The ah-ha moment

Well... It's been an interesting month (or two), in regards to the brewing.

First, as anyone who has read this blog before will notice (and by the counter, apparently I do get a few visitors), I changed the name of my blog.  As much as Hyper-Adrenalin kind of described me (or at least it used to), it never described my brews, or my brewing.
I have to admit as a hyperactive person all my life, the one thing that I slow down for, and am meticulous in each step of... it's my brewing. I think I'm probably border line OCD about it actually. When there's a recipe to follow, I follow every step to the letter. A friend who also likes to home brew laughed at me because of how intense I would get about following each step. Then he tells me my brews (usually) turn out better than his.
I love to home brew! It's not just a hobby for me, it's a passion. And I'm not even that good at it yet. I'm still an extract brewer. I can only imagine how much more passionate I will be when I get to the stage of All Grain like ESheppy, a man who started out with a simple Mr Beer kit and has probably forgotten more than I have learned on his way to becoming a brewing genius and the guy I turn to for help and advice on a regular basis.

So, I figured changing the name of this blog was appropriate. I couldn't think of something witty (because I'm not that witty), and using my last name didn't look right. I decided to use something based on the name of my home town, Mount Forest. Mostly because I've been getting sentimental the last few months, due to my grandfather passing away a few years ago and my grandmother living with lung cancer in her winter years, and also because I miss the quiet and the friendliness of my small home town. Hence the new blog name.... Mountain Forest Brew. I like it so much, I may have to copyright it, because if I ever get to that dream day where I open my own microbrewery I'll either name it after my grandparents, or my home town.


So... my brews....
As I posted in the last blog, I had a bit of a scare with my first 'big' brew, the Gigantor Quad. It's in the bottles, conditioning now. Hopefully it will turn out alright when it comes time to drink it in a few months.

I am proud to say, I brewed the BEST batch of beer I have brewed to date! I am ashamed to say, I have no idea what the numbers are on this brew.
I bought a second MrBeer kit a few months back, that came with a can of Classic American Light. I'm not a fan of American light beers, never have been. So I purchased a can of Canadian Blonde at the same time. Why? Honestly.... because I thought it was amusing to mix two cans called American and Canadian.
At first I had plans for this brew... I bought Citra hops and Safale US-05 yeast. The problem is, I'm not great at time management, just ask my wife (the planner). So I forgot or put off (take your pick) making the brew for a few weeks. Then I finally said 'screw it' and decided, one Sunday, to just grab my LBK and the ingredients and mix it all. Mostly because I was out of beer, and also because I was bored. I did not, however, remember that I had bought the hops and the yeast.
This was as simple a brew as I could make, right in line with all the other MrBeer batches I have made, that I have not tried to tweak. I sanitized the equipment. Boiled the water, removed the water from the heat, poured in the can of Classic American Light and the can of Canadian Blonde, added more cold water, opened and pitched the two packets of yeast included with the cans, stirred, put the lid on, and put in the closet for 3 weeks. Three weeks went by, I sanitized 8 one litre bottles, put the appropriate amount of sugar in each bottle, filled each bottle with the brew from the fermenter, and put the bottles away in the closet for another three weeks.
The weekend of the third week of conditioning The Planner and I had decided to take up the offer from her niece and niece's husband to visit on a Saturday night and play cards/chit chat. The niece's husband, a guy I gladly call my friend, had given me the guilty feeling for never bringing over a bottle of home brew for him to try. So this time I thought I would bring over the CanAm that was just reaching the right time to open, and let him try that. Even though I had no idea how it had turned out yet.
Well.... it turns out I made the BEST brew I have ever made!!! Will (niece's husband/my friend), looked at me and said "this is really good beer", I had to agree with him.... it surprised even me!

The sad part is... because I rushed through the brewing of this batch, I never took the gravity readings, so I have no idea what the ABV is. ESheppy  asked if I knew what the SRM and IBU numbers were, I don't know that either (although I don't know how to figure those ones out yet).
So.... for now, I will enjoy the last couple of bottles of this CanAm I made, while I watch the Leafs game on TV tonight at Wills. In a couple of weeks I will purchase the same two cans of extract and make an exact replica of this batch, only this time I will take the gravity readings and possibly find one of the trusted brew calculators online and figure out exactly what I am making.



Until next time...

GO OILERS!



edit note...... There are a couple of other brewing geniuses I would like to mention here, whom I turn to almost as much as ESheppy.... Tim and Clyde. Cheers, fellas. I didn't link them in this post earlier because, well, they don't blog. But that doesn't mean they aren't a HUGE help in my learning process.