HopBomb
Member
Warning: ramblings of an old homebrewer who hasnt brewed a beer in 15 years to follow. Ive got a lot to get off my chest
First off, a big thanks to my younger brother who got bit hard by the homebrew bug recently, and figured hed try and drag me back into the fracas. Knowing that I used to brew my own many years ago, back in the early 90s before the kids took over my life, he started sending me emails with questions about this whole homebrew thing. I think I brewed my last beer back in 93. The story behind that being the last one for well over a decade shall have to wait for another time perhaps. Lets just say the story itself is still conditioning (a clue can be found in my screen name; not too cryptic for those that have shared the experience Im sure ).
So my brother gets his first batch under his belt. Then he wants to go large. Huge large in fact. He tells me hes found a recipe for Pliny. To him and me both this is the king of beers. Pliny the Elder. The penultimate Hop Bomb. For those of us that like big hopped up double IPAs. I myself am an East coaster, but I get out the Bay Area a few times a year where my brother lives and we have made the pilgrimage up to Santa Rosa to the Russian River Brewery several times. Pliny the Elder is liquid gold. Ive not yet myself had the pleasure of quaffing Pliny the Younger, but understand Vinnie is brewing up this years edition right now, and I sure hope to make it out there in Feb to experience that
So for Christmas, my brother sends me a box full of hops. Not just any hops mind you. Pliny hops. Simcoes, Cenntenials, Cascades, and Warriors. Seems that he went through all the trouble of searching the internet to get just the right the makings for his batch of Pliny, that he ordered up a double batch, split them up and sent me half. He figured if this wouldnt get me back to homebrewing, nothing would. So I bit. Hook, line and sinker. Excellent gift Bro, better than socks and ties for sure. I went up in the attic, and dragged down all my old homebrew supplies. I had to make a trip to the local homebrew store to replace most of the plastic stuff it was all looking a little weathered from years in the attic. But my glass carboy and other tools of the trade seemed to be in good shape. I spent a few hours soaking and scrubbing it all one night. And remembered how much I hate cleaning with bleach. But I hope I eliminated all the nasties.
Okay, so it is now done. I brewed my first batch of beer last night after my self imposed 15 year hiatus. A Pliny the Elder clone, which I've dubbed "Pliny the Elderado." I was a little rusty with the whole process, but it's kinda like riding a bike, it comes back quickly. Most of it anyway.
I invited my next door neighbor and beer buddy Larry over. He'd never brewed before, but always enjoys the good beer. Turns out a few months ago his daughter and her boyfriend went to one of these high end fancy brew houses up in D.C. where you brew your own beer on premises. They brewed 5 cases at a total cost of ~$250, all inclusive. Seems awful pricey, but they went all out with the full bells and whistle options, and had a good time so I'm told. Anyway, they gave Larry a case of their beer for Christmas. So he brought over a sixer of that, which was perfect because I think I recall that one of the cardinal rules of homebrewing is "One must drink homebrews whilst brewing." Rule number 6.5.a, sec 4 paragraph 2, I think it was. Right after RDWHAHB. Since after my 15 year homebrew hiatus, I didn't have any of my own, we drank his pseudo-homebrew. It was a very tastey IPA, btw.
