Brandy Patton

Stubby’s Red IPA, I think he called it the Outlaw. I did the extract version on my then brand new single vessel system. I really didn’t know how to manage temperatures so I ended up hitting 170 or so during the steeping/mash phase. Dodged bees and wasps for a couple of hours, of course it boiled over almost instantly when I started the boil. The beer was drinkable, but oh wow I learned what astringency meant.

The current version of my saison recipe. I've gotten dinged for carbonation, dryness and hop flavor many times so the last batch I doubled the carb pressure, added a bunch of honey and cherry puree at flameout and another ounce of hops. It came out at 11 SRM and IBUs so I hope it does well in the Austin Zealots Crusade class this year. It's also entered in our Belgian Draft Horse.

A couple of years ago the AHA gave away some Vic Secret hops with a renewal so I decided to try making a southern hemisphere IPA with them. I didn’t think they’d be enough so I grabbed 4 ounces of Motueka hops. That beer was horrible! I don’t know what cat pee tastes like, but I bet it was close to what I just made five gallons of.

Bell’s Two Hearted. I used to beg friends and family to mule me Pliney but once I had Two Hearted my life got easier.

A SMASH with the Proximity base malt I won in the Alamo Brew Battle raffle. Centennial hops with Voss Kveik yeast. I’ve never used that malt or yeast before so it’ll be interesting.

25B, I’ve had the best luck with Saisons. They finish fast, you don’t really need to worry about fermentation temperatures and they can be fairly cheap to make. For drinking I’m pretty predictable, I’ve got a beard, I’m wearing a brewery t-shirt and I like beer so of course it 21A the good old American IPA.

My early attempts at all-grain were brew in a bag and for mashing I used my sous-vide immersion cooker to maintain the mash temperature. It actually worked pretty well but one day my work sent me a large bonus in the form of a pre-paid debit card so I used it to buy a Robobrew which after a few uses smoked the circuit board. So now the same system with a new circuit board is a Brewzilla version 3.1.1. I love brewing on this thing because it’s 110V and I can set it on my counter next to the kitchen sink. For fermenting I’ve got a chest freezer with a temperature controller to lager in, which rotates to an additional refrigerator when I’m not making a lager. As for fermenters I have a couple of the FastFerment conicals and an assortment of buckets and carboys. Nothing really special there. I had a kegerator already so I was kegging beer from the beginning. I only bottle for competitions or sharing and for that I’ve got one of the NukaTap counter pressure fillers. It’s made that process a lot faster and cleaner.

I lied to myself and got into it to “save money”. Now as I catalog my three-tap kegerator with a nitro tap, my over a dozen corny kegs, keg cleaning station, fermentation freezer, bottle capper, my new mill, all the chemicals, jars with yeast cultures, stir plate, etc… Nevermind, I think I made my point. Last year I decided to finally enter Bluebonnet with a saison and my wife’s hot cocoa stout. While we were watching, I said if we win a medal I’m going all in with homebrewing, if not I’m going to find another hobby. Well darn it the saison got a silver medal and both beers went to the BOS rounds. Her beer scored 42 points! So now we’re competitive homebrewers.