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.

Melting Stream Spring Saison

Do you remember about SheppyBrew's Seasonal Saison series of beers?

It all began in the winter of 2014 with Arctic Vortex Winter Saison.

It includes a Summer Saison (Hail Storm Summer Saison) and an Autumn Saison (Falling Leaves Harvest Saison).

But, I skipped Spring. As obvious as it should have been, I didn't think of doing a Saison for every season until that first Spring was over.

But, Spring is back, and now I was finally able to add a Spring Saison to the series. I brewed it Saturday.

Melting Stream Spring Saison

Orlando Trip: Kennedy Space Center

I mentioned a few days ago that we spent last week in Orlando Florida (see Orlando Trip: Universal Studios).

Of course, as I mentioned, we spent a couple days at at Universal Studios Theme Parks, and we had loads of fun there.

Even more cool, though was visiting the Kennedy Space Center. 

I wasn't sure what to expect at the  Kennedy Space Center, but it was completely awesome. If you are ever in the area, I totally suggest you make the drive.

It takes a whole day. We were there close to the opening and didn't leave until close to closing. We didn't come close to seeing everything there was to see.

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

SheppyBrew Going Professional

SheppyBrew Brewery is going Professional! Yes, we have decided that we are going to sell our beer ... for money.

The Brew Master has decided to quit his day-job and raise the capital for a brand-new 7 barrel brew-house. If you have a couple million dollars you wish to invest, we are open to discuss how you can help get this shiny new brewery open.

At this time, we have not decided on a location, but we are fielding offers from multiple municipalities who want us.

We will continue to employ gnomes to do most of the day-to-day brewing. Gnaughty and Gnasty will be promoted to co-head brewers and we will be hiring a small army of other gnomes to assist in the brewing and packaging process.

We will not discriminate against leprechauns, tommyknockers, elves, or any other kind of small, mythical woodland creatures, but there will be absolutely no consideration to any creature who is a fan of the Detroit Red Wings and we will certainly not be hiring ANY Green Bay Packers fans.

Orlando Trip: Universal Studios

We just got from a family vacation in Orlando, FL. We spent a couple days at Universal Studios Theme Parks, which was lots of fun.

The kids especially enjoyed the Harry Potter areas of the two parks. Unfortunately, we had camera issues and lost almost a whole day of photos, but here are some from our first day:

Untappd Badge Catch up

Well, I've accumulated a bunch of new untappd badges since Still More @Untappd Badges 18.5, and I need to catch up a bit.

Since I have so many, I'm not going to go through the usual detail. If you want more information, click on the hyperlink on the badge descriptions.

Without further ado .... 

Here you are some badges I've earned since 18.5:

A is for Alpine Dog Brewing Company

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 thought that going through the alphabet would be a fun way to start organizing a plan to visit more of my local Denver Breweries. As the alphabet begins with "A", and there being only one brewery on the list that starts with "A", my first choice is clear.

Alpine Dog Brewing Company

Sasquatch Hunter Altbier --- Batch 3

Perhaps you remember my first award-winning homebrew was Sasquatch Hunter German Altbier. I just reminded you a couple weeks ago that this beer won a blue ribbon in the 2013 Denver Regional of the National Homebrew Competition. It came as a complete surprise that this beer won a ribbon. In fact, winning was so far away from my expectations that I didn't even think of saving any to send to the nationals that year.

So, I had to brew batch 2 to have something to send to the National Competition. It didn't win a medal, but I was so excited to get to the Nationals that I didn't really care.

Not only did Sasquatch Hunter win an award, but I also really liked the beer. It is shocking that I have not brewed the recipe again until two Sundays ago. Not sure exactly why other than I just never got around to it.

Snowshoeing in the Mt. Evans Wilderness

 We went snowshoeing in the Mt. Evans wilderness last weekend.

