Oh, Baby!

So, here I am another million months later, finally getting around to posting on this not forgotten, but very neglected beer blog. So the good news: Rowan Blaise made his debut on May 9th, weighing in at a hefty 8lbs 5 oz, four days ahead of schedule. I thank the long walks, spicy Thai food and whole watermelon I ate 2 hours before I went into labor for speeding things along. He’s pretty perfect, super advanced in pooping, vomiting and tummy time. 

The Marriage Ref- Homebrewer’s Edition

Marriage is hard (no shit). It takes a lot of compromise, follow through, team work and just letting go of the little stuff. Two weekends ago found Brock and I in a fairly impromptu brewing situation. We looked up a recipe on-line. We had seen a youtube video sometime back when we first started brewing that was a lemon ginger rye. With summer coming we thought that a ginger wheat would be really refreshing. The recipe we found was a ginger wheat pale ale. Now wheat beers are not usually this aggressively hopped, so it seemed like a fun challenge to lose the kit and buy the ingredients to follow an adventurous recipe.

Hey, Porter

To ring in the New Year, Brock and I brewed our second batch of beer. For you dedicated readers you may remember I held a poll for what beer I should brew next. Porter was the clear winner. Those who are local and voted for porter, let me know, and I’ll get you a bottle. For those of you who voted for “butt beer” it was a close second, maybe next time. We went for a little more of a sophisticated kit from, where else, The Home Fermenter Center! The owner puts together pretty nice kits. We selected the porter kit with some additional malts so we could ‘Black Butte-rize” our beer. German debittered roasted barley and roasted barley, to be exact. We also used liquid yeast this time, which was really fun. I’ll explain why later.

Megan Can Brew

I’ve been wanting to brew beer for a long time. And now that the time is here, there are a couple things I wasn’t expecting: It wasn’t as hard as I thought, nor did Iever think I could lie on the floor and stare at a bucket as beer ferments inside, getting all giddy with excitement every time the airlock bubbles.

It all started out with a trip to Eugene’s own Home Fermenter Center http://homefermenter.com/. This is clearly a mom and pop shop and, boy, are they helpful, insightful and soothing to a budding brewer. Beer takes a long time to get a finished product and ruining your first batch would be so depressing. Jim at the Fermenter Center gave great tips and gentle encouragement. We bought our kit and brew pot which comes with all you need to start brewing right away except the actual bottles.

This is a lot of good junk for not too much cash ($125 at the Home Fermenter Center).