Wow, long time no updates. Not quite as much brewing this year since we have a few other things going on. Since the last post we managed to get one more brewing session in before Graham was born, that was back in April. We brewed the extra pale ale and the imperial stout. The stout turned out really good, the pale was a bit off, most likely since it was dry hopped and sat in fermenters for a really long time.

We had friends ask us to brew for their wedding. They requested the maple porter and I recommended the other beer be the extra pale ale. Maple syrup prices have gone way up, I ended up paying over $10/lb, last time we bought it, it was closer to $4/lb. The maple turned out really well. The pale was good, but still a bit raw. We were asked on fairly short notice, so the beer was not in fermenters as long as we would have liked. People had a lot of great comments about the maple at the wedding and I did not hear many about the pale. In the end more of the pale had been consumed, so I think they were both very well received. The bride and groom were extremely happy that we were able to brew for them.

The brew session for the wedding was the first time Graham joined us. Our neighbor asked if we would be naming a beer after him, I said we just finally came up with a name we liked for the porter, so it would have to be the extra pale ale. It seemed very fitting (if you have not met my wife and son, once you do, you will see why), so after getting Danika's approval, I am happy to say the extra pale ale finally has a name - Graham's Unexpectedly Pale Ale.

During the wedding brew session, I also set up a camera to take photos every eight seconds to I could make a time lapse video of the brewing session. Danika posted the video on YouTube and you can see it here. The camera stopped taking photos near the end of the day, so video does not capture some of the clean up, but otherwise it is a pretty good representation of what a typical brewing session is like.

Our last brew session was a couple weeks ago. We brewed a pumpkin and the rye PA. The last time we brewed a pumpkin it did not turn out as well as we would have liked, so we did some research and came up with what we think will be a better ale. Last time we used a lot of pumpkin and the beer was bit vegetable-ly. This time we used way less pumpkin and used it differently. I got two pie/sugar pumpkins. I baked them the night before and one went into the mash the other into the boil. I also kept the seeds. I toasted the seeds from one of them and used the raw seeds from the other. They went in at different times during the boil. We changed up the grain bill as well. We used a modified version of our extra pale ale recipe since it always turns out so well. A number of the changes we made were because of suggestions we got from Elysian's brewer. They make a great pumpkin ale, and Marc had a chance to talk to their brewer about it.

We transferred the pumpkin and rye PA to secondaries this week. We added the spices to the pumpkin in the secondaries. We decided to boil water, add the spices to the water and let them boil for a while to sterilize them. We brought a quart of water to a boil and added the ½ cup of spices to the water. It foamed a lot and also became very slimy. It was pretty disgusting, but we decided to use it anyway, since it still smelled fine. I did a bit of research since then and it looks like the cinnamon was mostly the cause of the slimiyness. I read about a few other people who have had similar experiences when adding cinnamon to water. We are thinking about trying to run the beer through a strainer when we keg it to remove any slime that is left. If we decide to do it, it will be a pain in the ass, but I think it will be better than someone getting a big ball of cinna-snot in their beer.

I have been doing a bit better job with posting brewing information on my blog. If you are interested you can check it out at blog.litke.info. Our next brew session is scheduled for November 7th.

We brewed the IPA and the maple porter back in January on the 22nd. We had a number of people stopped by to hang and check out the brewing which was pretty cool. Danika came up with a name for the maple porter -- North of the Border (Maple) Porter. We may also have a name for the Belgian Black, but it is still under review.

We also brewed last Saturday (February 28th). We brewed the Belgian Black and Half-Hearted McHopperson. We modified the hop schedule for McHopperson to try to hop it up a bit.

The big order of hops we got back in August is nearly gone, so we decided to try to find some more. After a quick search on the web, hops seem to be much more available now. We placed an order with Puterbaugh Farms (hopsdirect.com) and got five pounds! They were around $20-25/lb and when they arrived we repacked them and put in the freezer. They all had 17oz or more. When we were at the brew store I noticed their hop selection was pretty much back to normal, but their prices were through the roof, $8 for 2 oz bag! We should have enough hops to last us through most of the year.

We will probably skip brewing in March since we have forty gallons in fermenters right now and we both have beers in our kegerators.

We kegged the Blacked Out & Bitter and the rye last night. The rye is quite light in color, but has great flavor. I am still not sure what happened, but I think I must have not milled some of the grain.

Our first brew session for 2009 will be on Saturday. We went to the brew store to get yeast and the speciality grains last night, and I just got done milling the grain a few minutes ago. A couple people from work will be joining us on Saturday to watch. One of them is planning to write a book about beer and brewing.

The new year is here! 2008 was our best year yet. We brewed more beer than any other year, and introduced three new beers: Sol-toberfest, the Belgian Black Ale and the Extra Pale Ale. We brewed every month except June, September and November.

Our last session for 2008 was on December 6th. Marc started work on his basement, so it was the first session to brewed over at my house. We brewed Blacked Out & Bitter and the rye. They were transferred on the 17th. We forgot to add the hops for drying hopping to Blacked Out & Bitter, so I added them today. The starting gravity for the rye was really low, and the best thing I can come up with is that I forgot to mill 3-4 pounds of 2-row. It still is a good beer, it is just a bit lighter than we normal brew.

Right now I have the imperial stout and the EPA on tap. We kegged them back in November on the 20th. I think they are both pretty close to running out. We are trying to find a day in January to have our first brew session for 2009.