Things that go bump in the night.

Again it's been a while since I've posted. Lame, I know, I'd whine about having legitimate reasons like my young children keep having to have spinal surgery and what not... but the truth is that everyone is busy in their own way. At any rate, onto the real reason I'm hopping back on here to spew some random beer funnies into the ethernet. The man has been so busy brewing that there is no way for me to catch you up on the complete immersion he's made into the home brewing world, lots of beer, lots of experiments, lots of fun. Last night, however, was verrrry interesting. In the middle of the night we hear a noise akin to a gun shot that startles both the husband and I from a deep sleep. Immediately he darts up and goes to check on what? The kids? I think not. The husband charges to the space beneath the stairs that happens to house his little beer babies (at optimum temperature for steady fermentation).(Maybe too optimum.) The lid SHOT off the carboy. We've heard the music of yeast toots often enough but they've never been so veracious as to pop the top off like a speeding bullet. Funny how having been startled from sleep makes the man smile. He even called today from work to check on the little fellow. For those of you who may be wondering, fermentation has mellowed out to a dull roar, steady but safe from knocking someone off their feet for now. :-D In a few weeks we will have to see what this lavender beast tastes like. Until next time!Ashley!

Beer time.

It's been a while since my last post. Almost a month, but that's like a millennium in beer time. We now have six varieties bottled and three more fermenting. This week we've bottled, labeled, waxed, and he's experimenting an on lees technique using champagne yeast for his latest beer. It's a Belgian pale that's a little darker than expected so it's going to be a "brunette" which he thinks is incredibly whitty. So now we are at the point that we need more bottles, and how. The husband is a major lover of craft beer and so he had a lot of bottles to strip and use and it lasted him almost six batches... but now we are filling them faster than we can empty them and it's becoming an expensive problem. I am about to start calling bars and putting ads on craigslist for amber colored crownabls bottles, but it all feels kid of silly, what a sticky mess my life is becoming. I guess it's all a part of it.

I also recently joined a group on meetup.com. Michigan Micro-Brew Aficionados. It looks like a lot of fun with like minded people. I am looking forward to our first outing in Feb. 


What I will leave you with today are a few pictures of the labels that I've created :-) (I'm kind of proud) We just used gum paper and some trial and error but I think they look kind of neat! ENJOY!

He talks about yeast in his sleep.

My husband was sleep talking last night about yeast. No joke. "Mummble Mummble, that yeast is really WILD, you really need to watch what you're doing with it... What I usually do is, mummble mummble, snore". Yeah, that's how it is. :-P 

I've decided to give you folks a run down of my weekend because, per usual, it was pretty beer centric. Friday night we dropped the kids off to their respective "other parents". (The husband and I have no biological children together. All of our children are from previous marriages.) Then we head out to pick up some friends and then go to "Ashley's" in Westland, MI. (http://www.ashleys.com/) They have a pretty decent selection of beer and some tasty foods too. The atmosphere is a little more bar-like than I'd ideally choose, but it was all in all a good experience. The husband and I ordered the rattlesnake fries which are spicy and cheesy and zing, with jalapeño ranch dipping sauce - very yum. The man had some Jolly Pumpkin something or other (sorry, I totally do not remember which one)  and he said that the spicy tang really complimented the sour quality of his Jolly Pumpkin beverage. I had my favorite Atwater treat, the Vanilla Java porter and it was particularly smooth and rich in contrast to the bite of what we were eating. Moving right along to dinner we had a DELICIOUS Greek pizza. Feta, pepper rings, the works. OhMyGoodness it was good! The husband ordered a Midas Touch (DogFish Head) and that was a favorably interesting taste, and I got a Mackinaw Fudge (Arbor Brewing Company) which was tasty but not much compared to the Cream Stout 2 (Dark Horse) that our friend from across the table let me sample. :-) We turned in a little earlier than we may have because we were both already exhausted from a full day. But taste buds were tickled and we will likely return for more good times.

Saturday night it was time to brew again. I'm not sure what he was making but it smelled so hoppy I could barely take it! Some IPA or other with one kind of Hop. This is his first entirely original recipe so it will be interesting to see how it turns out. He used cheese cloth over a colender to filter the wort into the primary and it actually caught a ton of hop goo (very technical terminology that hop goo is). We also cracked open the recently bottled oatmeal stout which is turning out really nicely. It's not quite carbonated yet but it's bitter yet smooth and chocolatey and you can really taste the espresso. We had another bottle of the Vanilla/ Coffee Porter and a taste of the Meade, it's all shaping up very nicely.  I took a couple of pictures and this is my Saturday night in 30 seconds... The thing is, the video looks like crap now that I've uploaded it. It's too pixely on you tube, it's actually kind of neat when you can see the crisp pictures. I will work on a solution. 

