Brew Batch #129 Octohop

Having three under the age of 6 will make you an Octonauts fan, but after watching it on Netflix reruns on loop you may be reaching for Octohop. Kegged at 1.010-0.001 @54F to give an 8.4% bevvy that has a sweet dankness to it. Fearing the profile would come across muddled was my only concern and no hop shines through except possibly Bru-1 (aka Pineapple Express). So goal was 80 IBUs, 8% on 8 hops...check, check & check. AUfest entry? I'll know in 4 or 5 days.

1st Annual Farm Hand Brewing Co Homebrew Comp

Zoomed right by and left decent scores on some of my beers but no medals. After yet another harrowing Fedex delivery in which there was no one to sign for the package on a Friday my box was sent back to the facility for the weekend, reloaded and delivered only to yield 2 broken bottles on two different entries. Taking a Dunkels and End Chapter took a 30 each, Más Salsa a 34 and KeeWeePee finished it's current comp career on a 37. The results were posted early via their Facebook page as far as BOS but I am still medal-less in the state of IA! (9/5/19 Update: every beer got 2nd place)

Brew Batch #129 Octohop

An AUfest beta batch, that if it works out will simply be an entry. The goal here was to yield an 80IBU, 8%, octo-hopped NEIPA. Bittered on Centennial, whirlpooled on Comet and Simcoe, with a 7 day dry-hop of Bru-1, El Do and Loral and a 3 day dry-hop of X04190, X06297 (Lotus) and X07270. This will be mind blowing or muddled. OG 1.072+0.001@79F

Malt Madness XIII

Put on by the Lehigh Valley Home Brewers came and went today. I missed this one last year as I was cutting my teeth on all grain brewing and was only able to put 2 brews in this go around. KeeWeePee, a gold medaler from last month got a 28.5 (bringing it's average to down to 33.8) and Mas Salsa eked out a 31. Needless to say, there was no bling tonight from PA. This state is showing to be as elusive as NC on getting actual metal from. But I've still got my Punxsutawney Phil autograph.

Brew Batch #128 Elvis Snacks

As the pairing of One True Bine and Beat-12 Brewing Co's join forces for AUfest, Elvis Snacks is our first attempt at a new offering for this year's festival. A Baltic porter with 2oz of cacao nibs in the mash and 10 ounces of PB2 powder in the boil being fermented by Wyeast's 3068 at low temps to yield that familiar banana blow up you find in my WBI brew. Hopefully it'll behave the same way in this higher abv setting. Tentatively, I'll put 2 more ounces of nibs in the secondary, judge the isoamyl acetate and see if we need to tweak it with some extract to give us that infamous peanut butter banana sandwich Elvis supposedly craved.

Brew Batch #127 End Chapter

Today we keg a beer to celebrate the anniversary of the brew buddy that pushed me to AG and a string of medals along with better water chemistry post Seibel. I honor his move to Leavenworth with this, my first attempt at a Best Bitter (at least from the abv stand point). So FG 1.006-0.001@57F to give a hefty 4.1% and upon first sippage as it sits on 40PSI, this one has a cheeky malt backbone from the Maris Otter and a nice bitter "I need another" finish. But wait, he never moved. So this brew puts his yakety ass just around the corner as his wife got pegged here for another year, atleast. I hope this brew scores triple gold and the neighbors guzzle it cause I ain't brewing it again. Maybe...