Blonde ale still fermenting

Back from adventures in the winter wonderland. The Blonde ale is still fermenting. It has signs of a 3 inch krausen...though I was not here to see it. It was about 58 in the house aka brewhouse. Looks like it is slowing, but will watch it for the next couple days.

Bye Bye Blonde Ale

So...this may be the last beer brewed in NC so Bye Bye Blonde Ale seemed appropriate. Here are the grain bags for the beer. It is a blonde, so lots of light malt.

Can you say Saaz? A bunch of dry malt and saaz hops, etc

Philip and Ryan helped out this time.

No really......keep an eye on the boil.....I'll be right back.

da' boil!

Trust me there were lots of steps between 'da boil' and the chiller.......

Hey....think these guys have been drinking?

It's a Charlie Papazian rule, not ours...... :) have a homebrew...while you homebrew....

So....right now it doesn't look like a blonde, but......

We will test it out and see how it goes.....It did start out WAY above the estimated original gravity....... So maybe it is a "strong" blonde. We will try it and figure it out....!!!!!

Best regards

FYL.

PS. It started fermenting right away..... OG 1.058! :)

Sam's Quick Stop in Durham

WOW! That is basically all I can say. I heard about Sam's in my beer classes. I made a trip over to Durham today.... It is not much to look at on the outside, but WOW!

Beers of every shape and size. Cold, warm, 4packs, six packs, or get it by the individual bottle. From easy american beers to hard to find belgians, they have them all.

Did I mention...WOW. So I was so overloaded that I only ended up buying one bomber and one 12oz bottle. Will have to be more prepared the next time I go in.

If you get a chance....it is really something....

Bottled the Porters!!

I bottled the porters yesterday. They looked and tasted good along the way. Just gotta wait a while to let them carbonate and then we'll have to have a tasting....

The only thing about this process that kinda stunk was that I had to clean and sanitize between each porter before bottling. And longer clean up in the end.

I kept a sample of each to review side by side after all were in the bottle. Hmmm. Yummy.

I had to keep them separate after bottling so I could label them correctly.

OK...maybe you don't need to see this....these are the dregs after racking the beer off.

It looks kinda bad, but hopefully that means all the good stuff is now in my beer.

Cheers.