Well, I just finished up an eight hour brewing session. That is for 20 gallons of beer, so it is basically two 10 gallon batches. These were numbers 50 and 51, not that I’m counting.
The first batch was is a good old fashioned IPA which my wife is quite fond of. What made it different this time was that I used some whole leaf Cascade hops that Craig, a customer of ours at the bike shop, gave us a couple of months ago. I had dried them and stuck them in the freezer. I had ended up with 13 ounces or so. Here is a picture of what 2 ounces of whole hops looks like next to 2 ounces of pellets.

I ended up using 12 ounces of the cascade along with 2 ounces of Magnum in the 10 gallon batch.
Here is the recipe:
28 pounds 2-row
2 pounds caramel malt 40l
1 pound carapils
2 ounces magnum at mashout
2 ounces cascade at 60 min
2 ounces cascade at 45 min
2 ounces cascade at 30 min
2 ounces cascade at 15 min
2 ounces cascade at 5 min
2 ounces cascade at 1 min
I am still up in the air about whether I will dry hop in the secondary. I dry hopped once before with whole hops and it wasn’t much fun.
The O.G. came out at 1.070

The second batch of the day was one of my old stand byes. It is an English ESB. I have made this three or four times and like it a lot more than other folks do. It is a lower alcohol and much less hoppy. After visiting many pubs in England last summer, I developed a liking for some of their beers. I do like mine carbonated and a little cooler though. Here is the recipe:
22 pounds 2-row
2 pounds caramel malt 60l
10 ounces brown sugar
3 ounces Fuggle at 60 min
1 ounce Fuggle at 5 min
2 ounces Fuggle at dry hop (WHAT????)
I know, this is my first try at some dry hopping in this beer. Remember, my wife is English, I’m not.
This came out a little higher O.G. than I had planned at 1.060.
For both beers I made a yeast starter from a store bought culture. That saves money and makes things a bit faster in the primary.

For years I would put aside an entire afternoon to make 5 or 6 loaves of bread. I would start a day or two beforehand feeding my starter and getting it good and smelly. Now I find myself just making a loaf every couple of days. It takes about 10 or 15 minutes of hands on labor and about 45 minutes in the oven.

– Posted by Chaz

We finally got The Hub Crew up to The Lost Coast to do some mountain biking at Paradise Royale which is located about 3.5 hours North of Cotati, a little longer if you are riding with Aaron. This is an incredible 12 mile loop of pure single track designed by mountain bikers for mountain bikers. Here is a link to the trail map. Aaron, Raphy, and Sonic Yannick went up a day before Claire and I so that they could scout out the trails and arrange to have sausages on the campfire for Claire and I when we showed up Sunday night after getting our butts kicked at the shop that day. We stayed at the Tolkan Campground that night which was very quiet, and very dark. Aaron, Raphy, and Sonic were in a great mood when we arrived at 9:30, and had even waited to start eating until we showed up. That was quite a feat considering that Aaron had done the loop twice that day and that all three of them had spent a couple of hours doing some downhill runs right at the edge of the campground.

Aaron was a little worried about Sonic’s appetite since he had started gnawing on some firewood, but everyone survived.

The next morning, after a breakfast of Poptarts, eggs, and sausage. We headed out for the loop. The five of us did the entire thing with no major mishaps. The trails were very well marked, and except for some creek crossings, very rideable. Aaron and I were foolish enough to do a second loop.

– Posted by Chaz