baker and i are both pretty gay for pumpkin ale. he sent me this today



i saw this at the store a few hours later and sent it to him... and took some home, of course



about an hour later i got this from him



we'll be brewing up our second pumpkin in a couple weeks... it's official, summer is over, yay! we'll be snowboarding soon.

-kris

remember the 2010 beehive brew-off? hoppermaker took 2nd place in the bock category! unfortunately bier van mythische dieren and cap'n berrill's crunchmaker didn't place, but there is always next year!



a complete list of the winners may be found here:
http://www.beernut.com/beehive_winners_2010.html

on a side note, abomin-ale's revenge had a blow out. this was somewhat expected since we pitched 2 packets of s04 on it, but we were hoping for the best.


tommys orc started fermenting after adding the syrup


-bake

big brew day today. brewed up the abomin-ale snowman returns, transferred tommy's orc to secondary on syrup(fg 1.019), peacemaker to secondary on vanilla (fg 1.026), and el dorado to the kegs (fg 1.023). made the spice mixture for tommy's batch which will be filtered into a keg in 10 days. we also bottled up the rest of the crunchmaker and sb's nut brown. the brew session went fairly smooth, until we ran out of propane, hooked up the backup propane tank and ran out of propane again. we were planning a 90 min boil but ended up around 60 mins. due to this we missed our estimated og of 1.112 and ended up around 1.096. still the highest og beer we've made to do. we finished up the brew session rocking horde mode in gears of war 2. speaking of, we'll need to have a 'beers of war' batch ready next april when gears 3 comes out.



vicious red hue


weighing cinnamon, anise, and orange peel


peacemaker primary aftermath


adding scraped and chopped vanilla beans to peacemaker


-bake

we brewed up tommy's wedding batch yesterday (bugeaters oatmeal raisin cookie). the recipe only called for 14 lbs of grain so we did the initial mash with 6 gallons of water and the sparge with 10 gallons, to give us about a 1.5 water/grain ratio. luckly we ended up hitting our estimated og spot on @ 1.049. the beer nut was all of wyeast 1968 so we had to go with white labs, hopefully those little yeast do work.

toasting flaked oats










-bake

Just dropped off our entries for the Beehive Brew-Off homebrew competition, I think we've got some serious contenders.

Bier Van Mythische Dieren - Belgian Specialty Ale
Hoppermaker - Maibock/Helles
Cap'n Berrill's Crunchmaker - Brown Ale

I also picked up a few new ones from Epic to enjoy: Spiral Jetty IPA, Hopulant IPA, 825 State Stout, and Pfeifferhorn Lager. I thought I grabbed a Brainless Belgian too, but grabbed a second Spiral Jetty instead...oh well.



-kris

nicole hooked me up with a sweet anniversary gift, a blichmann beer gun. kris and myself will definitely put it to good use in the next couple months (sb's nut brown, tommy's wedding batch, peacemaker, and abomin-ale snowman returns)



-bake

luckly we did a blow off tube on the peacemaker.


-bake