I love snowshoeing. It is so peaceful to be out in the wilderness and there is something about the pure white snow that makes it even more amazing to me. I also really like the opportunity to get exercise. As a bonus, dragging the kids along gets them exercise too.

Reinheitsgebot Smeinheitsgebot

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.

Is Reinheitsgebot really a four letter word?

Honey Yogurt

Recently, I've been making my own yogurt in my crock pot. If you are a regular on this blog or follow me on FaceBook, you probably know this. If you need a refresher, feel free to look through Sheppy's Blog: Yogurt to see what I've typed about it.

Behind the scenes, ie... not documented on the blog, I've been doing some experimentation. 

I've added fruit or fruit jam to the fermentation. I've added vanilla extract. I've added sugar. I've tried adding other things. I've also tried mixing those sorts of things in after the yogurt has been finished.

I've come to the conclusion that my ideal yogurt recipe and process is the plain Mrs. Bluefield Recipe

Except ...

Quinzee!

You may remember my birthday weekend stay in a yurt.  If you look at the comments, Mrs. Bluefield wrote that I should stay in a quinzee sometime. You may not know what a quinzee is. Basically it is simply a temporary shelter made by hollowing out a pile of settled snow.

I like the idea of sleeping in a quinzee. I'm not sure it is a good idea to bring my wife and kids into the wilderness to sleep in the cold wintery snow. At the very least I thought I should try making one in a safer, controlled environment such as my yard.

Brewing Ale to the Chief Honey Ale

It has been quite awhile since the White House published its two #HomeBrew recipes. If I have my timeline correct, they released the recipes in September of 2012. I converted the porter a couple weeks later. I converted the Honey Ale to an all-grain recipe in November of 2012.

Recently, I decided to do a smaller batch of this recipe.

This Saturday, I brewed the small batch. If you pay attention to my brew-day blog posts, you probably realize that a Saturday brew is pretty unusual. Not only was it a strange day for me, but as you may be able to tell from the picture below, I didn't get started until after 10:30AM. This is practically unheard of.

Ale to the Chief: Honey Ale

Ireland Craft Beer Infographic

As I mentioned before, usually when people send me a request to share some sort of link via my Contact Me form, I am pretty accommodating.

A couple days ago I got an email from the Managing Director of a company called Home Brew West in Ireland. He has created an infographic "The top Irish Craft Beers you should be drinking in 2015".

"The Craft beer industry in Ireland has taken off and has in size since 2011. In the last quarter of 2014, sales in the industry were on course for more than €15 million. From home brewing to professional micro-breweries this infographic celebrates Irish beer, and outlines some of the finest Irish beers on the market today."

I don't give much thought to craft beer or home-brewing in Ireland. It is interesting to me how much the Craft Beer Scene in the United States seems to be a big influence on other countries. Notice how many big IPAs are in this infographic?

This was not the case only a few years ago.

Fascinating really.

Check out the Home Brew West website:

Home Brew West

One Hundred Hoppy Brown Ale

I brewed yesterday.

I guess you could say that this is a special beer. It is a little bit of a SheppyBrew milestone.

One Hundred Hoppy Brown Ale

You may remember that I mentioned it back in December when I came up with the recipe. See One Hundred. It is simply the 100th recipe page entered onto the SheppyBrew Website since I implemented a simple content management system for the site. ?id=100 seems like as good a reason as any to brew a special beer. 

As you can see on the previous blog post and on the SheppyBrew recipe page, I decided to make this a Hoppy American Brown Ale. If you are a home-brewer, you are probably familiar with The Brewing Network's Tasty McDole and his famous Janet's Brown. If not, feel free to Google it.  

I did not actually follow his famous recipe, but I certainly got inspiration from his concept. It is basically an American Brown hopped up like an IPA.

YUM!

Over Hyped Pliny (drink local)

So, I had Pliny the Elder last night.

You know Pliny, right? Russian River's Pliny the Elder has won the top spot on Zymurgy's Beer in America list for 6 consecutive years. It is one of those beers, at least here in Colorado, that is popular enough and rare enough to find that when it is on tap somewhere, it doesn't last long.

