Lotsa lettuce

Winding down on the lettuce season finally…but not before a big deluge of lettuce. I cleaned out most of the red leaf bed, about 1/3 of the mesclun bed, and a medium thinning of the green leaf bed. A good deal of peas too…guess nobody told them they aren’t supposed to be here until the 4th of July, this is our 4th harvest! Lesson learned on the peas: do not use tomato cages to hold them up when growing in a lasagna garden. It has always worked in my other beds but I put them in the lasagna bed and they took off! Easily 6 feet in height if stretched out but they are folded over because they outgrew the cages.

Lotsa lettuce washed and dried

Mesclun

Green Leaf

Red Leaf

Peas

Aren't they beautiful?

And I’ll be trying my first lager tonight!

Update
Not carbonated enough yet.
Appearance:Beautiful color. You’ll have to wait for when it is ready for a photo.
Smell:Unmistakeable lager smell
Taste:decent malty backbone, light bitter, needs to melt together more and will benefit from carbonation
Mouthfeel:thin, crisp, light, medium dry finish, very refreshing!
Drinkability: very drinkable, a quaffer for sure

Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold

First peas of the season

The first peas of the season shelled.

Hey! Who turned out the lights!

Our girls (and maybe one boy) are growing up fast. They spend their days out with the mama hens and the nights inside. They are not thrilled with the dark yet so they all crowd each other in the corner. The mama hens are treating them great, no issues at all. Hopefully this will kick start the egg production now that the molting is over too.

Bonus points to whomever gets the reference.

Drowning in lettuce but we see land!

The lettuce crop this year is fantastic. We’ve eaten salad, and salad, and salad, and salad. We gave away gallon bag after gallon bag of lettuce. There is still lettuce out there to pick. Every time I turn around it multiplies! Nice big leaved, rugged lettuce. Red leaf, green leaf, and mesclun.

Red leaf

Bowls of washed lettuce

Mesclun

Green leaf

Red leaf

Shouting Lager Lager Lager…finally!

Bottle up my Red Lager finally and I am washing this yeast to try to use again. The Red Lager smells wonderful and tastes really good too. Finally, a step in the lager process that doesn’t take twice as long, can’t wait for it to carb up!

Look at that happy Corona bottle, never been prouder of it’s contents!

Southcoast Homebrewer’s Association Group Brew Recipe

This is the recipe we used for our group brew. This is the third time we have done this recipe, it is a really easy recipe that brews a lot of beer, perfect for a group brew.

Type: Extract
Batch Size: 20.00 gal
Boil Size: 12.00 gal

Amount Item Type % or IBU
16.50 lb Pale Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM) Extract 45.21 %
16.50 lb Pale Liquid Extract [Flameout] Extract 45.21 %
3.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt – 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 8.22 %
0.50 lb Special B Malt (180.0 SRM) Grain 1.37 %
1.00 lb Jaggery sugar [Flameout] (0.0 SRM) Sugar 2.67 %
3.00 oz Warrior [17.20 %] (60 min) Hops 28.6 IBU
2.00 oz Warrior [17.20 %] (20 min) Hops 11.6 IBU
2.00 oz Cascade [6.10 %] (0 min) Hops –
1.00 oz Centennial [10.00 %] (0 min) Hops –

Est Original Gravity: 1.062 SG
Bitterness: 68.4 IBU
Est Color: 13.1 SRM

We did a late extract addition at flameout because the wort was so high OG, utilization predictions were low. We stirred in the extract right after we cut the flame and let it sit for 15 minutes to sanitize. Then we split the boiled wort 4 ways and topped each up with water to our desired volume. We got ~20 gallons from each kettle (we did two batches using two kettles). Each brewer is left to choose their own yeast, fermentation schedule, and any other additions.

Swap

My Red Lager came out of lagering yesterday and my Kolsch went into cold conditioning. The Red Lager looks very red and smells great! Bottle soon. My first RIS tasting will be in a few days too! The group IPA is starting to slow down now after mad blowoff and rapid bubbles. Skeeter Pee is also steady bubbles. Got an extract IPA to do and then next I am thinking Dampfbier and Roggenbier using the same yeast.

GO BRUINS!

Southcoast Homebrewer’s Association Group Brew

We brewed up 40 gallons of our SCHBA Warrior IPA for the 3rd time. This session we did a double batch using two burners. I just have to say it TEAM DECLAN RULES!

40 gallons of IPA yumminess

My IPA misbehaving already

Meet the brewers and their magical Princess.

I’ll post the recipe if anyone wants.