Hops Hops Everywhere

Today our little man made his very first visit to the brew store to pick up more supplies for upcoming brews.  My wife briefly explained that the hops pellets sold at the store are the same as the hops we are currently growing, but just in a different form (it's never to early to start learning!).   Upon arrival at the house we watered our hops and checked on growth.   Our Cascade hops are doing exceptionally well and although we had heard that you often get limited yield in the first couple of years our plants tell us differently.  Probably a couple of more weeks before the hops are ready for picking, but we are certainly excited to use them in a brew!

Already seeing some cones coming in!

Having added string so the hops could continue growing.

Our blueberry bushes that we hope to use in a recipe.

Bottling day!! Chocolate oatmeal stout

Today is bottling day.  29 days after brewing the beer it's time to bottle it up.  This beer was brewed in collaboration with my good friend George.  George is new to homebrewing so we took this opportunity to learn some of the more basic steps in brewing.  Sometimes just seeing the process is a lot more helpful than reading about in a book. 

Bottling the beer takes patience so I always recommend doing it on a day off or when your nice and relaxed.  I've learned the hard way that bottling when you aggravated or have too many other things going on, can make it more challenging.  If your to busy, just wait till tomorrow.  The one or two days off, wont affect the outcome very much if at all.

 opening the fermentation bucket

   Final Gravity 1.015

  Adding priming sugar

 Stirring in the priming sugar, I love the foam on top. The head of the beer will look similar

Filling the bottles

   Capping the bottles

         THE FINISHED PRODUCT!!!

Time to clean!!


Tasting note: The chocolate is definitely present and there is a less subtle taste of oatmeal, but we shall see what the final taste is once it's been bottle conditioned for a few weeks.  I've learned from experience that stouts take more time to bottle condition then other beers.  This beer will probably taste best in about a month from now.

An afternoon exploring a Lavender Farm

For the Fourth of July weekend my wife, our newborn, and myself visited a lavender farm on Cape Cod.  My wife had mentioned experimenting with lavender for some brews so we definitely wanted to stop by here to see what this plant was all about.  We hope that we are able to come up with some innovative refreshing brews for the summer months.  Also if we pull this off we hope to share it with the Cape Cod Lavender Farm where we got the lavender to infuse the beer with.

What's brewing updated 10/01/11

We currently have  the following brews fermenting.

Summer ale
Sinnfully Vanilla (in the secondary)
Razzle Dazzle Raspberry wheat (in the secondary)
Chocolate Peanut Butter Stout (in the secondary)

Bottled
Honey squeeze my lemon ale
Pumped up Pumpkin patch ale
Pomegranate WheatChocolate oatmeal stout (unnamed)
IPA (unnamed) 8/5/11  dry hopped with my homegrown cascade hops on 8/25/11

Upcoming brews!!!

Maple Porter
Black Butte clone
Barley wine for Jenna


Have any idea's for a brew we should do? Email us at:

otisbrewing@gmail.com

Welcome

Welcome to our blog, we plan to use this blog to share our home brewing experiences with those around us.  We will be bringing you updates on projects and collaborations, as well as what's currently brewing and what we have planned for the future.  We hope to hear some great ideas from you along the way.  Please check back soon for the updates.