Getting a little behind here............

This is about one of my newer favorite beers. When we go on vacation we drink vast amounts of Heineken. Not because I'm such a fan, but it's the cheapest good beer, in a can, that we can find. It's a wonderful beer on a very hot day, when it's very cold. It's good in the morning with pb & j, it's good sitting on a floatie at lunch time, and really, until it's time to fire up the gin & tonics, good anytime. So I asked myself, how would I change it to make it better.....well, more hops and alcohol would be a start. So, My Big Heine was born.

It's about 1.058-60 OG. Pilsner malt, flaked rice and rice syrup solids, a pound each of the last two. I get the IBU's over 50 and pitch a good, clean lager yeast. In the past that was often Danish, but this year I used my new favorite, Budvar. All in all, something to look forward to when summer finally gets here.

100 bottles of beer on the floor.........

Well, it's easy to put off, but if you want to drink your homebrew, then you have to bottle/keg it. So Sunday was designated as bottling day. 20 gallons were processed: the rye lager, the Budvar lager, the oatmeal stout and the American pale ale. A combination of bottle sizes hopefully gives me the right size to share/drink at home. Everything tasted good. So now I can start brewing again. The basement is still 52F but it will start creeping up now. I have an "imperial" dutch lager and a 10 gallon partial mash Vienna/Oktoberfest planned.

This picture is Ninkasi, the Sumerian Goddess of Brewing. She is clearly in shape for hefting up 5 gallon carboys.

Fun week in politics..............great picture online of Karl "turdblossom" Rove with a folder from the RNC website host under his arm. That would be the outlet used by White House staffers to avoid using the official email server, you know, the one that has to be preserved. Rove and co. were using RNC email addresses to conduct official business. Sounds shady to me.