2020 Hail Storm Summer Saison (batch 259)

Summer Saison Time. Last Sunday, I brewed SheppyBrew's Hail Storm Summer Saison.

This is the 7th time I've brewed the Hail Storm Summer Saison.

Has it really been that long? I must really like saisons. I must really like the WY3711 yeast.

Yes. Yes I do.

I also had a pork shoulder in my freezer left over from a Sam's Club two pack. I decided to make that Sunday too.

I was up a little after 4AM to get started on the pork butt.

It was a little smaller than last time, but it also was not completely thawed, so I got started pretty early.

Father's Day Weekend 2020

Quite often, we go camping on Fathers' Day weekend.

I think that is because the father in the household really likes camping and gets sad that we don't do it as much as he would like.

This past weekend was Fathers' Day. And, we went camping.

This year, we went to a campground at Turquois Lake, which is just West of Leadville, Colorado.

It was very nice.

I took a couple days off work so we could make it a 4-day weekend and camp three nights.

Anvil Cooling to Lager Temperatures

I've been brewing quite a bit lately. 2020 is easily on pace to be my biggest brew year ever.

Cool.

That doesn't have anything to do with this post. But, I thought I'd mention it. Not sure why.

Anyhoo ...

Remember Latest on my Anvil Cooling System?

I made a couple of small modifications to my process of temperature control. Basically, I went back to pumping cold water through my Anvil Cooling System to maintain low fermentation temperature.

Blackhawk Black (batch 258) and Pork Butt

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.

So far, I've brewed Stone Soup IDA, which is a black IPA designed to be like an old Tommyknocker Beer, Hop Strike. And, I've brewed Foothills India Pale Ale, which was designed to be like Odell Brewing Company's IPA.

Next up on my Colorado Homebrew 6 Pack list was New Belgium's 1554 Enlightened Black Ale for which, I decided to brew SheppyBrew's Blackhawk Black.

To be honest, Blackhawk Black was never REALLY designed to match the taste of 1554, so I doubt that a side-by-side tasting will be as close as the last two, but I am interested to see.

So ... brew day was Sunday. I also had a pork shoulder to smoke, so I was up early to get that on the Weber kettle.

Update on Foothills IPA vs Odell IPA

Well ... my Foothills India Pale Ale is almost gone.

It didn't last very long. It is so delicious, and Shelter-in-Place means I am drinking beer.

Well ... I drank beer before Shelter-in-Place so I probably can't blame SIP.

But, anyhoo ....

As I'm sure you remember, Foothills IPA is designed to be similar to Odell Brewing Company's IPA, and I used the AHA Odell IPA Clone recipe as the base.

Thus, it makes sense that I would compare Foothills IPA to the Odell Brewing Company's IPA.

A couple of weeks ago, I did the comparison ... see Foothills IPA vs Odell IPA.

Colorado Strong Pale Ale (Batch 257)

With all the Covid-19 Shelter-in-Place and Safer-at-Home directives, the small local businesses all struggled to stay in business.

Colorado craft breweries obviously were affected.

Left Hand's Brewing Foundation came up with a fund raising idea to try to help local breweries ... The Colorado Strong Fund.

Basically, they came up with a recipe and bought ingredients for breweries to brew it. Several of the local breweries I visit signed up.

Seeing this, I asked if I could get a homebrew recipe, and the answer was "yes". I made a donation to the fund, and they sent me the recipe.

The recipe they sent included locally produced malts, hops, and yeast.

Of course, I made a few minor modifications, but for the most part stayed as true to the recipe as I could.

Because the idea is to raise a little money, I am not posting my recipe on the SheppyBrew Website yet ... but there is still a "recipe page" here ...

Colorado Strong Pale Ale

May Progress on #5000MilesIn2020

It's June. If not for the whole COVID situation, I would be starting my Great Cycle Challenge today.

But, with the whole COVID pandemic a reality ... the Great Cycle Challenge has been postponed until September.

I'll still be cycling quite a bit in June, as I still am trying to log #5000MilesIn2020.

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 ...