Foothills India Pale Ale

If you follow this blog, you may remember that I decided to brew one beer to represent each of the beers I had in my Colorado 6 pack years ago.

See Homebrew Colorado 6 pack if you need a little reminder.

The first of these beers was Stone Soup IDA, which was very similar to the Hop Strike Black IPA that Tommyknocker brew pub used to make.

Second up on the list was Odell Brewing Company's IPA.

I've never really brewed a beer based on it, but the AHA has an Odell IPA Clone that I was able to borrow for pointers.

So, I went ahead and made a recipe using the Odell IPA Clone as the base.

Foothills India Pale Ale

Amish Friendship Bread Cornbread

You may have noticed that I've been trying Friendship Bread recipes recently.

See Sheppy's Blog: Friendship Bread.

What is "Friendship Bread"?

“Amish Friendship Bread is a type of bread or cake made from a sourdough starter that is often shared in a manner similar to a chain letter. The starter is a substitute for baking yeast and can be used to make many kinds of yeast-based breads, shared with friends, or frozen for future use.”

Or ....

“It’s a gloopy, unappetizing substance in a bag that you mash for ten days before baking the most heavenly bread in the world.”

Either way ... you can find information about how to make it and what to make with it at The Friendship Bread Kitchen.

16 lb Brisket on the Kettle

Well ... as I mentioned recently, I Bought Another Weber Kettle.

One of the reasons that I Bought Another Weber Kettle is that I wanted a bigger kettle on which to smoke bigger briskets.

For a month or two, every time I go into my Sam's Club (which is where I get most of my bigger cuts of meat to smoke), the meat department is pretty empty.

So, it has been awhile since I've seen a brisket to smoke.

Last week, I discovered that Sam's was now allowing briskets to be added to the online-order to pick up at the store.

So, I included a Prime Brisket to an order. To be honest, I wasn't sure I'd actually get one until I came pick it up.

But, sure enough .... when I picked up my order, included was a 16 pound USDA Prime Brisket.

I Bought Another Weber Kettle

Last year, I proudly announced that "I Bought a Weber Kettle". If you spend any time at all on my blog, you know that I use it a lot (see Sheppy's Blog: Weber Kettle).

I love it. Literally the only thing I think that I would change from time to time with the Weber Kettle is that I wish it were a little bigger. Honestly, it really only pops up when I smoke a brisket, but it is something I consider from time to time.

My son is graduating from High School this year, and I also thought I would need extra capacity to make more meat as part of his graduation party.

So ... for awhile I had been on the lookout for a 26 inch Weber Kettle either on sale or "like new" on various online market places.

Strava Widgets

So ... I've been bike riding more during the early months of this year than I ever have before ... as you may remember ... I'm trying to log 5000 miles in 2020.

According to Strava ... I have already logged over 1500 miles in 2020, which isn't bad when you consider its been winter most of that time.

While on Strava ... I came across a couple of "widgets" that I thought I'd try ...

#SIPBeerFest and Smoked Ribs

One of the unfortunate things about this whole covid-19 pandemic is the number of local businesses that may not survive the stay-at-home orders.

Of course, shelter-in-place orders reduce the amount of foot-traffic to businesses that rely on people coming to your business.

Business is down and when you are a small local business, you often don't have the luxury of a whole lot of margin to get past a long period of reduced sales.

This is true of restaurants and similar businesses, and of course includes the small local brewery.

Here in Denver, over this past weekend, there was a "Shelter-in-Place Beer Festival" to try to help out these small breweries.

All proceeds from ticket sales, merchandise sales, and sponsorships will go to affected Colorado craft breweries staff. 

I decided to participate. I ordered 2 "tickets" and a couple of tee-shirts. I also headed over to one of my local breweries, Green Mountain Brewing Company and picked up a couple crowlers and a growler of beer. 

My participation won't save any breweries, but hopefully it helps out some.

March Progress on #5000MilesIn2020

If you follow this blog fairly regularly, you might remember that I've made it a goal to ride 5000 miles in 2020.

