More Beer?!?!

With 20 gallons in the garage and 7+ gallons in the kegerator, i felt the need to make more beer on Sunday. We're having a company picnic in a few weeks, so I offered to make a keg of hef for the party. The beauty of hef is that it is insanely easy to make, heat water, add malt extract (sorry, all grain is too much for me right now), boil with hops, chill and add yeast. Also, the hef is nice because it only take a few weeks start to finish. I am trying something new with it, though. We bought a Better Bottle, a plastic carboy. It definitely is easier to transport.
I'll have to start the grand beer shuffle in a week and a half as it becomes time to pour the lambic over fruit. It has definitely been a fun brewing season thus far.
Quick update on the porters. The English Ale yeast took off immediately, strong fermenetation underway in around 24 hours. The batch with the California Ale yeast took a few days, but then got going strong.
We have tapped the Kolsch I made a few months ago and it will definitely be on the list for future summer brews. Great, easy drinking beer.

The first episode....

Well, here's my first dive into blogging. I think it accidentally will be how I keep track of my beer brewing and the destruction I wreak upon my CB350 project bike. Today I started an experiment to learn more about the effects that yeast has on beer flavor. I have made a porter recipe from MoreBeer 4 or five times. I love the beer, easy drinking yummy porter. So, today I made 10 gallons of the porter. Half of it was made partial boil (the pot on the left) and the other half was made full boil. I cleaned up two carboys and mixed half of each batch into each carboy. One was inoculated with English Ale Yeast, the other with California Ale Yeast. The beers were taken down to the garage and are now incubating side-by-side. Yes, there are several other beers already in the garage. We have 5 gallons of what will be a kriek fermenting in the bucket. It has California Ale Yeast and the lambic blend. I made it June 8. As soon as I have an empty carboy I will pour it over10 pounds of cherries from Berkeley Bowl. The keg has 5 gallons of a Belgian dubbel made by my wife. It is her favorite beer, her signature beer. It is about a month old and she will probably let it sit for a bit longer before we move it to the kegerator. We have two beers in the kegerator right now, the double barrel ale kit from morebeer and a Kolsch. The DBA is already tapped, the Kolsch is carbonating right now and will be on draft soon.
Next update will be about the motorcycle and the carb problems I am starting to work through....