do it justice, but I still take one just about every time we are in the park...

C is for Comrade Brewing Company

You may remember that as I was composing the list of Denver breweries that I had not visited, it struck me that most of the letters of the alphabet were covered by the beginning letters of the brewery names.

I started with A ... A is for Alpine Dog Brewing Company

Next up was B ... B is for Baere Brewing Company

And now for C.  My List actually has 5 breweries whose names began with the letter C, but to be honest, I always was leaning toward one of them:

Comrade Brewing Company

Gzombie Gnome Gapocalypse

As I mentioned in Bad Lands Kölsch, we recently added a new Brewing Gnome at SheppyBrew Brewery. I also mentioned that he and I would be designing a beer recipe together soon.

His name is Gzombie Gnome. He certainly does not look like either of the other SheppyBrew Brewing Gnomes. He is, in fact, pretty unique looking among all Gnomes.

This is because Gzombie is a Zombie Gnome. Zombie Gnomes are pretty rare.

You may not know this, but beer geeks love zombies. Don't believe me? Do a search on untappd for "Zombie Apocalypse" or just simply "Zombie". There are TONS of beers named after zombies.

As one of my brewers is a Zombie, of course I needed to add to the Zombie theme.

So, together, Gzombie and I designed a beer worthy of the Zombie Apocalypse genre. The underlying design question was ...

What would Sheppy Brew in the (likely) event of a Zombie Apocalypse?

We came up with:

Gzombie Gnome Gapocalypse

Searching Guacamole

I introduced a new Travel Bug to the world yesterday:

Searching Guacamole

I know my obsession with Travel Bugs is childish and/or nerdy. I don't care. The whole concept fascinates me. In a weird sort of way, I live vicariously through these little travelers.

On Searching Guacamole's Profile, I introduced him very similarly like I did Search & Rescue. Both list their "mission" to find and hopefully rescue my first travel bug Guacamole.

6 Pack for American Craft Beer Week 2015

Well, I did it last year. Seemed like a good idea. So, I am doing it again.

This year, May 11 - 17 was American Craft Beer Week (#ACBW).

If you follow SheppyBrew on Facebook (if you don't, please go like us). You might have seen my pictures every day. In case you didn't see them, here is my 2015 ACBW 6-Pack:

Biodegradable K-Cups

This past Christmas, I received a Keurig coffee machine as a gift.

It is nice to have. Being able to make myself a cup of coffee at a time is really more in-line with how I generally drink coffee from home. Usually, I only need one cup on my way out for work.

Awesome.

I was talking with a co-worker about my new toy.

He mentioned that he also had one. He loves his. He lamented the fact that all the single serving "K-Cups" were made of non-degradable plastic and ending up in land fills.

Quite honestly, until this guy mentioned the land-fills, I had not even thought of that issue. But once he mentioned it, I could not stop thinking about my K-Cups sitting around for millions of years.

"Surely," I said, "someone has thought to make something bio-degradable." 

Turns out I was correct. My co-worker found San Francisco Bay "OneCup" biodegradable single serve coffee cups that work in our Keurig machines.

Return of Taco Pterodactyl

Back in January, I reported that my Travel Bug, Taco Pterodactyl had gone missing.

If you want, go back and see Missing Taco Pterodactyl?

On December 31th, this geo-cacher said "good-bye" to my little Taco Pterodactyl and dropped him off at "Want a Steak, Want a Shake, or will you get Gas?".

On January 5, a log on this cache says, "Nice cache no trackable inside tho".

I contacted all the people who had logged visits to that cache between the time Taco entered the cache and the time he was reported missing. I got answers from 4 out of the 6 saying they had not seen the poor little guy. The other 2 never answered.

I had no choice but to consider Taco MIA. 

2015 Style Guidelines

If you are a brewer, you probably know that the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) has finally updated its Style Guide.