If you don't know what I'm talking about ... you can catch up by checking out Sheppy's Blog: #5000MilesIn2020.

Now that March is complete, I thought I'd give another quick update.

2020 Q1 SheppyBrew Stats

I know it is difficult to believe ... but the first quarter of 2020 is done.

Wow.

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: Sheppy's Blog: Brew Stats.

Arctic Vortex Winter Saison

The SheppyBrew Brewery had a huge Q1, brewing 7 batches and a whopping 35 gallons. I'm almost positive that this is the most volume of beer I've ever brewed in in a quarter. I'm on pace to brew 140 gallons of beer in 2020!

2020 Melting Stream Spring Saison (Batch 252)

It is Spring here in the Front Range of Colorado.

This means fairly nice warm weather followed immediately by beautiful snow falls followed by sunny melting warmth.

This might be my favorite time of the year.

It also means that it is time to brew Sheppy Brew's spring version of the Seasonal Saisons.

Melting Stream Spring Saison

Melting Stream is the lightest in color of my Seasonal Saisons and uses slightly different hops than the traditional noble hops that the rest of them use.

It is nice and dry letting the Lemon Drop hops shine through. A beautiful spring saison. Wonderful to drink both on those snowy and Sunny March and April days.

Amish Friendship Bread Waffles

Not sure if you noticed, but I've been doing more with Amish Friendship Bread Starter lately. Until very recently, the only thing I made with it has been the standard (Original) Amish Friendship Bread Recipe.

Now I'm trying to branch out some. There are TONS of recipes to choose from on the Friendship Bread Kitchen, and I want to try some more of them out.

My newest experiment is Amish Friendship Bread Waffles.

Dudocs Best Bitter (Batch 251)

It had been quite awhile since I brewed with my homebrewing buddies Du and Doc. Learn to Homebrew Day was the last time we had gotten together.

We made a plan to meet at Doc's house prior to all of Colorado's closings, and with all the covid-19 things going on, we considered cancelling.

But, none of us were feeling sick. We'd all been fairly separated from the world for awhile. We were planning on gathering in a group less than 10.

We decided to still go for our brew day.

And this happened Saturday.

Like last time we got together, I decided to go with a fairly simple extract recipe rather than doing a full all-grain batch.

It means I don't have to bring as much equipment and it means I don't have to pay quite as close attention while Doc's homebrew is distracting me. Plus, cleanup is quicker and simpler.

It just makes sense when I'm brewing away from my home brewery.

The recipe I came up with is

Dudocs Best Bitter

T is for ... Time Out

Well ... certainly not the worst of the casualties of the Covid-19 pandemic, but my A to Z Denver Brewery Project is on hold.

"Time Out", you might say.

Even if I didn't want to practice social distancing, all tap rooms in the Denver area are closed down, so I don't really have much choice.

Most (if not all) of the Denver breweries are trying to survive by remain open for beer-to-go, but for now, I won't be visiting any breweries.

This means that you won't see any new posts to Sheppy's Blog: A to Z.

In the grand scheme of things, this is the very least of anyone's concerns. No big deal.

It does add to my general sadness about this whole pandemic, though.

Amish Friendship Bread

So ... quite a few years ago, my sister was nice enough to send me some Amish Friendship Bread Starter.

I built it up. Made some bread, and froze some of it.

From time to time, I pulled some out of the freezer and made more bread.

From time to time I build up more to replenish my freezer supply.

Until fairly recently, I've only ever used it to make the standard (Original) Amish Friendship Bread Recipe. It is a nice easy thing to make for the family or my "Friday Breakfast Club" that I've mentioned before.

Note ... being in Denver ... it is important to make High Altitude Adjustments (see Recipe Adjustment Guide) for the bread to turn out pretty. Sometimes I do a better job than others. Even when the top collapses some on itself, the bread still turns out delicious.

Here is the recipe I use:

Buckwheat's Belgium Pale Ale (Batch 250)

According to my records, I have brewed Buckwheat's Belgium Pale Ale 13 times. It is SheppyBrew's most brewed beer.

