Newsflash: neither of my entries in the AHA national homebrew competition made it to the final round.
It was an extremely mild and pleasant winter here, but also a very busy one. Between relocating the office, Dad’s broken hip, and reverting to a solo practice in which I do everything myself, I haven’t been inspired to write here. There are developments, though.
The brewstand described in the previous post has arrived and is nearly ready for action. The burners amd gas manifold are installed; just have to mount the pilots and thermocouples now. Then I will be able to do normal 5/10 gallon brews in the garage again. Parts one and two of my build article are posted on homebrewtalk.com . Part three will be the final installment after the project is complete.
I have been using a Picobrew Zymatic in the office for indoor 2.5/3.5 gallon all-grain brews. With 15 batches under my belt on that setup, I’m ready to review it when writing time permits. It is a great little system and I plan to use it whenever weather or time don’t permit full, outside brew days.
Current favorite brews: a clone of Pliny the Elder IIPA, a clone of grapefruit sculpin IPA, my house pale ale, my house vanilla porter, and a clone of Yeti RIS. I know, I need to get more of my own recipes into the rotation when time permits – but the clones are so darn good and I only have five taps!
I’m going to make a real effort to post something here biweekly so folks don’t get the impression that it is an abandoned page. I plan to describe a typical Zymatic brewday. I also want to write a little about some new toys, such as the digital refractometer and the pH meter. Of course, I’ll have to write about the first brewday on the big rig whenever that is complete. I thought I was going to finish building that this weekend, but there’s a lot of paperwork that will need to be done today instead.