Beer geeks love Pliny the Elder.

I love Pliny the Elder. I think it is a wonderful double IPA. It is crisp and clean with just the right mouth-feel. It is wonderfully hoppy both in flavor and in aroma. It has everything a West-Coast IPA should have.

But, gosh I think it is over hyped.

One of my first Zymurgy BBIA posts was about Pliny. I wrote at the time that I didn't think this was the best beer in America. I don't really mean that as an insult. It certainly deserves to be mentioned among the best beers in America.

Denver Breweries II

It has been almost two years since I posted Denver Breweries. Since then, I've been to a significant number of Denver Breweries, but the Metro area is adding breweries faster than I am visiting them. The list of local breweries that I have not visited is even bigger now than it was back then.

Pathetic. I'm pathetic.

Locavore Beer Works happens to be one brewery I have visited

A fan of local craft beer should be better at visiting these places. I really should.

Looking through the Fermentedly Challenged Denver Area Breweries , I have composed a list of Breweries I really should visit. You can see that list below. This doesn't even include breweries in the North Suburbs, just ones that are in Denver or the South Metro area.

Weekend in a Yurt

You may remember that it was my birthday last week.

One of the birthday gifts that my loving family got for me was a weekend stay in a yurt. You may be asking yourself, "what is a yurt?" To be honest, I was surprised how many Colorado people didn't know what a yurt was, so don't beat yourself up if you don't know.

Basically, a yurt is a somewhere between a big tent and a small shack. The YMCA of the Rockies ... Snow Mountain Ranch has a campground "village" of them.

These yurts are pretty nice. They don't have heating, but they do have electricity, which means you can bring electric space heaters (which we did). They also have lights, a little refrigerator, and a microwave in each.

Homemade Frozen Yogurt

So, my youngest son asked for and received an ice cream maker for Christmas. Santa was good to the entire family in this regard. I do not know if you've ever had homemade ice cream, but it out absolutely fantastic. My boy has made a few batches so far and they have all been great.

Recently, I've discovered the joys of making my own homemade yogurt (see Making the Bluefield Yogurt and  More Yogurt). You might say that I've become a little obsessed with it. My favorite breakfast over the past few weeks has been homemade yogurt mixed with thawed mixed berries.

As I've mentioned a couple times, I wanted to try homemade frozen yogurt using my homemade yogurt. Makes sense, right?

Craft Beer Calculator

As I mentioned before, usually when people send me a request to share some sort of link via my Contact Me form, I am pretty accommodating. Apparently, sometime last week someone tried to contact me using that form. Either the email server from my hosting company did not work quite right or (unfortunately more likely), I deleted the email thinking it was a server status email. Unfortunately, the "Contact Me" email and the server status emails look very similar.

Anyway. This person did not give up. He cleverly went to the SheppyBrew Facebook Page and messaged me.

He wants me to help him "take a stance against drunk driving" and share a resource on my blog:

www.CraftBeerCalculator.com

Gruntled Berry Weiße

I brewed Sunday.

I decided that Super Bowl Sunday's batch would be a 2.4 gallon batch instead of my usual 5.5 gallon batch size. Being the lazy guy that I am, I thought I would use the base of a recipe I'd already designed and brewed: Gruntled Sour Weiße.

Just to make it a little different, I decided to make it a fruit beer, simply adding the same frozen mixed berries that I've been using to help flavor some of my yogurt. I do plan on not adding quite as much Lactic Acid as well.

The resulting recipe on SheppyBrew.com is Gruntled Berry Weiße.

Not only was this a small batch, but it is also very low in alcohol, thus low in OG, thus low in grains needed to brew it.

XLV

My parents will tell you that they are not old enough to have a child who is 45 years of age. Or at least, my dad has mentioned similar things about my age for just about as long as I remember.

They did have me young.

