brew crazy revisited

A nice rainy night on wednesday I went to my first meeting of the Indian Peak Alers, and invite I received from John whom I'd met at the AHA party last week. This group usually meets at Lefthand, but tonight they were at the Tasty Weasel at Oskar Blues - both surprisingly just a quick jaunt down 287 in Longmont. The theme for the night was cask & wood aged beers and luckily I still had some of my french oak chip aged IPA Rocktane to share with the group. Considering that it was only my second brew ever, I was surprised at how well received it was. On the night, I also tried samples of a chaiPA, oak aged imperial stout, pliny the elder clone, apricot wheat, and a couple more I cannot recall. The guest speaker was a brewer at OSB who spoke about cask aging. One member had made some pretty sweet coasters out of bamaboo as a thank you for a big brew day they had done last saturady and I scored ~4 lbs of pale malt which was extar from a large buy they had done. All in all a pretty solid group of about 35 folks. I think I'll visit with them again.

Thursday I bottled the Red (Sox) RyePA, since it was bout a week overdue and next month's aler's meeting theme was IPAs.



It had been raining all week and friday was the first day I had a chance to cook my Kiwit. I was beginning to worry about the 4 pounds of kiwi I'd purchased the week prior, but it turned out just fine - they were a bit easier to peel after having ripened a bit. What a messy brew - my first foray into brewing with fruit. This should be a perfect summer sipper!



Steph was out of town with her sister until sunday. So saturday I headed over to 3959 to meet up with Jacq & Andy before we went to Ryder's 2nd b-day at the park of Violet. It was once again cool & rainy, but it got damp cold as soon as we showed up to the park. No one was ready for such a soggy chill, so after about 45 minutes the party was called a wash. We went back to 3959 for some margs and some sotring through Andy's newly acquired terabyte of choons to pick things out I thought they might groove on. Then on my way home I swung by LauRenn's to pick up some honey from Renn's hives for a braggott I plan on making soon. When I got back to Milo I finished up watching the Bruins (loss) and the Red Sox (win).

Sunday when Steph got home we watched Middle Men which was a surprisingly good film about the precursor to paypal. And then we went shopping for some dinner ingredients and Steph whipped up a sweet fresh tortellini dish. Nom nom nom.