Sauerkraut and Kombucha

It has been awhile since I've made any Sauerkraut or brewed any Kombucha.

I really like homemade Sauerkraut on brats and sometimes other things, but I just have not made any in awhile.

So ... my wife was entering a grocery store order and I asked her to add cabbage and jalapeños. She did. I used it to make jalapeño sauerkraut.

In case you're not familiar with the process, it is pretty simple.

Shred up the cabbage and cut of the peppers.

Add a couple of tablespoons of salt to the cabbage and knead / massaged it, mushing it together. The juices from the cabbage will come out and combine with the  to make a nice brine.

Foothills IPA vs Odell IPA

So ... about a month ago ... I brewed Foothills India Pale Ale, the second beer in my Homebrew Colorado 6 pack.

The recipe's base comes from the AHA's Zymurgy Clone recipe of Odell Brewing Company's IPA and was designed as a homebrew tribute to Odell's beer.

I kegged on the 8th of May, and added gelatin to help clarify the beer. On the 14th, I felt I was ready to give Foothills India Pale Ale a side-by-side comparison with Odell Brewing Company's IPA.

Of the Homebrew Colorado 6 pack, Odell IPA is one of the few that is available commercially year-round, so I had to take advantage of that.

May 14th ... hazy

Visually, the beer had not cleared up as much as I thought it would, but the color was actually pretty close if I took the haze into account.

T.Ra.Sh. Light Mexican Lager (batch 256)

In this whole environment with COVID Shelter-in-Place, I find myself brewing a lot.

But, after having a huge amount of inventory earlier in the year, I took a month off. I found myself running a little low.

Now, I have quite a bit of beer, but I still find myself wanting to brew.

So I do.

At some point I'll have to figure out how to drink all this beer or find out ways to give it away.

One way to smooth out my pipeline is to brew something that might take little longer to brew.

For example ... a lager.

This past weekend ... I brewed ...

T.Ra.Sh. Light Mexican Lager 

5th Season Blackberry Saison (Batch 255)

As you probably know if you follow SheppyBrew Brewery, we brew at least 4 saisons every year.

Winter Spring Summer Autumn.

I call them my Seasonal Saison series of beers.

From time to time, I add in different saisons as well. Usually, I call them "5th Season".

I have made a Blood Orange Saison, and now in mid-May, I found myself wanting another beer to replace a rapidly disappearing beer supply.

I had some blackberry extract sitting in my cabinet. It smelled good. I decided to use it in a "5th Season Saison".

5th Season Blackberry Saison

Latest on my Anvil Cooling System

In my Wild Cow (sort of) Kölsch blog post, I mentioned that I was using my  Anvil Cooling System for Bucket Fermenter to help keep my temperature in a range appropriate for Kölsch fermentation.

Last time I used the system for a lager, I was using Glycol stored in my deep freeze pumping through the system to cool. It didn't quite work out how I envisioned. If you would like to go back and see what I wrote at the time ... check out Anvil Stainless Bucket Fermenter with Cooling System (Part 2).

This time, I went back to the low-tech ice water in a cooler method with a couple of small modifications.

The first was really something I kept telling myself I should do and never took the 5 minutes to do it.

I drilled holes in the cooler to allow the tubes and power cord to run through. This way, I could close the lid of the cooler.

Grapevine Loop From Morrison

If you follow me at all ... you probably know that I do a fair amount of biking ,,, especially over the past year.

I'm not particularly fast, and I'm not great on hills. I'm not in danger of hitting any Strava KOM's. Usually when I look at a Strava segment, I'm not anywhere close to the top of the leader board. 

But, I do like to see myself hit PR's on Strava. It makes me think that at least I'm improving. 

Wild Cow (sort of) Kölsch (batch 254)

Years ago, when my wife (aka the SheppyBrew Beer Model) and I lived in Illinois, we were camping with a group of people in a campground in Southern Wisconsin.

While sitting at the campfire, one of the campers came back from wherever he had been.

He was very excited.

"Wild Cows!" he said. "There are wild cows in the forest around us".

It was funny. Or at least the consumption of alcohol and the general mood of the group made us all laugh.

Much more recently, we were visiting my family in Wisconsin, and we had a few Spotted Cows.

I mentioned that I could probably find a clone recipe for Spotted Cow and make it to be ready in time for my son's High School graduation.

Remembering the camping trip years ago, I thought "Wild Cow" would be a great beer name.

Wild Cow (sort of) Kölsch

April 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 April is complete, I thought I'd give another quick update.

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.