Topics

1

General Homebrew Discussion / Wedding favors

« on: April 12, 2012, 08:14:21 AM »

My friends had asked me to brew two batches of beer for their wedding to give away to their guests as favors.  They liked all my homebrew they have tried and had some of the bottles I made for special occasions and really liked them. I can not begin to tell you how honored I was.  I consider myself an intermediate brewer. Almost all of my brews have turned out really good, but for my daughter’s first birthday, I gave out a batch that I had a chlorine/chloramine issue with and to me it tasted like plastic.  I didn't want anything similar to happen for this.

She chose a stout and he chose a Hefeweizen. I was extremely nervous about these two batches. I came up with the recipes, brewed and bottles the beer, and designed the labels to match their wedding scheme/theme(green color, beach/ocean, and orchids).  If the beer was bad, there was no one to blame but me and I had the possibility of ruining their day.   I was freaking out because I felt like I took a big risk doing everything myself and not just buying kits, and I had never brewed an all grain hefe before.  I had two nightmares the week before. One was that the beer tasted bad and the other was about beer bomb bottles of stout during the reception from overcarbonating or infection.  Their wedding was last Friday and a lot of the beers were opened before the reception was over.  Everyone, especially the bride and groom,  loved everything. The beer, the labels, everything.  I could not have been more proud, honored, and grateful to be a part of anything as I was that day. I'm really happy that I could help to make their day special.   I could finally RDWAHAHB.
Here are the labels:

2

All Things Food / Espresso Machines

« on: February 15, 2012, 11:00:53 AM »

I dont post a lot here, but I do read a lot of them, and I know there's a bunch of people who love and know a lot about all things food.  Our faithful espresso machine crapped out after 7 years. It was nothing fancy, an older Krups Novo. It made some good espresso every day and multiple times a day on the weekend.  I'm using a stovetop one now, but I would like a new machine. Any suggestions for a midrange semiautomatic machine would be appreciated? 

3

Equipment and Software / King Kooker

« on: January 19, 2012, 10:03:16 AM »

Can anyone tell me anything about this King Kooker

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00264G584/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000O3MX62&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0NX8FPKXWPPEE6W7NZTQ


I'm thinking of(and my wife is hoping i will be) moving my brewing completely out of the kitchen. I would use this for my mash tun and hlt and my sp-10 to boil the wort. It would be like a poor man’s brew structure.  It would be nice to not have to lug a pot full of hot wort from the kitchen to the burner outside.  Any better suggestions would be greatly appreciated.