#GABF Begins Today

Actually, the 2015 Great American Beer Festival began last night for the public and earlier in the week for Breweries.

But tonight is when the 2015  Great American Beer Festival begins for me.

Usually, I have a pretty detailed "game plan" going into every GABF session. This time, I'm not sure I will. I may just follow my wife (whom I think has something of a plan) around and see what happens.

Maybe I'll get more organized for the Saturday Session.

This year, the physical area of the the event has increased quite a bit. This is nice, but of course they fill it with more breweries and more people, so I expect it will be just as crowded.

I will probably want to attend at least one session in the Beer & Food Pavilion. All of them look interesting for tonight:

6:30 pm - 7:00 pm  Old Beer and Stinky Cheese
7:30 pm - 8:00 pm  Sam Adams and Red Robin Burger Pairing
8:30 pm - 9:30 pm  Beer and Cheese Pairings: Ingredients and the American Way

I am less interested in the Brewers Studio Pavilion Schedule, but we may stop by one of these:

6:30 pm - 7:00 pm  Rogue Ales: The Grow-Your-Own Revolution
7:30 pm - 8:00 pm  Employee-Owned Breweries
8:30 pm - 9:30 pm  The Evolution of In-Process versus Finished Versions of Barrel-Aged Brews

Anyway, I guess I'll treat tonight as a reconnaissance mission and see what is up for Saturday's session.

I'm Excited.

If you want to look at any of my GABF beer posts (including this one), check out Sheppy's Blog: GABF

CHEERS!

Brewing the 2015 Will-o'-Wisp Pumpkin Ale

As you know if you follow this blog or the SheppyBrew Facebook Page, Sunday was a brew day for me.

Specifically, I brewed Will-o'-Wisp Pumpkin Ale.

We actually grew pumpkins in our garden this year, but we didn't use those in the pumpkin beer. They are not pie pumpkins. They are jack-o-lantern pumpkins. Plus, my wife tells me that they are not ready to pick yet. Something about a finger nail test?

Who knows?

Anyway, instead of real live garden pumpkins, I used 58 ounces (a couple cans) of Libby Canned Pumpkins.

The mash is the same as a usual beer mash except I added mashed up pumpkin to the tun about 45 minutes into it. Before adding pumpkin, I heated it to 350 degrees. The idea of cooking the pumpkin was to get maybe a bit of caramelization, but that didn't really happen in the amount of time I cooked it. Not a huge deal.

Muggled!

A couple weekends ago, I discovered that a couple of our geocaches had gone missing.

If you are wondering what a geocache is ... feel free to dig through this blog at Sheppy's Blog: Geocache. If you are still having trouble with the concept, check out Geocaching 101.

Anyway, I was checking up on my geocaches (as I do from time to time) in the Pence Park area. The first one I checked on was Sheppy McShepardSons (take II). It was not where it is supposed to be. To be honest, of all the geocaches that I've hidden, this is the one that I thought would be the least likely to go missing. I guess I was wrong. This did not make me happy.

I'm brewing a pumpkin beer

I'm brewing a pumpkin ale this weekend.

Why?

Don't be stupid, you know why I'm brewing a pumpkin ale this weekend.


I'm brewing a pumpkin ale this weekend because of this chick --->

aka, The SheppyBrew Beer Model --->

aka, My wife. --->

This chick, aka The SheppyBrew Beer Model aka My wife really likes pumpkin spice beers.

Really. She really likes them.

Really.

I don't think she's actually ever met a pumpkin beer that she has not liked, and she has tried a lot of them.

Double Brew Day

I brewed two batches of beer yesterday.

Why two?

Well ... one of my brewing friends has recently decided to give up on the hobby (or at least take a break), and gave me a 5 gallon Better Bottle carboy. I wanted to justify to myself having two.

My bottle collection of homebrew is pretty sparse, and I wanted to brew something I could bottle.

I wanted to use up some apricot extract.

Upon initially tasting my recently brewed Apricot Lovin' American Wheat, I thought I had added too much Apricot flavor. I wanted a beer with which to blend that beer if I wanted less apricot flavor.

Bad Lands 2015

This post is yet another example of how far behind I am writing on this blog.

Do you remember that earlier this year, we visited South Dakota? Well, we did. As you may remember from our trip back in 2013, my favorite part of South Dakota is the Bad Lands (see Badlands National Park Pictures).

This year, it was my favorite as well, although, it felt like I was the only one of the group who felt this way.

But anyway ... here are some pictures of us (and my sister's family) at Bad Lands National Park...

F is for Factotum Brewhouse

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

After B comes C ... C is for Comrade Brewing Company

Are you recognizing a pattern here? ... D is for Draw, Boggy (I took a little artistic licence to change Boggy Draw into Draw, Boggy)

And then, of course, E ... E is for Epic Brewing Company

Care to guess what is next? You don't have to; I'll tell you.

