30 Days of Creativity - Day 22: Relax, have a homebrew

We are just enjoying one of our latest beer creations. Our "White Tea Steam" beer recipe is based on the "The sun has left us on time" steam beer from "The new complete joy of Home brewing". The change we made was adding 1 gallon of steeped white tea (that looks anything but white) and 1 1/2 lbs. of honey, just to offset the bitterness of the tea.

So here is the recipe:

- 2 oz. White Tea Garden Aria from Teavana boiled in 1 Gallon of water.

- 1 1/2 Lbs. Honey

- 7 1/2 Lbs. Light Malt Extract

- 1/2 Lb. Crystal Malt

- 1 Oz. Northern Brewers Hops (added while boiling)

- 1/2 Oz. Cascade Hops (Finishing)

- Lager Yeast

The beer came out really good, it is a good summer beer, similar in taste to an Steam, but with a rather fruity aftertaste. It's also got a very fruity aroma.

We are thinking of brewing a Heffeweizen as soon as we have time. First we need to bottle our Dunkelweizen. For the Heffy we are thinking of using tea, and maybe some fruit... stay tuned ;)

30 Days of Creativity - Day 11: Brew Day

A marvelous day. The laundry is done and a batch of beer has been brewed all before noon. Score!

We have been slacking lately on our homebrewing. Mostly because some of our gear is at my parent's house, and also because our apartment has been hot. It seemed to have cooled off in the last week, so we figured we had better take advantage of the situation before it's too late. After all, this dunkelweizen could be our last brew for the summer. (*sigh)

We are in love with the Northern Brewer kits. We got this kit at their Milwaukee location; it was affordable and an extremely easy recipe. If you are a first-timer, I would highly recommend using this kit. When we first started brewing we used some really funky kits. The beer was horrible. We've advanced since then - thank goodness!

While we admit not a whole lot of creativity went into this recipe (as we followed it verbatim), that is not normally how we roll. We've been really into doing tea beers lately, and are hoping to do one more of those before it gets too hot to turn our stove on. [Our last brew - a white tea steam beer - turned out delicious.]

So here's to homebrewing and the weekend. Prost!

solace (does it = beer?)

It's a black and white kind of day. Not for any particular reason, it just is.

We've been a moving target for the past month. It almost seems like we haven't been around at all on weekends, and when we are we have to play catch up from not being around. Through it all we've managed to keep our shelves stocked with homebrews (to the tune of 200+ bottles).

We're getting nervous as the summer approaches, as our place may be too warm for brewing. We just have to wait and see. We got a Dunkelweizen kit at Northern Brewer this weekend, and are hoping to at least add that one to our collection.

Yesterday we went to the AHA Homebrew Rally at Lakefront Brewery. Not only was the beer good (as always!), but it was nice to meet other homebrewers. I was surprised by the diversity of homebrewers. Folks of all ages. So refreshing to see so many beer lovers. Perhaps the best part: Getting free wort (Riverwest Stein to be exact) from Lakefront. Woot, woot! We just paid off our membership for the year with that wort. We cannot wait to enjoy it.

All this talk about beer is making me thirsty. Cheers to the start of a new week!