It started out in 2010 as an extract recipe based mostly on a recipe from Jamil Zainasheff's and John Palmer's book Brewing Classic Styles called "Antwerp Afternoon".

The SheppyBrew Beer Model (aka my wife) picked the recipe out from the book as something she would like to try.

She ended up really liking it. In fact for a long time, she called it her favorite beer.

So, I made a lot of it.

It was the first recipe I converted and brewed as all grain.

I also did quite a bit of experimentation on yeasts with the beer to find out what my wife preferred.

The recipe today is all grain and a bit more hoppy than the original, but I think the base is very similar.

Mexican Hot Chocolate Amish Friendship Bread

Do you know about Amish Friendship Bread?

“Amish Friendship Bread is a type of bread or cake made from a sourdough starter that is often shared in a manner similar to a chain letter. The starter is a substitute for baking yeast and can be used to make many kinds of yeast-based breads, shared with friends, or frozen for future use.”

Years ago, my sister sent me a starter. I have not shared it like a chain letter, but I have built it up and frozen it multiple times.

From time to time, I've made bread. Mostly, I've made the "Original" Amish Friendship Bread.

Recently, though, I tried a couple of batches of Mexican Hot Chocolate Amish Friendship Bread.

Sunny Rise Wheat (batch 249) and Smoked Pork

I brewed and barbecued this past weekend.

I was up around 3AM to start seasoning a pork butt and getting the Weber ready to go.

The meat was on a little before 4AM. 40 degrees internal temperature.

Then, I went straight into brew day for Sunny Rise American Wheat, which is basically a wheat malt base hopped like I do my Bohemian Pilsners.

Around 4:45 AM, I had the mash started.

Everything went well on both the smoked pork and the brewing.

Around 6:30, I was sparging, and the internal temperature of the pork read 108.

S is for Station 26 Brewing Company

It was not real long ago that I posted R is for Resolute Brewing Company Arvada Tap & Cellar.

Just like the letter "R". The letter "S" had plenty of breweries for us to pick from.

The Colorado Brewery map has over 25 breweries whose names start with S. Not all of those are in the Denver area though.

I could have picked from any one of these:  Sanitas Brewing Company; Satire Brewing Company; Seedstock Brewery; Sheaf & Kettle Brewing; Shoes & Brews; SomePlace Else Brewery; Something Brewery; Soul Squared Brewing Company;Southern Sun Pub & Brewery; Spangalang Brewery; Sparge Brewing; Spice Trade Brewing Company; Station 26 Brewing Company; Stein Brewing Company; Strange Craft Beer Company.

Some of those I've been to and some are a little farther away than is practical (especially given that we had such a huge number to choose from.

When it came right down to it, it wasn't difficult to pick at all. I picked a brewery that I've been meaning to visit for quite some time.

S is for Station 26 Brewing Company

February Progress on #5000MilesIn2020

So ... you know I've decided that I'm going to try to bike ride 5000 miles this year?

See #5000MilesIn2020 if you missed it.

I gave you an update after my first month of riding (see Progress on #5000MilesIn2020) .

Spike in Page Views

My blog currently says it has gotten 12,713 page views in the last 30 days. That is a ton for my blog.

February will be the highest number of views this blog has ever gotten. Back in June of 2016, I hit 11,124 page views. Then for a little over half a year, the number fell steadily. It sort of had some ups and downs until late last year.

R is for Resolute Brewing Company Arvada Tap & Cellar

Right after "Q" in the alphabet is "R". You may already know this.

As you may remember from the end of Q is for LiQuid Mechanics Brewing Company, Finding breweries that started with the letter "R" was not going to be a problem.

There are several I could have chosen in the Denver area.

Last weekend, my wife (aka the SheppyBrew Beer Model) chose for me.

We actually went for a hike / walk up north of Denver in the Arvada / Golden area.

And after the hike / walk, she directed me to local Arvada brewery tap room ...

R is for Resolute Brewing Company Arvada Tap & Cellar