Did you know 45 is dividable by 1, 3, 5, 9, 15, and 45?

My wife looks way too young to be married to a 45 year old guy. Unless the guy is a hell of a lot more wealthy than I am. 

More Yogurt

Well, you may remember that a couple of weeks ago I made homemade yogurt. using a recipe from my sister's blog. See Creamy Homemade Greek Yogurt for her recipe. My blog entry is called Making the Bluefield Yogurt. If you missed it, you should go read it right now. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Frozen Mixed Berries

I really enjoyed that first batch. I liked to fill a pint mason jar half with frozen berries, fill the rest with yogurt, store in the fridge so that I could take it to eat for breakfast at work. Yummy. Of course, the berries would thaw and the fruit and yogurt would blend some. It was nice.

Sledding

We went sledding during the day on New Year's Eve this year. There is a Jefferson County Open Space Park called Meyer Ranch. We've seen people sledding there, but never tried it ourselves. This time, we decided to head down 285 to try out this hill.

Not sure why it took me so long to share these photos and videos, but here they are ....

Making the Bluefield Yogurt

If you follow the SheppyBrew Facebook page or my twitter feed, you likely know that I made Greek yogurt this weekend.

I was inspired by my sister, Mrs. Bluefield, and her blog post Creamy Homemade Greek Yogurt.

Actually, she also blogged about homemade yogurt back in August, at which point I decided I needed to give it a try. I'm not sure why it took me so long. If you followed the link to her posts (which you totally should), you probably know that the process is ridiculously easy. It is time consuming, but all but about 15 minutes is waiting for the magic to happen.

Seriously simple. Heat the milk. Cool the milk. Inoculate the milk. Wait. Those are the steps. If you want Greek yogurt, you need to strain off some whey.

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.

Missing Taco Pterodactyl?

I'm afraid my travel bug, Taco Pterodactyl has gone missing.

Taco is my second oldest travel bug, and until recently, the oldest one still surviving.

For quite awhile he was traveling across Florida with one geo-cacher. 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".

Assuming that the January 5th log is correct, and that cacher did not just miss Taco Pterodactyl in there, either someone picked him up and forgot to log him, or someone picked him up and didn't know to log him, or someone stole him.

Of course, I am hoping that someone just forgot to log him. Perhaps by the time you read this, it will have been logged.

SheppyBrew X-Mas vs Breckenridge Christmas

I've mentioned a couple of times that I think the 2014 version of my X-Mas Ale was based originally on a clone recipe I found (years ago) for Breckenridge Brewery's Christmas Ale. I don't know where the recipe would have come from, and it may be that I imagined this memory. Of course, even if it started as a clone, I would have made significant changes to it. That is just the way I do things. I never copy recipes completely.

Even so, I knew that I would be trying a side-by-side tasting of the two beers, just to see how they compared. I've done it a few times this year, and if you follow the SheppyBrew Facebook page, you may have seen pictures.

Until today, though, I have not gotten around to blogging about the comparison. Here we go ....

They are certainly not the same. They are both winter warmers, but I don't think anyone who tried them both would confuse the two.

2014 Year-End SheppyBrew Stats

2014 has ended. SheppyBrew Brewery was pretty busy last year, although not quite as busy as the past couple of years. Since the Brewery likes to post quarterly updates on how much we have brewed, it is time for another Brew Stats post.

If you are interested, can see all these past updates (including the one you are reading right now ... and if any I do in the future) by following this link: http://blog.ericshepard.com/search/label/Brew%20Stats .

Unlike the past couple of years, I did not break the 100 gallon mark for beer brewed in 2014.  This doesn't come as a surprise to you if you've been following my quarterly reports this year. I did get to approximately 90 gallons of beer for the year, though. After the second quarter, I didn't think I would get anywhere close to 90, so things really sped up in the second half of the year.

