Dark Wheat Duck

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Wednesday morning (4 AM) was the start of an early, exciting brewday at Elevation 66 Brewing and despite Izzy being under the weather still, we had a full house with owner Super Dave, lead brewer Big Ben, and four volunteer brewers (me, Li’l Jon, Black Jack & new returner Easy E). With six brewers, the work was fairly easy when spread out… so during the slower times (waiting for water to boil) Big Ben’s wife was also there studying for her BJCP/Cicerone certification… and she conducted an Off-Flavor Tasting. What’s that? Well… it’s basically a taste test where you take a basic beer (in this case, Trumer Pilsner) and you basically add some off-flavors to it… and see if you can identify the off-flavor. Oh… there are some tricks in there too… as there are some placebos… and you’re just drinking the base beer… so it puts your senses to the test… especially if you don’t really have an amazing sense of smell like me. It’s a great way to test your senses… learn what might cause these kinds of off-flavors… and basically I was drinking some beer with my friends at something like 6 AM. Here’s some pictures…

 

 

After the brew day, Super Dave offered to take us out to T-Rex for some barbecue and brews… great restaurant to check out if you’re in the neighborhood.

 

A few hours later, Izzy headed back home and we headed out to the city of Concord to visit the MoreBeer homebrewing shop (warehouse level selection) and then we headed to downtown for some beers & snacks at the Hop Grenade, their neighbor E.J. Phair Brewing, and just down the street is Ale Industries’ Pig & Whistle location. All three have some pretty fantastic offerings. Hop Grenade has a more “connoisseur” level selection of brews… and of course, the elaborate podcasting area for the Brewing Network (which I WAS finally a guest on). E.J. Phair has some great brews including my personal favorite Shorty’s Revenge which is an English style Amber… and they had some great prices for their beers and decent snacks. Pig & Whistle seems like a nice place to check out after watching a movie late night across the street. Just a nice little area… congrats to Concord!

 

Here's a picture of a sunset & our hops growing up now...

Also, Izzy is graduating in less than a week! Yes, the amazing woman who has been joining me on these many, many adventures over the years… is finally graduating with her Illustration degree in mere days… and I couldn’t be more proud of her. She’s truly an amazing woman & I’m lucky to have her in my life. Feel free to leave your congratulations below… she checks everything (though I think the last REAL comment that wasn’t her… was probably over two years ago). Congratulations beautiful!

 

Sunday morning, we also started a Dunkelweizen recipe… that we’re affectionately calling Darkwheat Duck (Dunkelweizen means “Dark Wheat”) and it was a pretty standard recipe… but here are some great pictures…

 

We also kegged our Taddy Porter from Learn to Homebrew Day… it’s a little lighter than I expected, more like our English Pale Ale but more of an amber color… but still pretty delicious. More pictures…

 

So yeah… a good week of beer enthusiasm… and there are plenty of movies as well… until then, have a great day everybody!!!