The Gavinator

So,

After shifting it around a few times, and having Quinn toss his eyes at it, we have a finished recipe for the "Gavinator, a strong brown Doppelbock". The idea came from a trip last fall to the dog park with a few friends. Our friend Emily has a pup named Gavin. He is best buddies (when they are not eating each others faces) with our dog Malachi. Gavin is a sweet, strong and brown dog and having gotten into the habit of naming our beers after people we know we decided to throw dogs into the mix. Here is a picture of Gavin himself:
What a handsome devil he is, all dressed up and posing for a picture for his Mom. I've been thinking about letting him help with the recipe by humping the primary fermentor, I know he would gladly help us out.

In other "beers we made that are named after people" news, we cracked a bottle new Brad the Braggart Braggot. The first one, in my opinion, had the subtle flavors of being punched in the face with a glove soaked in beer. To put a finer point on it, I put way too much lavender in it. In the new recipe it was decided that a softer approach was necessary. So we still put lavender in it, but just a little. We also put heather and a few other herbs in there to add complexity and make it not do that whole, sucking thing, it did before. I think it may have worked, it is still very young but has some killer residual sugar and complexity. Give it about a year and it should start getting really nice.

---Ricky

A few days off

Hi,

Having survived my first Christmas season at Masseys Jewelers and having accrued quite a bit of comp. time I have been given a good five days off in a row. Having never had five days off in a row from any job, ever, I am about to have more time on my hands then I know what to do with. With travel being a too expensive option and sitting on my ass being too tempting I am trying to come up with some cheap little brewing ideas.

I'll throw some ideas at Quinn and see if any stick to both of us. I have a Smoked Porter and a Double Bock idea that has been in the works for a bit, but who knows. There are some Mead ideas out there that have been waking me up in the middle of the night in need of a cold shower. So, who knows what we'll do, if anything. I am just psyching myself up to do some brewing this upcoming vacation. Anyway, watch this spot for potential vacation brewing adventures.

---Ricky

Hi everyone,

As I am sure you have noticed, this is the first blog posting here. I started this blog on impulse, as I am not typically the type to make a blog. However, over the past year or so of brewing we have had many friends help Quinn and myself out and many more who want to keep apprised of all our brewing exploits. When I say brewing exploits, I mean they want to know when more booze is ready so they can come over and drink some.

With that being said, this blog was also started with the intent of keeping another record of all our brewing adventures. Quinn and I have a spooky little note book where we keep all our recipes and such in, but that only keeps a record of grain bills and such not the wackieness that ensues. The note book is covered in all types of crud, so that counts a little in the "Wackieness" categories, but not enough in my book.

So, for fear of this post getting too long and boring whatever poor fool happens upon this blog I'll end on some ACTUAL BREWING CONTENT! Heavens, what a thought? So, yesterday we had a bit of a bottling party. We bottled three fruit wine we had brewed a few months back, two of which I'll let my co-brewer fill you in on, as they were fully his recipes. The one I'm going to mention is a Sweet Plum Wine I hammered out.

I Love Asian plum wine more than I love myself, pretty sad I know but I am self deprecating like that. My wife, Quinn, Kitty (his lady) all love plum wine more then they love me also. With that being verifiable fact, I decided to make some. Diane, the wonderful plum bearing Secretary at my work happened to have a plum tree and gave me about 6 lbs of it. About 4 or 5 months later here we are, with a deep magenta wine. It sits about 10%ABV, is fairly full bodied for a plum wine, and has a near dessert wine sweetness. I didn't muddle with this as much as I typically do with all the other brews coming out of the house, so it comes off as straight forward plum. It is 100% drinkable now, but with its sweetness and slight tannin backbone it will age very well. I wish all our brews came off this well.


---Ricky Hansing, Co-Brewer