8-bit Brewing

It’s been a while…again. Here’s what happened. We took a trip to Oregon. We consumed a lot of beer. Hit up the Portland International Beer Festival on a Friday, a party at Colbys on Saturday and at some other point hit up Rogue in Portland and McMenamins. There’s a really good beer store, as well as other liquors too, called John’s Marketplace. Great place for craft brews from the states and especially some Nøgne-Ø, Mikkeller and Cantillon, which are my favorite European breweries. Hit up Rogue in Newport as well, decided I wasn’t all that impressed. I was kind of blah the whole trip anyways so it could have been from that.

So anyways, the Coco Nichas 2.0 and 2.1 had to be reprimed. Strangely, one bottle from each batch was carbonated and the others were not. Tastes great, no bubbles. I reprimed it on 9/8 so hopefully it’ll be good by the time I get back home.

I haven’t gotten feedback from Kevin but I’ve decided to make a honey mead. Inspired by a god awful “blackberry” honey mead at a local bar with sadly the best microbrews in Arizona on tap, which isn’t toooooo impressive. If there’s another one, I don’t know of it. I’m a snob and I know it, but you don’t get anywhere being satisfied with everything all the time. Anyways, the mead was terrible. Tasted like I was drinking something that should be used for cleaning and engine. The waitress asked me if I’d ever had mead in a snobby tone. Oh well. Anyone have any honey hook ups? I need about 18 pounds.

Should be bottling tomorrow. Hopefully Kevin doesn’t have more groceries to get. Kekeke.

Got caught up in life and didn’t brew up until recently. It happens. Anyways, Kevin and I got around to making the Coco Nichas 2.00 (two point oh oh) finally. It should be stronger than the original and maybe a slight bit more chocolatey. I got a little crazy and decided to experiment. We split the batch and wound up making a Coco Nichas 2.1, which has cherries and vanilla. It’s still fermenting as opposed to the regular batch, not surprising though since of the sugar in the cherries. So yeah, that’s that for now. Toodles.

I am more than proud to announce that “The Fear”, named after Kevin, is ready. I have to say that after sampling it I am very impressed. First pour produced a nice head (1.5cm or so), amazing hop blast in the beginning with a long bitter but mellow hoppy aftertaste. A select few of you will be getting these so, keep an eye out.

So Kevin, my partner in (a non gay way) brewing has been added as an admin. Granted there’s only a handful of you but still. He’s here. And he is handsome.

I seriously hate how this shit resizes my images, otherwise I’d just post them directly. Great and now they’re 90 degrees off.

First few bottled.
All bottled.
Yesterdays batch earlier today.
And this evening-ish.

Today, April 5, the chocolate stout is going to be primed and bottled. It will be ready for consumption on the 12th. I’ll update this post later today when I’ve actually bottled, heh.

Great, so I bottled. Took 2 hours, did it solo. Figured no reason for Kevin to drive all the way from Encinitas. The batch produced about 48 bottles, plus half of a bomber, which I’ve dedicated to what I’ll call “research” drinking. Hope that priming it gives it some more body, not impressed with it currently, otherwise it’s not too bad. By the way, using one of those liquid vacuum pumps and trying to have the bottle filler pressed down at the same time is a pain in the ass.

I’ll have to upload pictures in a bit .  I’m starving.

Yeah, so almost two weeks later here’s the images.

Attempting to get our boil on. We totally did it.

Proof we did it.

Meet Wort. Notice the build up of hops on the side of the pot.

The only time an ice cold bath is good..

Transferring.

Fermentation.

Dessert.