AG#19 - California Dreaming - American Pale Ale (With pics!)

[Birdman]

Check out the RR taster plate


and I even got to have a very quick chat with Vinnie Cilurzo who was such a nice guy

[Birdman]

Finally, check the Bear Republic Kegarator!


I even got to have a Racer 5 from it

[WishboneBrewery]

Cool stuff... Maybe I've just found the only reason I'd actually want to go to America for...

[simple one]

Cheers for posting that. Very interesting stuff.

[onelegout]

Awesome! I can't wait to get out there and see these places : ) That Russian River taster plate looks epic!

This batch is now in the keg, it got down to 1.010 in a week then I let it warm up for a couple of days as there was a distinct diacetyl smell, once it had gone I crash cooled to help the yeast drop out and kegged. This batch does seem very cloudy, I'm hoping it will drop out in the keg. I think it's due to my thin mash. I don't think there was enough grain to provide a good grain bed filter, and as a result I ended up with very cloudy wort in the copper. Still, it tastes delicious despite being very young. I reckon a month or so in the keg for this one, and in the mean time I'm going to get an ordinary bitter on the go.

[Brunken Dastard]

I am onelegout, and will be using this account from now on as I figure as my brewery name is 'Brunken Dastard Brewery' I should be using that name on brewing sites : )

[WishboneBrewery]

Branching away from homebrew to commercial then are you?

[Brunken Dastard]

Not yet, but I hopefully will be within 5 years or so. I figure it doesn't hurt to get the brand out there sooner rather than later. I'm keeping an eye on the local commercial property available for brewing. A local publican having tried a few of my beers said that if they had freehold on the pub they would build a microbrewery in the back and ask me to be head brewer, but unfortunately they've only got a five year lease and it wouldn't really work. I'm expecting the craft brewing market to explode here in the UK as the mass market discovers hoppy light ale, so hopefully I can capitalise on that before I miss the boat! : )

[Brunken Dastard]

[WishboneBrewery]

ahh... best of luck

[Birdman]

Nice one mate. Good to have a plan of action. I was recently made redundant in the UK and looked into it quite extensively myself (in fact, the guy from work I was looking to partner with has decided to go for it and is hoping to open up next year). In the end I decided to stay with the company I work for but move to Sweden (were they are moving our operation to) as they made a very good offer. I'm pretty sure that the industry I work in won't get me anywhere near to retirement though, so I'm also hoping to open a brewpub some day.

Glad a few people enjoyed the photos earlier in the thread, I went to a homebrew club meeting last night for the DOZE club.
http://clubdoze.com/

It was a really good meeting. These guys are serious about homebrewing, there was a talk on dry hopping techniques with group tasting of commercial and homebrewed examples by Nate Smith (of brewing network / brewing TV fame), and I even got to have a quick chat with Tasty McDole (who gave me a bottle of Tasty APA ) which was really cool.

[critch]

I'm expecting the craft brewing market to explode here in the UK as the mass market discovers hoppy light ale, so hopefully I can capitalise on that before I miss the boat! : )

it already is mate and in certain areas the markets already saturated. cheshire has over20 micros and not enough trade to sustain them, bigger micros are usingstack em high sell em cheap tactics which many smaller micros cant compete with

the problem is the tie, you just cant sell to 90% of pubs

[onelegout]

I keep signing into this account by accident! : ) Can an admin block my access to it or something?

[Brunken Dastard]

Yeah the thing is my brewing isn't consistant enough yet anyway - I've still got a lot to learn and won't even consider going commercial until I've got a great deal more experience than I have now. One day though... one day!