Anybody seen or heard from Jim Kosin...owner of Harborside Brewing?? He seems to have vanished from the face of the Earth.

If anybody knows him, ask him to check in with us here at Brewza.

Hope he's ok...

later kids.

josh

Recipe

Ok...here we go...I told you I'd be back...though initially, I didn't mean quite so soon.

I brought you something. We’re gonna keep this first recipe pretty simple. After all…we don’t know each other very well yet.

As we progress, things will get more complex…you’ll start seeing some all-grain and more advanced recipes here. For now, we’re gonna start simple with a nice imperial stout. Get everybody nice and warmed up…nice and loose…and then we’ll get into the more advanced stuff.

So bare with me. Are ya ready??

Here goes.

I guess if you’ve found your way to me, I’m assuming that you’ve got the basic brewing equipment…buckets, brew pot and such things.

If not, check out Northernbrewer for your basic equipment needs…they have a pretty amazing selection of ingredients as well if your town doesn’t have a homebrew shop.

Anyway…let’s get rolling…

Here are the ingredients:

2 lbs. American Chocolate Malt (crushed)
6.6 lbs. Liquid Dark Extract
3.3 lbs. Liquid Amber Extract
1 oz. Cascade (Pellets, 5.50 %AA) boiled 60 min.
.5 oz. Northern Brewer (Pellets, 8.00 %AA) boiled 30 min.
.5 oz. Fuggle (Pellets, 4.75 %AA) boiled 10 min.
Yeast : DCL Yeast Safale S-04 Top Quality Ale Yeast


Any questions on the ingredients?? Pretty normal, straight forward stuff right.

So basically, it goes something like this.
Place roughly 3 gallons of water in your brew pot and bring to a boil. Once it’s reached a boil, add your extracts, your crushed malt and the 1 oz of cascade hops. Allow mixture to continue boiling, stirring every 5 minutes or so.

At approximately 30 minutes from the start of the boil, add the ½ oz of Northern Brewer hops to mix. Continue to stir mixture every 5 minutes or so.

When mixture has been boiling approximately 50 minutes…or 10 minutes from the end, add ½ oz of Fuggle hops.

After mixture has boiled for 60 minutes, remove from heat and transfer liquid to your fermentation bucket or carboy to cool. Attached lid and affix bubbler. Allow 4-6 hours for liquid to cool before adding yeast.

Once liquid is cool, pitch yeast and replace lid with bubbler.

Allow to ferment for 7 days before bottling or kegging.

I hope this makes sense…again, I guess I’ve been assuming that you’ve brewed at least once before finding your way to me. If I’m mistaken and I need to post a primer on the entire process, let me know.

For now, gotta run.

Later kids.

josh

Hey there...sorry for the long delay...anyway, we're back and ready to talk beer.

I'm recently back from Portland, OR. The nature of the trip didn't really allow me to get out and try as many of the local brews as I really really wanted to, but I did stumble upon a couple really fantastic ones.

I am in love with the Bridgeport IPA. It is easily among my favorite brews at this moment in time, but now that I've been home for a few days, I'm at a loss for how to really describe it...so sadly I can't throw much of a review your way. But if you find yourself in the Pacific Northwest for any reason, grab yourself a couple of bottles...its definitely worth it...

Check em out on line at Bridgeport Brewing Company

The other brew that caught my attention was the Broken Halo IPA which is produced by Widmer Brothers. Fantastic stuff, but again, I am at a loss for how to really describe it as now that I'm back in the midwest, the only Widmer Brothers we can get is the hefeweizen. So again, if you find yourself in Washington or Oregon and have time for a tasty brew check it out at Widmer Brothers.

And for now, I've gotta run...but I'll be back soon, so keep checking back.

Later kids.