Batch 63

Even if I include some special batches (that didn’t make it to the website) I realize I haven’t brewed for a year and even longer if those special brews are not being counted which is a bit insane, but I’m happy to be back again, especially with this Christmas themed porter!

There’s plenty of reasons why I haven’t brewed as much lately, but perhaps the biggest being that me and my wife really wanted a house and started picking up the pace with house for sale visits this year. I knew that if we were lucky enough to find a fitting home, within budget and winning the bidding, we’d suddenly be in the position to sell our apartment and I don’t think the smell of sulfur gas because of fermentation is appreciated, or at least it wouldn’t improve our odds of anyone buying it.

So, here I am, many months later with the first batch done in the house and there’s actually more to talk about than just the very nice beer. First  of all I had to come up with an idea how to get rid of the boil steam since the best place to brew is in the basement, but there’s no outtake fan installed there and I didn’t want the whole basement to get soaked in brew steam.

I figured that many other people should’ve faced my challenge and so I went to my sources on the wild internet and started studying what could be best solution for me. I finally found out that Braumeister has a hood that can be placed on top one of their homebrewing systems and it fitted my Grainfather homebrewing system nicely so after having this in my arsenal I bought a steam exhaust pipe and installed a fan on the other end having it sucking out the steam to make as efficient as possible. With the results in hand, it turned out great! I even got rid of the smell which is a plus sometimes, especially for the others who’re not brewing..

The other thing worth mentioning is that I forgot about a few stuff during the brewing and the obvious reason for this is the lack of brewing lately of course. It didn’t however affect the brew negatively (at least to my knowledge and taste) but it was kind of funny how easy it is to become like a well-oiled machine and then wait a few months just to see how very easy and fast you become rusty (pun intended).

To summarize the experience I can say that I’m looking forward to brewing more, it was really nice with all the space and not blocking the kitchen for a full day so hopefully batches will start flowing again. I’ve mentioned previously that I want to design a new label and I will after reaching 100 batches so I better get going! The good news is that I’ll have plenty of time to create the best label possible!

Okay so the beer itself is also very nice, it wasn’t just nice to brew it. I think it’s very balanced and I’m pleased with how it turned out since I made the recipe myself too. I might change a few things before giving this a name (yes it was that good) but it wont be dramatically different because I actually think this is exactly what I’d like to have for Christmas.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!