First Brew of 2015: Arctic Vortex

The lovely and sexy SheppyBrew Beer Model purchased me a refractometer for Christmas this year. I've always thought that it would be nice to own refractometer, but it is not something I ever felt I would buy for myself. I've always been able to brew without one, after all.

However, getting one was very exciting for me. The nice thing about a refractometer is being able to take gravity readings with a tiny amount of wort, which means much less time cooling the sample down. This means a much quicker pre-boil gravity reading. It also makes it much more practical to take readings throughout the boil. This flexibility allows adjustments during the boil to make sure that the beer follows the plan.

Of course getting this meant that I had to brew to try out my new toy.

Still More @Untappd Badges 18.5

I sort of left you hanging on Still More @Untappd Badges 18. One day, I was drinking beer in my new local brewery, when all of a sudden, I had two badges jump to level 50! Apparently, untappd changed its maximum level on all badges from 10 to 50.

As you may be able to imagine, this allowed me to get quite a few "new" badges that were not really new. They were just higher levels.

One Hundred

If you ever go to the SheppyBrew website to look at my beer recipes, you may have noticed that most of the urls to the recipe pages have a numerical id associated with each of them.

For example, recipe.aspx?id=1 is Eric's Red Ale. Similarly, recipe.aspx?id=2 is Buckwheat's Belgium Pale Ale. So it goes. My 50th recipe page is Pompously Illegitimate Red Ale. My 75th is Helles in a Hand Bock-sket. This is because the website is mostly filled with a simplistic content management system that stores most of its recipe pages in a SQL Server Database table. The primary key on that table is an identity field which increments itself by 1 every time a new page is added.

Premium Geocaching

Exciting news!

I am now a Premium Member on Geocaching.com !

If you follow this blog, you've seen some of my posts about my family's GeoCaching adventures.  To me it is a wonderfully fun hobby. If you don't know what geocaching is, check out Geocaching 101. 

One of the really cool things about the hobby is that you can do it practically for free. You need some sort of hand-held GPS or a smartphone on which to load an app, but other than that, all you need to do is go to the website, sign up for a free account, and start doing your thing.

I think it is an awesome way to add adventure to family hikes. This is especially true if you have kids, but from time to time I will do some searching without the kids.

Still More @Untappd Badges 18

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.

Here are some of the badges I've "earned" since Still More @Untappd Badges 17 .

Snowshoeing

My kids had all of Thanksgiving week off from school. I also took it off from work. On Wednesday, my wife suggested, "Let's go snowshoeing".

When my wife says something like "Let's go snowshoeing" or "Let's go hiking" or "Let's go for a bike ride", she never has an answer when I ask "where". It is one of the things I find amusing about her.

The "usual" place we go snowshoeing, and anyplace relatively close to our house doesn't really have enough snow in November to justify snowshoeing.

This means it was up to me to come up with the "where".

We ended up going just West of Nederland, Colorado into the Indian Peaks wilderness. We could not drive very far up the forest access road, so we ended up hiking up the road itself.

My Thanksgiving Beer Lineup

Merry Thanksgiving everybody!

Thanksgiving is obviously a big food holiday. For me, it is also a beer holiday. As you may or may not know, beer is a far superior drink with which to pair food than any other alcoholic beverage. Over the course of the day, I am likely to try a few.

In addition to various SheppyBrew beers I have on tap, I also have bottled beers that I'm likely to drink today.

Brewing T.Ra.Sh. Mexican Lager

I brewed my T.Ra.Sh. Mexican Lager today.

To be completely honest, there is nothing particularly "Mexican" about this beer. It does use WLP940, which is White Labs "Mexican Lager Yeast". Its SheppyBrew Label features my father-in-law, and he is of Mexican decent.

But really, when I picture a Mexican Lager, this isn't what I think of.

Stylistically, it is sort of a Vienna Lager, which some of those famous mass produced darker lagers are. It isn't really dark enough, though. It isn't sweet enough either.

