Tons of Fun

Well its been a while, and tandr have been busy over the last few weeks.  Its been a total mad house!  And we have the Kegerator up and running in full swing. Brewed two beers and a cider, with a third beer coming in the next few days. All this happened so quickly that tracye and I didn’t even have time to think up a brew for our 1 year beeraversery. I can not believe its been one year already. 

Beers on tap .  stone IPA clone, cider, red ale, lemon wheat ale.

beers brewed , coco stout, ginger/chamomile ale, apple cider, and a brown ale with Hot peppers.

The reason that we have been brewing so much lately and trying to add different things to our beers is do to the fact that we are going to be submitting two of the the beers to the Copper Creek Creative Libation Challenge. (See rules and information below)…

The Copper Creek Creative Libation Challenge is a competition designed 
to facilitate brewing innovation and participation from the 
homebrewing community in Athens. It is open to all non-professional 
brewers. The goal is to develop a unique, radical, clever, and above 
all delicious beer recipe to be showcased at the Copper Creek Brewpub 
by Matt Buley in downtown ATH. Don’t be afraid to be way out there 
with your recipe but also don’t be intimidated by that prospect. If 
you have a good idea that doesn’t seem mind blowing in radness go for 
it anyway, chances are it will be excellent beer no matter what. 
The guidelines for the brew are as follows: 
  Original Gravity contribution from grain should be no more than 
1.060 
  Up to a lb of adjunct sugar (per 5 gals) may be used beyond that so 
total O.G. can be higher 
  As already stated the recipe should be something out of the 
ordinary. Bent styles, combined 
  styles, interesting ingredients or techniques, whatever, except; 
  NO FRUIT as Matt cannot use fruit in his tanks. 
  Be clever with your recipe name if possible. 
  Darker styles are a plus but anything will be considered. 

Entries: 
  Drop off one bottle and $2 cash entry fee at Blockader Homebrew 
Supply by the first tier 
  judging date (TBA). You must also hold at least 3 bottles in reserve 
in case you move on to 
  2nd tier. There are no limit to number of entries per competitor. 
You will provide a name and 
  brief description of the beer and receive a numbered slip to prove 
yourself as the originator of 
  the recipe. Every entry will receive feedback from the initial 
judging panel. 

Judging: 
  Matt Buley and any assistants he selects will sample all entries in 
mid-May, make 
  notes/scores, and choose several beers to move on to the 2nd tier. 
  A special meeting will then occur with participation open to all 
members of A.L.E.Z. at which 
  the 2nd tier beers will be tasted (4 more bottles must be provided 
for this judging). 
  Those members present will decide on the winning recipe either by 
consensus or blind ballot. 

Prizes: 
  The winning recipe will be brewed by Matt at Copper Creek in June 
with the winning entrant invited to participate in the brewing. It 
will occur on a weekend to facilitate participation. 
  Full credit and acknowledgment will be made to the recipe creator in 
Copper Creek sales material. 
  Winner will receive all entry fees from the CCChallenge minus 
whatever funds are required for  the judging process. 
  Winner will receive either a $50 gift certificate to Blockader 
Homebrew Supply or a prize of commiserate value. 

We all Win: 
  We can all go to CC the first night the Creative Libation is tapped 
to sample it and proclaim our glorious achievement for as long as Ort 
will listen.

Kegerator Tower

Well since brewing started at T and R brews we have been bottling every batch.  We hate this part because it takes the longest of all the steps.  So we started looking in to kegging and modifying the old Kegerator that I have had since my college days.  The first step was to buy some kegs.  After looking around the world wide web, an doing some research in to the two different types, sanka and soda, we purchased 4 soda kegs.  The next step was to build a keg tower, with 4 faucets.  

Let just say trying to modify an old kegerator would have been easier, if we would have just spent some money and not built it. After spending about 10 hours at lowe’s and home depot in three days we finally had all the equipment to built a tower.  What it is, the base is the original 3 inch column with a 4″ tall 6″ deep and 16″ wide wood box on top. It has 4 faucets on the front, and a hinged door on the back. We painted the whole unit black to hide any screws or JB wield spots.

i have posted a picture in the about T and R brews page for you to see….

