Brewing update

Let us congratulate Matuz on his union in marriage. Unfortunately/Fortunately it was with a woman and not a brew.

Lessons to be learned from the weekend:

1. The experience proves we can serve, beer, wine on a large scale event. The Hefeweizen was absolutely a crowd pleaser(as all 10 gal were emptied) and all we were left with was 5 gal of Witbier. I have to say we had plenty of people who knew our homebrew but I think many people trying homebrew for the first time enjoyed it.

2. Preparation of kegs is a necessity. As with the kegs at the house and at the wedding reception, I have concluded that the kegs need forced pressure for a week in a chilled environment(20psi). Basically they need to be hooked up to CO2 for a week. This helps fuse the beer with CO2 and provide a head. The beer had carbonation, but as the keg tap was flying all night, the beer could not recuperate and appeared flat. Preparing will help with this. Case in point- I am drinking the Bock and Dunkelweizen right now, each with a frothy head and great lacing. When I first tapped them, both were flat.

Hops update. Matuz's Sterling and Nugget hops have poked out last week and are leafing. The Halletau has not grown in two weeks and is starting to fade. I am thinking of trimming and letting new branches grow. This happened last year, and I am beginning to think this hop variety may be hard to grow in this area. On the bright side, the Cascade has two strong growing vines, one of them at least 5ft tall. At this pace its growing about a 1ft per week. Pray for stability and the appearance of cones. I will have pics once the weather improves.

3. I love homemade wine. Can wait for the next two batches!

The Kolsch was finally secondaried after three weeks! It was fermenting on the lower end of the temp scale which I assumed would slow the fermenting. However, there was plenty of yeast slurry on top when I opened the carboy. The smell and appearance seem on schedule with last year's batch. Hope to have it bottled Sunday. Anyone who can help is welcome.

Hopefully all of us can get together before Matuz's honeymoon to bottle the lagers which have been aging for months. I had a quality control sample last month, and I'm not going to lie, that once you taste them you are not going to want to go back to commercial lagers.