It certainly isn't light in color or body to be one of those lighter mass-produced Mexican lagers either. It has too much nobel hop character as well.

Bottling and Kegging Coffee Stout

When I brewed Gnaughty Gnome English Coffee Stout a couple weeks ago, I had wort left over after I filled my big fermenter. It was pretty trub-filled, but I put about a gallon and a half in one of my Mr. Beer fermenters.

Yesterday, I bottled up that "extra" beer before I kegged the "main" batch. I've mentioned before that I dislike bottling (actually I probably used the word "hate"). I never really minded bottling back when I was doing Mr. Beer sized batches. During each bottling session, by the time I was getting sick of the process, the small batch was done.

And this bottling session was even better. I only got a couple of liter bottles, 4 bombers, and 5 12oz bottles. Filling 11 vessels is not bad at all.

The FG was 1.015 on the bottled beers. The sample tasted nice. It was not particularly "coffee-like", but that is OK. I will enjoy drinking these when they are carbonated.

Chihuly

The Denver Botanical Gardens has been hosting a Chihuly Exhibit. Yesterday, the Sheppy Family headed over there to check it out. It was really cool. There are night-time showings, which would probably be even more awesome, but those are sold out.

So, these daytime pictures will have to do us.

Brewing Gnaughty Gnome English Coffee Stout

Last weekend, in an extended celebration of #StoutDay, the SheppyBrew Gnomes and I brewed a coffee stout.

Sort of.

We brewed a Stout. I took a sample today. It is a good dry(ish) stout. It does not really taste like we went above and beyond on the coffee, though.

Mostly, that is because we didn't. We did not add any coffee to this "coffee stout".

Personally, I like coffee stouts once and awhile. Read that to mean that I don't want to drink a whole 5 gallon keg (minus what I give away) of something that goes too overboard on extra coffee in a stout.

#StoutDay & #GnomesLikeBeer

As I am sure you know, today is International Stout Day.

Yes it is.

The first Thursday in November always is. It is not as popular as #IPADay, but .... well ... you know.

As a Beer Geek, I was aware of  #StoutDay, and planned ahead. I got myself some Left Hand Milk Stout Nitro. You may remember that in my Colorado 6 pack, I included this beer. Both the Nitro version and the non-Nitro version are delicious. The reason I picked the this beer for my #StoutDay beer was that untappd had another badge specific to the Nitro version "Pour Hard".

Kegging and Bottling

Last weekend I didn't brew, but I did have a pretty busy Sunday.

I bottled and soured my Gruntled Sour Weiße. I also kegged my Falling Leaves Harvest Saison.

For Some reason, this picture says "Gruntled" to me

You may remember that I mentioned that I would be souring my Gruntled Sour Weiße by simply adding Lactic Acid rather than using souring bacteria. Part of the reason I made such a small batch was that I wasn't sure how good the lactic acid souring would be. Billy from The Homebrew Academy did the same thing for a Gose (see Gose Homebrew Recipe). He didn't really give me the idea, but he did remind me of the idea. He also was kind enough to post an amount for me to start with.

St. Mary's Pictures

Last Saturday, we drove up past Idaho Springs to a spot called St. Mary's Glacier.

Here are some pictures.

Zoo Photos

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and oldest son were away. My youngest and I went to the zoo.

Here are some pictures.

Lagunitas Sucks

It doesn't, you know.

Lagunitas doesn't suck.

There is a story behind Lagunitas Sucks Brown Shugga’ Substitute. Lagunitas has a wildly popular Christmas seasonal called Brown Shugga'. It is a pretty big beer at about 10% abv. In 2011, Lagunitas was going through expansion construction at the brewery, and some brewing equipment was late arriving. As I remember the story, since Brown Shugga' was a such a big beer, it tied up the equipment more than Lagunitas could spare, so they were not able to get it out as a seasonal that year.

