BrewMagician\’s Blog

This year, our club has exceeded our top goals from any year before.  Gordon Biersch and Big River took notice of that, and figured we’d be more profitable to them if they comped our tent and took tokens for our beer.

C’est La Vie.

 We lose control of our taps, but that’s not such a big deal.  There’s so much beer at that thing it’s ridiculous.  And, all the proceeds from VIP ticket sales are funding our 12-tap draft beer dispensing system, affectionately referred to as “The Hitman.”  “Killing Beers for Years…” and all that goodness.

Anyways, Bret and East Tech have begun production on it, and I hope to have it complete by the Fest.  It will be beautiful.  I’m really psyched about it.

Hopefully, it will gain us a foothold to holding our own festival in the spring.  From there, we can use it to raise funds for the club to build our own brewing rig to keep at Bend Brewing, if they will allow that…

Anyways, more later.  I’ll post pics of “The Hitman’s” construction soon…

Just got my ridiculously strong magnets from ThinkGeek.com.

They are no joke.  They work like a champ.  I can get a 1/2 “tornado” in the water.  I think their full name is “Ridiculously Strong Magnets.”

Anywho, I will use them to build up the starter for our club’s 50 gallon batch next Saturday…

Brewed on Saturday with Rich, our resident gruit master.  I was amazed by how much beer he has fermenting in his cellar.  There were about 14 carboys fermenting as secondaries!  I don’t know where he finds the time or patience to brew, then give most of it away.  We brewed his 140 Shilling Ale, which has heather tips in it, and an OG over 1.100, and I had to leave before the second batch was done boiling, but it had Bog Myrtle and Heather Tips in it and it smelled great.

I’ll definitely be doing some more gruit brewing in the future…

I’ve discussed with some members changing up how my club accepts members.

We have a ton of inactive brewers who are still on the list.  Right now, there is no incentive to pay dues.  I need to make a “Members Only” section of the site, but for now I’m going to cull the list down to only dues-paying members.

It may make it more expensive to go to the Southern Brewer’s Fest for us, but we’ve never really had trouble getting people to go to that.  So, we could sell passes like we did last year to brewer’s who just want to go, but aren’t contributing any beer to the cause at a higher rate to offset the cost of the Big Brews.

I feel like it will make the club a more tight-knit group…

Today I brewed with Chris Hunt over at Moccasin Bend Brewing company in the St. Elmo region of Chattanooga.  We made up a batch of Pumpkin Seed Pale Ale.  Maris Otter and Crystal with Fuggles and Simcoe.  I now understand Joe’s fascination with Simcoe.  They smelled like tangerines in pine trees.  Delicious.  I would love some of those in a nice tall glass of IPA.

 It’s good to brew with other brewers, because everyone does something different.

I learned a great deal from him about troubleshooting and emergency engineering.  Mainly because his gear kept falling apart.

I can’t jab at him, he has the capacity to mash a 5 barrel batch, and most of that they built themselves.  I wish I had a 5-barrel version of the Brew Magic.  It could have ladders and slides and such to get to all the levers.  Like an adult version of the child’s game, but twice as fun.

 Anywho, I’m sore and tired now, going to bed.

Gave up Beer for Lent.  It’s hard to run a homebrew club when you’re not drinking.

 I think I’ll give up something else for Lent next year.  I have 18 gallons of Pale Ale (8 of which are I2PA) conditioning from before Lent started.  The hardest thing about giving up beer is having gallons of it at your fingertips.

 Next year I’m giving up something else.