Of course, in 2013, I made the effort to brew the at least one beer in all the BJCP categories that I had not brewed up until that point in time. See SheppyBrew Styles if you need a refresher.

On almost the last day of 2013, I brewed Schnockered to Comfortably Numb in my last category (Category 19 Strong Ale) to fulfill my goal. At that point, I had brewed at least one all-grain batch in every one of the 23 BJCP Beer Categories.

And now, they have changed things all up.

As I write this, they have not updated their web version, but you can go out and download a pdf of the 2015 Style Guidelines from http://www.bjcp.org/stylecenter.php.

Bad Lands Kölsch

A couple years ago I visited South Dakota with my family, and I have fond memories of visiting my Badlands National Park.

Recently, we were talking about the possibility of going to South Dakota again, possibly meeting more family who live in another part of the country.

I thought that, just for the fun of out, I'd brew a beer that would be appropriate to bring to the Bad Lands.

For various reasons, I decided to go with a Kölsch. See the recipe at:

Bad Lands Kölsch

I brewed it yesterday.

Still More @Untappd Badges 19

From time to time, I share the untappd badges that I've earned. I can't imagine why you would want to, but you can look at all the posts (including this one) by going to the "untappd" label on this blog.

After Still More @Untappd Badges 18.5, I went quite awhile without posting any, and so I accumulated enough to be overwhelming. I tried to catch up by posting less information about the badges in Untappd Badge Catch up and More Untappd Badge Catch up. It worked, and now I am ready to proceed with the regular format of these untappd posts.

Since Still More @Untappd Badges 18.5, I've earned the following badges:

B is for Baere Brewing Company

You may remember that as I was composing the list of Denver breweries that I had not visited, it struck me that most of the letters of the alphabet were covered by the beginning letters of the brewery names.

I started with A ... A is for Alpine Dog Brewing Company

Next up was B. My List actually had 3 breweries whose names began with the letter B.

No one gave a suggestion in the comments, so I just randomly picked one.

I decided to go with...

Baere Brewing Company 

They are located in a little strip mall at 320 Broadway, Suite E, Denver, CO 80203. Baere is fairly new (opened July 2014). Somebody told me something good about it at some point. I don't remember who and I don't remember what they said, but I do remember it was something positive.

Summer Lovin' Wheat Brew Day

The SheppyBrew Gnomes and I brewed Summer Lovin' American Wheat Sunday.

The recipe for Summer Lovin' has been around for quite some time, and I use it as a base for a few fruit beers. Most notably, Apricot Lovin' American Wheat and Boo Berry American Wheat.

The beer was originally created because The Beer Model wanted something like New Belgium's Sunshine Wheat. You know ... light and refreshing with coriander and orange peal. It is a wheat beer without the banana and clove of the German Weizen. Just a nice summer beer to sip or chug or whatever you prefer.

Feel free to inspect the recipe at

Summer Lovin' American Wheat

Orlando Trip: Gators

If you follow the blog, you may recall that we spent "Spring Break" in Orlando Florida.

I've already posted that we went to Universal Studios Theme Parks (see Orlando Trip: Universal Studios) and Kennedy Space Center (see Orlando Trip: Kennedy Space Center).

Another thing we did was to seek out alligators.

We even found some. Oh boy did we.

Super Simple Yogurt?

If you follow the SheppyBrew Facebook Page, or my twitter feed, you may have noticed that I posted another article to The Homebrew Academy. If you haven't seen it, go take a look. Leave a comment.

Simple Crock Pot Yogurt

Well, I thought "my" method of Crock Pot Yogurt was simple, but the very first comment on the article told me that I "may be making yoghurt more complicated than it needs to be".

More Untappd Badge Catch up

The untappd badges continue to accumulate. I caught up some a couple weeks ago with the post Untappd Badge Catch up. I am still way behind, though, and feel I need another catch up post where I don't include the detail for each badge. If you want that detail,feel free to follow the hyperlink.