But, they had to get some seasonal out, and so they made Lagunitas Sucks to substitute for Brown Shugga'. The name is sort of an apology to fans of their regular seasonal. I don't think anyone actually thought that this was Lagunita's fault. The name was just a joke ... the beer company making fun of itself.

Still More @Untappd Badges 17.5 #GABF Edition

Well, just a few days ago I let you know that I was sick of typing Still More @Untappd Badges 17, so I stopped. I promised that I would follow up with a "special edition of the @Untappd Badges".

So here we go.

Usually, in the past I don't check into very many beers at GABF.  This year, I didn't at the festival either, but when I got home I checked into all the beers that I had written down during the festival (which was a lot).

Obviously, first and foremost, we have ... 

Eric's Red Brew Day

I brewed twice this weekend.

I already told you that I brewed a little batch of Gruntled Sour Weisse on Saturday.

On Sunday, I brewed a regular-sized batch of Eric's Red. I guess you could say that Eric's Red is one of my "flagship" beers. It actually started out as a Mr. Beer recipe later to be converted to my own all-grain formulation. I have been calling it an "Irish Red", although I'm not really convinced it is. This time, I added Citra hops, which certainly isn't very Irish. It is simply a beer that I enjoy.

It doesn't really matter what style it is. Is it simply Eric's Red.

Gruntled Sour Weisse

I'm doing a bit of a brewing experiment. I've decided to brew a Berliner Weisse. I'm going to sour this Berliner Weisse with lactic acid rather than adding souring bugs to the fermentation. I'm not sure how it will turn out, so I decided to brew a small batch.

If you would like to see my recipe, check out on the SheppyBrew website:

Gruntled Sour Weisse

Yesterday, my son and I went to the zoo together, and it wasn't until we were on the way home that I decided that I would brew for sure. We stopped by my most local homebrew shop and picked up malts and yeast.

Still More @Untappd Badges 17

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.

At this point, I don't seem to be earning very many new badges. Instead I seem to be "leveling" up. For example, to earn "Lager Jack" (see below), I had to drink 5 different lagers. To get to level 2, I had to drink 5 more. Every 5 lagers, I get to "level up". Most of the badges end at 10 levels. Several I have pasted 10 long ago.

Anyhow ...

Here are some of the badges I've "earned" since Still More @Untappd Badges 16 .  Hard to believe that was so far back in August.

Falling Leaves Harvest (Autumn) Saison

 Well, I told you in Seasonal Saisons that I would be brewing my "Autumn" Saison. My "Winter" Saison was black. My "Summer" Saison was yellowish orange. The Autumn Saison is Amber colored, right in the middle of the previous two.

Falling Leaves Harvest Saison

I decided to add pumpkin to this recipe, pretty much so that the "harvest" part of the name . Originally I was going to add several different types gourds and perhaps other types of things that are harvested in the fall, but I decided to simplify.

Before the end of the brew day, I wished I had simplified more by leaving out the pumpkin completely.

I did brew this last Sunday.

Seasonal Saisons

I don't know if you've noticed, but I've stumbled across a pretty cool (at least I think its cool) concept for a series of beers. Seasonal Saisons.

The Saison is a fun style of beer. Its guidelines are pretty wide, open to much interpretation and experimentation. For quite awhile, I avoided Saisons, but recently (in the past 12 months or so), I've really been digging them, and I will almost always try one when I see it on tap somewhere. I am not sure if my pallet has changed or if breweries are starting to nail this style, but I am starting to really love them.

Some Thoughts on #GABF Award Winners

If you've been following this blog, you know that I attended a couple of GABF sessions last weekend (see 2014 #GABF Members Session and Friday Night #GABF). It was an overwhelming spectacle, and awesomely fun.

But, man, is that a lot of beer!

The competition winners were announced pretty early on Saturday, and you can look at the list at GABF Winners.

For what it is worth, California won the most medals at 46. Colorado won the second most at 39. Those two states together won almost a third of the total medals. Half the medals were won by top 5 states (California: 46, Colorado: 39, Oregan: 22, Texas: 16, Pennsyvania: 12).