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Cheers!

The reason for the season.

When asked what she'd like to get her loved ones for Christmas my darling 4 year old daughter listed off toys... like a dino for her grandma, and a puppy for her papa. She'd pick paints and paper for her aunt and a pillow pet for her uncle. There was one thing on her list that stood out though. When my darling 4 year old daughter was asked what she would like to get her father for Christmas she responded quite simply "Beer". Is that bad? To me it was funny and really thoughtful. In her little mind she really paired him with something she thought HE would like specifically it was very considerate.

So now we are on the hunt for the perfect bottle of beer for the man who knows what he likes and yet loves to try something new all the time... My husband loves dark, bitter, hoppy beers with complex tastes and smells. He loves rich beers with lots of flavors and yet smooth like a nice oaked stout. He's a chocolate stout man, and he's an oatmeal stout man. He loves a good IPA or a good Imperial. The problem is I want to get something new for him to try and he's the world's biggest buyer of craft beer (Try and dispute that as a fact, I dare you.) So I am looking for a craft beer that is rare yet accessible, dark and flavorful, and is (maybe similar to but) not on the list below (he already loves these, and many more):

Rouge's double chocolate stout
Young's double chocolate stout
Atwater's Vanilla Java Porter (My FAVORITE)
New Holland's  el Mole Ocho (and they have some other super yum stuff too like that beer with chai...)
Ugh. I could go on forever but he loves so many things. Duvel, Chimay, a million kinds of dogfish head's and founder's creations.

Any suggestions lover's of craft brews?

That blogging kind of journey

My husband loves beer. I love my husband. And thus, a blog was born!

When I say my husband LOVES beer, I might not have covered it accurately. The man has a passion for beer, and not just any beer but craft beer. He smells it, tastes  it, pairs it with foods and sweets. He reads about beer, watches television shows about it (props to brew masters and dogfish head, you are well loved), the time and money invested are nothing by comparison to the energy, the love, and the passion. Naturally this love and appreciation melded with a creative desire. For his birthday I bought him the beginnings of his home brew set up, and as I was told it would, the compulsion has set in. Our first batch of home brew is not yet bottle conditioned and he's already got two more batches going. 

Our first adventure started with a kit from our local home brewing store, Great Lakes Home Brew Supply in Riverview MI. (Review on beer advocate: http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/22949) I was lucky to have been referred here, the man who owns the shop was very kind and very knowledgeable. Talk about a passion for brewing - for those of you who have not ventured very far into the world of craft beer you need to understand that this is more of an artwork than a means to an end. You don't really make or consume craft beer to get drunk. That can be part of the experience but you really do it to experiment, to express, and to enrich. At any rate, back to our first project... I bought my husband a kit claiming to be a robust porter. He set to work following the instructions to a tee. And then he couldn't help himself :-D We went to another home brew shop that's semi local and picked up some vanilla beans, some oak chips, and a few tools. I'd love to tell the whole story of flukes and victories but I don't have the time. I can tell you that he's learned what happens when you get the gasket for your airlock too hot (from sanitizing it) when you are putting it onto your lid (it slips right through the hole and DISAPPEARS INTO YOUR BEER!!!). Apparently a robust porter is not so much "robust" when you brew your hops inside of a bag (they don't get enough circulation - thanks to the man at Great Lakes he's straightened out a good solution for that though). AND my husband is kind of a genius, but then again I already knew that. The beer has been bottled for eleven days now and the last taste I had was getting pretty yummy. 

So we've got an oatmeal stout in the works (with coa coa and cold brewed espresso) that we bottled last night, the "robust porter", and something that's supposed to be related to both cider and mead with lots of apple juice, cinnamon, and other such deliciousness. My basement is turning into a chemistry set and my husband is becoming a little brew master (don't let him know I said that though, because I'm pretty sure that's somehow not the politically correct title : P), he's sneaking in new ale pales every day. 

It's funny, I'm not really a beer person so I can be kind of picky. Conversely he really IS a beer person so he's really picky too but in an entirely different way. This kind of quirky coupling brings us to a lot of different places both literally and figuratively. I love my life and so I am about to share it with you. 

Welcome. You are about to join me in my journey of love, life, and beer. It's about to get interesting.