ThePortlyDragon

I’m coming back to what was supposed to be my old hobby blog about home brewing because I want to share and heal myself after my relationship of 17 years ending. We have too many mutual friends on FB and I don’t understand sc or Twitter, so here I am.

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All 3 beers are now in secondary vessels. The samples I took were super encouraging. Especially the honey and lemon. Also, I bought a homebrew journal. My notes a are no longer written on folded printer paper.

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I have a lot of airlock activity still. I used us-05 for the first time and it took about a day longer than brewer's gold to get really active. I'm looking forward to seeing how the different yeast changes the flavor of my beer.

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Everything is fermenting away now. 2 brew days in one weekend was a lot to do, but I think it will pay off.

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What next?

My IPA is almost done boiling. I'm trying to decide what to brew next.

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What's the worst that could happen?

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I brewed the honey and lemon APA yesterday and pitched this morning. I also just mashed in for today's IPA.

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I'm finally back

After months away from brewing, I've just placed an order for enough supplies to brew my honey and lemon peel pale ale as well as a new recipe I thought up that contains candi syrup and wormwood. I'm very excited.

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Porter is bottled. I ended up with 39 12oz and 3 22oz after spillage and samples. My wife didn't find the same humor in coke bottles full of porter that I did.

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Ohmyporter. I just transferred to secondary after four weeks. The cup of sample porter I took was well beyond my expectations. With some more luck this brew will also kick ass.

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It's a bummer night when Boston brewing co and Great Lakes brewing co both fail to hit the spot. No problem though. This is the kick in the pants I need to brew some more good stuff. And btw, Boston and Great Lakes are still awesome, they just lack whatever I needed tonight. Party on Wayne.

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Lucky break

Through dumb luck I've managed to source affordable fresh local honey directly from a bee keeper. I think I'm going to revisit my pale ale with lemon peel recipe.

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Update: pale ale w/ lemon peel

I had a sample bottle yesterday and it was surprisingly good at 1 week bottled. Also, I've been sampling for the past couple hours. Very happy with this one. ; )

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Another fave of mine, and it's been a while sense the last time I had one. Definitely in my top 5 personal list.

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This creek is usually murky and green, but it's beautifully clear here. Brutus was after some bait fish.

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That's what I wanted to see.

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Looking a little dark in there.

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Updates

Still aging the pale ale with lemon peel. I have an order in to paradise brewing supplies for a bunch of hops, some corn sugar, malt for my next brew(porter) and some yeast. Should be here before the weekend. I'll bottle the pale ale and try to work in brewing the porter on my one day weekend.