Gadgets

As I start to move deeper in to the world of home-brewing I find Myself (R), always reading and searching for information about beer. That leads me to the topic of the day and a few of the things i have been working on since me trip to Raleigh NC.( Brew day in Raleigh NC — January 24, 2009 ) or ( Birthday Brew ).

I have started working on building some new equipment to add to me home-brewing setup.  

1. Brew Kettles 
2. Kegerator Tower 4 Faucet
3. Mash Ton 
4. Gain Mill 

As for the information about each one of the above project, i have to get back to you on those at a later day, just wanted to drop a little and let the home-brewers out there know what i was working on…

Brew day in Raleigh NC — January 24, 2009

Brew Day of a the Pale Ale from afar.

Driving about six hours with your girlfriend to spend, a birthday weekend with one of your best friends is always a blast. But once you throw in taking out time for a chance to share a hobby that both of you enjoy, that just makes the weekend just that much more special.  

It all started on January 24, 2009  at around 8:15 am. We started brewing the beer that would become the Simmering Brews house pale ale. It would be my first time brewing an all grain beer. I did know what had to be done in brewing an all grain, I just did not know how it was going  to get done. The day was a lot of watching and sitting on my butt, while Andrew the brew master of Simmering Brews formulated a beer that is yet to be tasted. We started off with 3.5 to 4 gallons of water and heated it up to around 160 degrees, this took some playing with since we lost track of the temperature and had to add some cold water to it.  after that we throw the cracked grain and the water in to the mash ton and let it sit for 1 hour.  In the down time we set the kettle and got the sprague  water ready, and weighted out are hops. started the boil and add the hops at at different times in the boil to add aroma and bittering. Boiled the wort for 1 hour and the chilled it down with wort chiller, and finished off the day with pitching the yeast into the 5 gallon carboy. 

All and all if was a good day and learned a lot about all grain brewing, after thing slow down for me in my life may be me and my girlfriend and take our brewing to all grain but for now we will stick with the extract. 

thanks to my boy andrew for a great day in brewing…..

Bottle/Brew Bottle !!!

Sunday January 11, 2009 was the first day of the new year for T and R brews, as we set out to show one of our friends what it feels like to homebrew. She has been asking to brew beer with us for about three months, so we invited her over had a few home brews and brewed beer.  The day was all good but long!

I will never try to do so much in one day as it gets old quick. For us to brew we first had to bottle one of the two beers that we had in the secondary fermentation stage. We started at three o’clock cleaning and cooking the bottles then we bottled our Hefeweizen, which is now our staple beer in the line of our homebrews. Then we turned around and stuck more bottles in the oven before starting to brew a Irish Red Ale. As the Wort cooled we bottled our second beer of the day, an Oatmeal stout. We finished the day around 21:45, after dropping our irish red ale in to the primary fermentation tank. 

I know the blog is going to sound like i am complaining about my day on sunday but i am not. The joy i get from homebrewing helped me forget the bad day my NY Giants had in football.

Hello world!

Welcome to T and R brews

Welcome to T and R  Brews, the blog about  my hobby that has to do with everything beer, from brewing, tasting and writing about the world of beer.  T and R brews is the name of the beers as a hobby to learn how to homebrew and create craft beers at home. We have been brewing since April 5th, 2008. . We brewed seven times and produced five different beers;

english nut brown, hefeweizen(3), pale ale, imperial stout, and  Oatmeal Stout.

All were extract beers, and tasted like they should have been found at your local watering hole. Over the last few weeks i have been thinking a lot about our beer and our brewing, and want to learn much more than I know about it at this point , so i have started reading many different magazines and other peoples’ writings on the internet. So I began this blog to help keep what i learn out there for others like me that might need help some day. I’ll  be posting  various things on here as I see fit, from reviews about beers i taste ( home brewed, or comercially brewed ), to articles i fell are interesting, my recipes and just random ramblings from time to time.

So enjoy and try some new beers