Tompopo Brewhouse & Winery
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Brewed the fifth batch of the year, an Irish Stout.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Sampled a bottle of batch #3, but it was way too early to open these up and drink them yet. The brew had a pretty good taste; B said it was just bitter enough without being too hoppy, but it was flat as piss on a plate. It needs to spend at least another week in the bottles to get the foamy head I'd expect when I pour and the fizzy snap it needs.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Finally bottled batch #3 after cleaning up the brewery and making it ready for operation.
Bottling was a solo operation this time; B was working in her garden and Tim was locked away in his room. The only hitch I ran into was learning to park the hose so I could cap the six bottles I had just filled, but once I got the hang of it the process went smoothly and I had all five gallons safely bottled in just an hour or so.
There was just enough beer left at the bottom of the bucket to swish around in my mouth. The flavor made me smile at the possibilities.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Brewed the fourth batch of the year, a replay of the second batch. I liked the way that turned out, nice and clear, and it had a big head on it, but it needed more body and more flavor so I added another pound of malt extract and another ounce of Cascade hops to the boil. I also boiled the Hallertau a bit longer during the finish. Fingers crossed!
Saturday, July 11, 2009
I’m one more step closer to having a functioning brewery in the basement, and it all started with a simple project: soak the labels off some beer bottles.
I have dozens of beer bottles in the basement, waiting to be filled with beer, but most of them still have labels on them, which makes cleaning them up a little harder than it has to be. Besides, I don’t want somebody else’s label on a bottle of my beer. So I was trying to figure out a way to soak a whole bunch of them for a long time, days, if necessary.
The kitchen sink was out. My Darling B needs to use it from time to time, sometimes several times a day, and would very likely object to having it filled to the rim with water-filled beer bottles.
The cement sink in the basement might be a candidate, but only after I scrubbed it half a dozen times with Ajax and soaked it for a week in pure chlorine bleach. It gets used for all kinds of gross stuff: washing out paint brushes, cleaning anything that’s too dirty for the kitchen sink, and the wash machine drains into it, leaving behind a living scum of grey slime. No, the basement sink was out.
I have a five-gallon bucket, but it holds two dozen bottles, at the most. Using that to soak the labels off sixty to eighty bottles would take longer than I care to wait.
While I was working all this out, my eyes fell on an old plastic utility sink I bought many, many moons ago and have been lugging around the world ever since. I gave passing though to setting it in the basement sink, plugging the drain, filling it with water and using it that way ... and then I thought, Hey, why don’t I just plumb the damned thing?
Sooner or later I’d have to install another sink in the basement anyway, one that wouldn’t get any dirty jobs so I could use it for brewing. And it just so happens that there are already hot and cold tap lines running over to the wall opposite the cement sink that I could run down to the utility sink.
All I had to do was figure out how to run a pipe for the drain, and with a little help from a guy at the hardware store, that didn’t take long at all.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
We popped open a couple bottles of the SNAFU Brew last night to drink while we were playing a game of Risk. It’s been almost a month now since we bottled it, so I figured it had to be close to ready, and it was. Everybody liked it. It’s got plenty of fizz and a taste that’s sweet and nutty. I’ll bet anything it’ll get better and better the longer it’s in the bottles. I’m going to set a couple of six-packs aside to give them a few more months to condition themselves, but the rest is good to go right now.
The Risk game ended in a draw when Tim refused to respond to B’s attack.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Racked the third batch of beer to a clean carboy tonight, so it could sit and settle for about a week before bottling.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
My Darling B and I bottled the second batch this evening, after both of us carefully calculated the number of twelve-ounce bottles we’d need for a five-gallon batch (fifty-four) and checked each other’s work. I remembered to leave some beer in the siphon this time, we had more than enough bottles, and everyone lived happily ever after.
And we sampled another bottle of SNAFU Brew. That was the first batch of the season that we bottled two weeks ago; the bottling session started out bad and quickly got worse with every step. We were delighted to find that the brew tastes pretty good!
Saturday, June 6, 2009
We chilled a bottle of SNAFU Brew before dinner tonight and sampled it as we ate. We feel confident in our assessment that it’s not ready to drink. Tasted all right, but was flat as piss on a plate.
© 2009 Dave Okonski
2nd Batch:
Not Too Spunky
5/24/09
5th Batch:
Irish Stout
9/20/09
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