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.