So as my wort was cooling, and after we polished off all of his beers and a couple of local micros I had in the fridge, we were talking about bottling. Id long ago tossed all my old beer bottles Id had from my previous life as a homebrewer. So over the last couple of weeks since my Christmas present arrived Ive had to start saving bottles again. At which point he informed me that he had empties. They had lots of company over the holidays, and his recycle bin was overflowing with them he tells me. I haven't quite yet accumulated all the bottles I'm going to need for this beer when it's ready, so I lit up. "Great, I'd be happy to take them off your hands", I say. Just in time, it turns out. Today is recycle pick up day, and he'd already put them all in his recycle bin out by the curb last night for pick up this morning. So off we go, out into the cold wet drizzle at 11 o'clock at night, digging through the recycle bin, separating the plastics from the cardboard from the bottles, like giddy little kids. "It's just the brown bottles I'm after, and not the ones with screw off tops. Here's one... clank clank...and another ..." Probably waking a few of the neighbors up as we go. Or and least causing them to look out the windows to see what all the commotion is. We did eventually wise up and drag everything up into his garage where we could actually see what we were doing and complete Operation Bottle Separation (OBS). We ended up fishing out almost a case of good brown bottles, over half of which had been from the aforementioned daughter's IPA. Which was cool, because those didn't have labels. I always hated scrubbing the labels off of used bottles for my own brews. When we came back in out of the cold, Larry's wife, who'd also come over to witness the new neighborhood brewing operation, and my own wife were both giggling and laughing - they of course had spied our little dumpster diving bottle rescue escapades from our window. We must've looked pretty ridiculous out there. But it was worth it. Along with the six Larry brought over early in the evening, and the few more we polished off, I netted half the bottles last night that I'll need in a few weeks when Pliny the Elderado is ready. And I tell them "hey, I'm just trying to make good on one of my new year's resolutions to try and be more green. We just saved those bottles from being trucked off to some far away recycling plant, and reduced our carbon footprint..." Bottle locally and drink globally. Or something like that.
So, in a few weeks we'll get to see how Pliny the Elderado comes out. And how close to the one true "Elder" I get. Probably not as close as I hoped. My OG was a little low, coming in at 1.062. I was aiming for something like 1.074. Guess I'm just a tad rusty after 15 years off. But all those hops sure smelled good. The fresh leaf Simcoes were just spectacular. I don't recall ever using those in my prior brewing life. Or fresh hop leafs for that matter. I could never find them so always used the plugs and pellets. But I've still got another couple ozs left to do the dry hop with. I'm sure Vinnie would be proud.
And once again to my brother, who rekindled my homebrew fires, a big thanks. He also pointed me to this great HBT web site where Ive been poking around for a few days reading up on all thats good in the land of homebrew. Ive even seen a few of his posts he's Odins Brew I think. Perhaps one day hell even share his Pliny clone brewing adventures. Or at least some of his beer.
First off, a big thanks to my younger brother who got bit hard by the homebrew bug recently, and figured hed try and drag me back into the fracas. Knowing that I used to brew my own many years ago, back in the early 90s before the kids took over my life, he started sending me emails with questions about this whole homebrew thing. I think I brewed my last beer back in 93. The story behind that being the last one for well over a decade shall have to wait for another time perhaps. Lets just say the story itself is still conditioning (a clue can be found in my screen name; not too cryptic for those that have shared the experience Im sure ).
So my brother gets his first batch under his belt. Then he wants to go large. Huge large in fact. He tells me hes found a recipe for Pliny. To him and me both this is the king of beers. Pliny the Elder. The penultimate Hop Bomb. For those of us that like big hopped up double IPAs. I myself am an East coaster, but I get out the Bay Area a few times a year where my brother lives and we have made the pilgrimage up to Santa Rosa to the Russian River Brewery several times. Pliny the Elder is liquid gold. Ive not yet myself had the pleasure of quaffing Pliny the Younger, but understand Vinnie is brewing up this years edition right now, and I sure hope to make it out there in Feb to experience that
So for Christmas, my brother sends me a box full of hops. Not just any hops mind you. Pliny hops. Simcoes, Cenntenials, Cascades, and Warriors. Seems that he went through all the trouble of searching the internet to get just the right the makings for his batch of Pliny, that he ordered up a double batch, split them up and sent me half. He figured if this wouldnt get me back to homebrewing, nothing would. So I bit. Hook, line and sinker. Excellent gift Bro, better than socks and ties for sure. I went up in the attic, and dragged down all my old homebrew supplies. I had to make a trip to the local homebrew store to replace most of the plastic stuff it was all looking a little weathered from years in the attic. But my glass carboy and other tools of the trade seemed to be in good shape. I spent a few hours soaking and scrubbing it all one night. And remembered how much I hate cleaning with bleach. But I hope I eliminated all the nasties.
