The Barley Pops Tymes

Wrong!  Well, ok, probably not wrong, but the batch on the left exploded....and I mean beer flowing out of the top, down the sides, all over the inside of the fridge, after, of course, blasting the airlock off the ceiling of the fridge and spraying brown foam and beer all over the place.  The good part is, though, that I caught it after only a couple minutes.  When I checked it out after work, the airlock was getting gummed up, so I was inside sanitizing a backup when it happened. 

New hardware for this batch - two 3-gallon carboys, for smaller batches and jr-high volcano experiments, blow-off hose for "vigorous fermentation".

On a side note, the blonde ale is pretty tasty, but needs to mellow a little bit to ease the hoppiness.

I brewed my own recipes over the weekend.  Being an engineer-type, I brewed two batches, keeping everything the same except the hops mixture.  That way, I can taste the difference from just the hops.  I kept the same ingredients, same brew times, same total amount of hops, same types of hops, different amounts of individual hops......good plan, right?

Sorry - this post is more my notes than anything else....

No new hardware with this batch, but this video shows a good example of yeast doing what they do best during primary fermentation....it's been going strong all day. 

This batch is a blonde ale with OG of 1.040.  That might be a bit low.  The recipe listed a target of 1.046.  Temperature correction would close the gap a little bit. 

Had one boilover.....pretty impressive.  The patio kinda looked like the skin of a root beer float when I was done. 

Pictures from Hurricane Ike...

Someone was definitely looking out for us, because all we lost was fence, which probably needed to be replaced, anyway.  The tree against our garage scraped a couple shingles, but nothing serious.  (fyi, the limb in the last photo was pointed directly at our garage and house before Ike redirected it over 90 degrees back)  I'd like to include photos from the neighborhood, because there's a lot more damage, but I don't want to seem as if I'm gloating over other people's misfortune.

My first boil-over....calm to super-boil in about 5 seconds.  Glad it wasn't in the kitchen.

And the survey says.......drinkable.  Nothing more, nothing less.  It has a bit of a harsh after taste.  I think this could be because:

    1.  I got a little yeast from the bottom of the bottle.  I hope not, but will find out in a little while, I guess.  (If you don't know what I'm talking about, go here:  http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter11-9.html)
    2.  The beer is still a little "green" and needs to age a bit.  I'm really hoping this is it.  Waiting longer is the easiest thing to do, since it requires no effort.

And finally, notice the Inn-N-Out t-shirt.  Couple that with the Jack Ball I use as my photo, and maybe those are signs I need to change my diet????  Nah, that can't be it.