We brought out Blond American and American IPA to a fund-raiser at Verdugo (verdugobar.com)
We got some good tasting notes from Ryan Sweeney (owner and Cicerone). Looking forward to incorporating his input into our next beer (for which we bought ingredients earlier in the day).
We served two of our beers at a charity event this Saturday. The blonde (American yeast) and the IPA (also American yeast).
They seemed well received. We have our serving set-up pretty well squared away.
We have another event in a couple of weeks. We might serve the Belgian blonde and Belgian-American IPA beers then. This event is being held at the Verdugo Bar in the Glassell Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. It is known for serving the best beers in the city. In fact, the owner is LA’s first Cicerone so the bar is set very high.
Dry yeast is doing its job. Only six weeks to go.
Ten gallons of a Pilsner Urquell clone is in process.
We planned on a two step mash but were forced into a third step with our broken thermometer.
Looking good so far.
Bummer. Had to dump the water, clean and start over.
While heating our HLT for 10 gallons of Pilsner we see this in the bottom.
Not a porn movie.
We tried our two blonde ale variants. They are GOOD!
The Belgian ale was first tapped. It tastes lightly hopped (as expected- we used half the hops after all). If it weren’t 6.5 alcohol I would call it a session beer. Easy to drink. Too easy.
The American really benefited from the additional dry hops. Wow. Great beer. Not a boast, but an assessment of what we like. We like.
Our American yeast IPA looks ready to move to secondary. We will toss in an ounce of Centennial to dry hop. If the hybrid yeast batch is ready too (still slowly bubbling as I type) it will get racked with the same.
We have another charity event to which we have ben asked to bring a keg. Hopefully one of the IPA’s are worthy.
Our blond ales were kegged. The American dry hop leaves can be seen in one photo below. The other is the Belgian which, even after racking to secondary, had a lot of sediment. These should be good. Final gravity hit the mark at 1.010.
The holiday ale made it to the USC vs. Oregon tailgate, where it was completely consumed. Reviews were good.
The mini CO2 and tap kit worked great. It uses more than one and less than two cylinders to push a 5 gallon keg.
We also tapped the Pumpkin Ale. It was pretty weak, but still pretty good. We tried it with a bit of pumpkin syrup (the kind Starbucks adds th their lattes) and it was tasty.
An conceptual drawing of what our rig would look like. Probably from February or March of 2010…
Los Angeles Brewers 