BrewBrain Sports Investing

That’s right, I’m now the happy owner of a second deep-freeze that I converted into a fermentation cabinet.  Actually, there is no real conversion.  I’ve simply plugged the freezer into a temperature controller that’s keeping the temperature at a steady 65 degrees, give or take a degree or so.  And, I’m making good use of it already.

Saturday, I brewed up another batch of Raccoon Trail Pale Ale.  I tweaked things just a bit to make some subtle improvements.  We’ll see how that goes.    Sunday, I brewed up another shot at an American Amber.  I learned a thing or two from the last one I brewed (don’t over-do the Crystal) and I’m really looking forward to this one.  Again, as I finalize and get really happy with the recipes, I’ll start a recipe page on the brewbrain site.

Next up for me will be an IPA, again with smallish tweaks to the last version.  The last IPA I brewed turned out to be a big hit with everybody who tried it.  I really liked it too, but there are some areas I want to improve.

After that I’ll make some other variations on my basic pale ale.  I should be able to brew beers I really like to drink while learning from substituting grains in and out.  Since the 1-gallon test batches proved to be such a pain in the ass, this is how I’ll conduct “grain school”.

The news is not so wonderful on the keezer front.  The LHBS guy didn’t get my order in for whatever reason, and so I still don’t have my equipment.  This really sucks since the only reason I went through him is to give him the business since I rather appreciate having a store I can walk into if I need something sooner than UPS can deliver.  So, I’m paying a premium, getting shoddy service and waiting longer for my gear than if I had just ordered online.  Not good.  Lesson learned on that one.  The only positive is I don’t have much ready for kegging anyway.  I do have a stout waiting, so it would have been nice to get that one serving in the next week, but no luck there.

This is making me consider buying bulk grains on-line and gettinga barley crusher.  I really want to do as much of the work as I can myself anyway since I enjoy it.  This would allow me to crush grains the way I want and will probably result in better efficiency.  I ran numbers on a single recipe, and after shipping, my LHBS is slightly less expensive.  If I order bulk, I’m sure I can do much better online.