2014 Q3 SheppyBrew Stats

Here it is already 10 days into the 4th quarter and SheppyBrew Brewery still has not posted its 3rd quarter brewing stats. Lame!

But, I am doing it now, so all is well. If you are ever interested in looking through all these reports, you can see all the quarterly updates (including the one you are reading right now) by following this link: http://blog.ericshepard.com/search/label/Brew%20Stats .

Quarters 1 and 2 were light brewing quarters. The 3rd quarter was not. I brewed 7 batches in the first half of the year and 6 in the 3rd quarter alone.

2014 #GABF Members Session

Yesterday, of course, was the Members'-Only session of the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). Of course, the SheppyBrew Beer Model and I attended. It was, of course, a great time.

The members-only session is my favorite. It is one of the great benefits of being an AHA member. In fact, I know people who became AHA members just so they could buy tickets to this session of the GABF.

We got in line pretty early, but even still, we were about 3/4 of the way around the Convention Center. The line went really quick once the doors opened, though. We were in the festival before 15 after.

Big crowd on the way in.

They let the line spread out sooner before the doors this year. I thought this was going to cause a nightmare mess, but it turned out very well. 

Friday Night #GABF

The Beer Model and I attended the Great American Beer Festival last night.

Great Festival as always.

You probably remember from yesterday, that we went in with a "plan".

We got there late because of having to drop off the kids and taking a new light-rail route with which we were a bit unfamiliar. The nice thing about getting there late is that the line is practically gone. I didn't really feel like we missed all that much either.

I didn't start off with E16 Russian River Brewing Company, but I did come around to it eventually to check Supplication off my my Best Beers in America List. I got lucky on the line and it only took me 4 minutes to get to the front. I have a feeling that the line would have been longer at the beginning of the night, so for this beer, it was a blessing in disguise to get to the festival late. I do think that Supplication was the best sour that I had all night. And I had several.

2014 #GABF Friday Night Plan

I always go into the Great American Beer Fest with a game plan. I think the main reason is that 600 different breweries in one place is sort of intimidating. Having a plan helps me stay focused and I think it enhances my beer fest enjoyment.

This year, my wife has taken the time to do a "plan" so part of my plan is to go where she wants to go. I guess that is fair considering most years I get to dictate where we go during the fest.

Unfortunately, her plan involves Pumpkin Beers. Berry Beers. Cream Beers. And Peanut Butter Beers.

Can you imagine having to drink several different Pumpkin beers in one night? Yeesh!

So, here is my plan ...

Getting ready for the 2014 #GABF

It should come as no surprise to you that I am attending this year's Great American Beer Fest. I am, in fact, fortunate enough to have tickets for both myself and my wife to attend Friday Night and Saturday Afternoon (the members-only session).

I don't really have a plan this year. Maybe one will formulate before Friday.

The beers at the festival were released just a couple hours ago. I have not spent a whole lot of time looking at it, but I did check the beers left on my (Zymurgy's) Best Beer in America list. Of the beers that I still need to try on the list, only Russian River Supplication will be served at the festival.

Generally speaking, I tend to stay away from long lines at GABF, and usually Russian River has one of the longest lines. I am trying to decide if it is worth the effort to check off one beer if I have to wait in this long line.

I guess we will have to wait and see what I decide.

Still left on "my" list:

#5. The Alchemist Heady Topper ... Brewery will not be at GABF
#6. Lagunitas Sucks ... Have a bottle at home
#28 Russian River Pliney Younger ... not on the beer list
#30 Russian River Supplication ... The only beer on this list at GABF ... E16
#39 (Tie). Russian River Consecration ... Have a bottle at home
#39 (Tie) Troegs Nugget Nector ... Brewery at U25, but this beer is not on the list
#49 (Tie). Founder's Backwoods Bastard ... Brewery will not be at GABF