Okay, so it is now done. I brewed my first batch of beer last night after my self imposed 15 year hiatus. A Pliny the Elder clone, which I've dubbed "Pliny the Elderado." I was a little rusty with the whole process, but it's kinda like riding a bike, it comes back quickly. Most of it anyway.
I invited my next door neighbor and beer buddy Larry over. He'd never brewed before, but always enjoys the good beer. Turns out a few months ago his daughter and her boyfriend went to one of these high end fancy brew houses up in D.C. where you brew your own beer on premises. They brewed 5 cases at a total cost of ~$250, all inclusive. Seems awful pricey, but they went all out with the full bells and whistle options, and had a good time so I'm told. Anyway, they gave Larry a case of their beer for Christmas. So he brought over a sixer of that, which was perfect because I think I recall that one of the cardinal rules of homebrewing is "One must drink homebrews whilst brewing." Rule number 6.5.a, sec 4 paragraph 2, I think it was. Right after RDWHAHB. Since after my 15 year homebrew hiatus, I didn't have any of my own, we drank his pseudo-homebrew. It was a very tastey IPA, btw.
So as my wort was cooling, and after we polished off all of his beers and a couple of local micros I had in the fridge, we were talking about bottling. Id long ago tossed all my old beer bottles Id had from my previous life as a homebrewer. So over the last couple of weeks since my Christmas present arrived Ive had to start saving bottles again. At which point he informed me that he had empties. They had lots of company over the holidays, and his recycle bin was overflowing with them he tells me. I haven't quite yet accumulated all the bottles I'm going to need for this beer when it's ready, so I lit up. "Great, I'd be happy to take them off your hands", I say. Just in time, it turns out. Today is recycle pick up day, and he'd already put them all in his recycle bin out by the curb last night for pick up this morning. So off we go, out into the cold wet drizzle at 11 o'clock at night, digging through the recycle bin, separating the plastics from the cardboard from the bottles, like giddy little kids. "It's just the brown bottles I'm after, and not the ones with screw off tops. Here's one... clank clank...and another ..." Probably waking a few of the neighbors up as we go. Or and least causing them to look out the windows to see what all the commotion is. We did eventually wise up and drag everything up into his garage where we could actually see what we were doing and complete Operation Bottle Separation (OBS). We ended up fishing out almost a case of good brown bottles, over half of which had been from the aforementioned daughter's IPA. Which was cool, because those didn't have labels. I always hated scrubbing the labels off of used bottles for my own brews. When we came back in out of the cold, Larry's wife, who'd also come over to witness the new neighborhood brewing operation, and my own wife were both giggling and laughing - they of course had spied our little dumpster diving bottle rescue escapades from our window. We must've looked pretty ridiculous out there. But it was worth it. Along with the six Larry brought over early in the evening, and the few more we polished off, I netted half the bottles last night that I'll need in a few weeks when Pliny the Elderado is ready. And I tell them "hey, I'm just trying to make good on one of my new year's resolutions to try and be more green. We just saved those bottles from being trucked off to some far away recycling plant, and reduced our carbon footprint..." Bottle locally and drink globally. Or something like that.
So, in a few weeks we'll get to see how Pliny the Elderado comes out. And how close to the one true "Elder" I get. Probably not as close as I hoped. My OG was a little low, coming in at 1.062. I was aiming for something like 1.074. Guess I'm just a tad rusty after 15 years off. But all those hops sure smelled good. The fresh leaf Simcoes were just spectacular. I don't recall ever using those in my prior brewing life. Or fresh hop leafs for that matter. I could never find them so always used the plugs and pellets. But I've still got another couple ozs left to do the dry hop with. I'm sure Vinnie would be proud.
And once again to my brother, who rekindled my homebrew fires, a big thanks. He also pointed me to this great HBT web site where Ive been poking around for a few days reading up on all thats good in the land of homebrew. Ive even seen a few of his posts he's Odins Brew I think. Perhaps one day hell even share his Pliny clone brewing adventures. Or at least some of his beer.