So...... I had to fire my capper tonight

I finally got around to bottling up my Pumpkin Ale tonight. Whenever I bottle beer I always have an extra set of little hands that end up touching each bottle and cap.

So tonight it was easier to give A Bird a job than have her touching and grabbing at the hot bottles or spilling them trying to "help". So tonight I "hired" her on as my capper.

I would fill the bottles and hand them to her and she would place a cap on each one. This worked out great until she quickly mastered putting the caps on and was capping faster than I was filling. So once she had all of her bottles capped, she decided that I was in need of some advice and supervision.

She would stand next to me and tell me when to fill the bottle, how fast to fill the bottle and how full to fill it so she could cap it. Man, she is already her mother's daughter. Just kidding L Bird, but seriously sometimes she is identical to you.

Anyway, this is the way it went for a few rounds of bottles, then something happened. At first I didn't notice it, but then it hit me about 3 bottles in. A Bird had gotten quiet and wasn't giving me any advice, so I peek over at her and I notice that before she put the cap on each bottle she was sticking her tiny little finger in the bottle and then sucking the beer off her finger. That's right, SHE WAS DRINKING ON THE JOB!! Can you believe the nerve of this kid? I give her a job and then she goes and takes advantage of my generosity by drinking up all my goods. The nerve!

But seriously I caught her and explained to her that beer is a big person drink like soda and that she can't drink it until she's 21. I know I am probably disillusioned about the 21 thing but hey i can hope. I asked her how many times she had done that and after some grilling she fessed up to 3 times, so she got 3 tiny tiny tiny tastes. So we had another long talk and I thanked her for her help but told her that if she did that again she would no longer be able to help me bottle my "beerd". The consequence of not helping me was too devastating to her so she swore off the sauce and went back to work.

So I guess I really didn't fire her, I just wrote her up and gave her a verbal warning. But the important thing is she learned her lesson and she is just too cute to fire.

All these people and me with no teeth...

Well, the title of this post sums it all up I think. It was A Bird's 3rd birthday party and L Bird's Grandpa had come to the party but forgot his teeth at home on the table. More than likely they were sitting next to an ash tray with 20 butts in it and a tobacca, yeah that's right I said tabacca, stained coffee mug, that's a whole other story.

Anyway how that applies to me is that I found out about a homebrew/homemade wine contest and it is only 3 weeks away which is not enough time for me to put together a formidable entry. So I have this contest and no beer to enter. Well, strike that I have two beers to enter, but they are not typically what I would like to enter into a contest. They are what's left of the hot chili beer and the pumpkin ale that I am bottling this weekend. But what the hell if you don't have a full set of dentures to put in, I figure some is better than none so I'm going to rock a partial. I  guess that sort of makes sense in some weird dental analogy kind of way, right?

So I'll give it a go and see what I get. This competition doesn't seem super professional and they are also letting the public tastes the beers as well, so if nothing else I should get a real honest review of the beers from the general public.

So if you are free the weekend of Oct. 16th and you are up this way, stop in and try at least a pumpkin ale, and if you have you full set of dentures in, put on some extra polydent and give the chili beer a go.

Wish me luck and hope to see anyone I know there!

Ithaca Beer Review: Excelsior Eleven

I was in Wegmans the other day and I realized it had been some time since I did a beer review, so I moseyed on back to the beer section to take a look. After searching for a while I had got down to two choices, the Ithaca Beer Eleven or a nice 750 ml of Delirium Tremens from Belgium. I went back and forth for a bit, but went back to my old rule. If you can't decide, drink local beer. With that Ithaca was the winner!

Here we go:

Appearance: It was pretty dark, almost black. It poured pretty flat, I had to start really pouring it roughly to get the small amount of head you see above. The head was light brown and dissipated almost immediately.

Aroma: The initial aroma is coffee. The more I smelled it the more it smelled like coffee grounds/espresso. This makes sense because Ithaca ages the beer on locally roasted Sumatran Coffee beans.

Taste: Its taste follows up the aroma nicely. It has a lot of strong coffee notes, as well as some bitterness with a slight hint of dark chocolate. It is not too light, but not really heavy either. However, I was very disappointed in the carbonation level. This beer was very flat, it reminded me of a breakfast beer, you know when you used to stay up too late drinking and you still would have a half a pint glass of beer, so you would stick it in the fridge, and then drink the flat beer in the morning.

Overall: It was an ok beer, it definitely did not live up to the high standards of what the Excelsior series had delivered to me in the past. This is the 3rd beer I have tried from that line and the other two were excellent, this one fell way short of that mark. I would probably not buy this label again, but I also wouldn't turn it down if someone else paid for it.

Keep 'em tippin'!

Pumpkin Ale - Still Bubbling

I finally got my supplies for this Pumpkin Ale and got it brewing. I have never brewed a pumpkin ale before and this one used a lot of real pumpkin. I ended up buying three pie pumpkins, cooking them, then pureeing them and then finally adding 9 lbs of this pumpkin puree to the brewpot.

It has been happily fermenting for 6 days and it was time to transfer it to the secondary fermenter. All of that pumpkin that was added produced a pretty thick layer of solids on the bottom of the fermenter and for clarity it was a good idea to transfer it.

Before I go into the actual transfer of the beer I wanted to sing the praises of this little whosamawhatsit.

No, its not anything used in S & M bondage or horse training, its the "Brew Hauler". For anyone who has tried to lift and carry a full 5 - 6 gallons of beer in a glass carboy, you know how heavy and uncooperative it can be. Plus if you're old man river like me with back trouble, it can be down right dangerous, I could lose my grip, fall and break my hip. Then where would I be, I don't have one of those "Help, I've fallen and can't get up" thingys, so I would have to lay on the floor and survive off of floor beer until someone found me.

But anyway I digress, so this Brew Hauler slides over the carboy and clips to provide an easy way to carry the beer.

You can see the two handles, that make life so much easier.

Now with my strapping all in place, I could finally transfer the beer and get it back to happily fermenting in the corner.

Even after the initial transfer, you can still see a pretty huge layer of sediment on the bottom, so I may be transferring again, but we'll see.

So bring on the Pumpkiny Goodness!!

Preparing for changing seasons.

So I know summer is drawing to an end and with that comes fall. Apple picking, sweat shirts, falling leaves, football, Halloween, Thanksgiving and pumpkins. Based on that I figured I would brew a beer for the season, and what goes better than a Pumpkin Ale. Liquid pumpkin pie in a bottle, the perfect compliment to any fall gathering, right?

It was originally a toss up between Pumpkin Ale for the holidays or a Coconut Porter to warm me up through the cold fall/winter nights. I wanted to do the Coconut Porter but there are some issues to be worked out with the porter. Apparently the oils in coconut, mess with the carbonation and you get a beer with no head, unacceptable, everyone loves a little head, lol. So until I get the kinks worked out Pumpkin Ale is the winner, I will still eventually brew the  porter.

So I ordered all of my supplies and am patiently waiting for the their arrival, so I can start brewing. Then I have to find a farm stand with pumpkins out this early for the final touches. Then with all of my supplies together, the magic can happen and hopefully a glorious beer will be born. But until then I'll have to settle for whatever Pumpkin Ale I can find at Wegmans.

Well, off to find that 6 pack!