F is for Factotum Brewhouse

Some summer photos

Just some interesting photos I have sitting around. No particular theme. No real order to them.

Enjoy.

When the mighty Blackhawks played the evil Minnesota Wild, my nephew thought it would be a good idea to bet me an ice cream cone on the winner of the series. The wager went better for me than for him. I collected when we saw each other in South Dakota.

Happy Feet Best Bitter

So, I've become a little obsessed with fitbit.

My employer started a "pilot" program "Walking Challenge". As part of this program, employees of the company were given discounts on fitbit trackers. The company also paid $50 for each fitbit bought through the program.

Then, each person who wanted to join the program was divided into a team. There were something like 550 people divided into 22 teams across 3 locations (I work for a big company).

When I got my team assignment, I started talking trash with a couple of my co-workers and told them my team was awesome and theirs sucked. We made a wager between our two teams. I was putting up homebrew. I don't really remember what the other team wagered.

Unfortunately, after starting off fairly well, my team (Team 7 ... Take a Hike) has really sucked. The other team (Team 8 ... Happy Feet) isn't doing a whole lot better, but they are doing better enough that it does not look like we will catch them.

Beer Bike Ride

I like to bike.

I like to drink beer.

Fairly often, I combine the two activities. For example ... remember BOB .... Brew on Broadway and Biking the Beermuda Triangle?

Well, recently, some exciting things happened in the South West Denver Metro Area.

First, Locavore Beer Works opened, becoming my most local brewery ... right along my route home from work.

Not too much after that, Saint Patrick's Brewing Company opened in its new location a couple blocks East of Locavore. The new location was right on the South Platte River's bike path.

Then, Breckenridge Brewery opened its new "Farm House" brewery South of St. Patrick's, also right along the bike path.

Most recently, as I reported in D is for Draw, Boggy, opened basically on the corners of the Bear Creek Bike Path and the Platte River Bike Path.

Apricot Lovin' American Wheat

One of the important logistic considerations in the SheppyBrew Brewing Schedule is that there are two beer drinkers in the house.

It just so happens that one of the people, the SheppyBrew Beer Model, does not always like the beers that the Brew Master likes to drink. The Brew Master, of course, has his favorite styles, but will drink and enjoy just about any beer style.

The SheppyBrew Beer Model has a much narrower focus. Anything too bitter and anything with too much roasted or coffee flavor is out. She also has random aversions to certain beers which she cannot articulate.

And so, the brewing schedule has to factor in taking the time to make beers that the woman of the house wants on tap. 

Random South Dakota Pictures

You may remember that my family met my sister's family in South Dakota this year. I posted Mt Rushmore Pictures 2015, totally intending to post more pictures soon after that post. I never really got around to it, but here are some more random pictures from that trip...

One of the first things we did was visit Jewel Cave National Monument and took a cave tour.

E is for Epic 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

After B comes C ... C is for Comrade Brewing Company

Are you recognizing a pattern here? ... D is for Draw, Boggy (I took a little artistic licence to change Boggy Draw into Draw, Boggy)

As you may or may not have figured out ... it is time for E

E is for Epic Brewing Company

I always think of Epic Brewing Company as a Utah brewery. The Denver location is relatively new.

Brewing Chelsea Dagger

You probably know that the Mighty Chicago Blackhawks won their 3rd Stanley Cup Championship since 2009. (coincidentally, it is also their 3rd Stanley Cup since the 1961 / 62 season)

As a Chicago Blackhawks fan, the 49 year drought (more years than I have been alive) made me sad.

As a Chicago Blackhawks fan, the 3 recent Stanley Cups make me happy. Very happy. Downright giddy, you might say.

I figured it is about time I made a tribute beer to the Stanley Cup Champions. I didn't do it in 2010 or 2013. It is about time I do it for their 2015 championship. 3rd time is a charm?

I knew immediately what I should name this tribute beer: "Chelsea Dagger".

D is for Draw, Boggy

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

After B comes C ... C is for Comrade Brewing Company

Are you recognizing a pattern here? ... what comes after C?

D is for Draw, Boggy

2015 Q2 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 .

Q2 of 2015 was actually pretty busy at the SheppyBrew Brewery. I brewed five batches:

• Melting Stream Spring Saison
• Summer Lovin' American Wheat
• Bad Lands Kölsch
• Gzombie Gnome Gapocalypse
• Hail Storm Summer Saison

Hoppy Melting Stream

More McShepardSons

Well, do you remember that I hid a new geocache? If not, see McShepardSons on Independence Mountain.

It has not been getting very many visitors. In fact, after almost 3 weeks, it had only been logged as found once on its online log. There were a couple of entries in the paper log in the cache. It seems weird to me that someone would find the cache and not sign online, but maybe that is just me.

Anyway, while hiking up to the top of Independence Mountain, I thought maybe more people would visit the cache if there were more to find on the way up.

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.

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.