beer

This morning I moved my latest beer, a coffee Irish stout from the primary fermenter to the secondary, in anticipation of bottling probably next weekend. It's lighter in color than I expected and I really am not detecting any coffee at all at this point. Still smells like really sweet, well, just really sweet. My last stout (an imperial stout) took forever to age into a good beer, so this one will be bottled and then left to age for a few months. My goal is six. Let's see how long I can make it for real.

One of the fun parts of brewing, other than drinking the beer, of course, is deciding what to label the beer. Some people don't label at all. I think it's cool, so I always do.

I say always like I do this all of the time. Truth be told, the coffee stout is only my fourth beer. The beer (and their labels) are:

An Imperial Stout:

A Scottish Ale:A German Alt (in the bottle now, haven't tasted it yet):


And now the coffee Irish stout (haven't finished the label for this one yet.

Brewing is interesting. Lot's of time standing around waiting for water to boil, keeping things heated to a certain temperature. Trying to keep things clean. It's time consuming while you're doing it. Of course, you can't brew without having a few beers yourself, so that makes it better.

I've got a couple of friends who brew regularly (Dave & Eric) and one who's about to brew his first batch (Bryan) so, in theory, if we trade out, we could always have some good home-brewed beer around. Not bad, especially given the very limited selection of available beers here in Utah.

Anyway, I'm rambling now and I'm sure this isn't really that interesting so I'll stop. For now.