Home Brew! Hopalong Hefe

Well, we've decided drinking delicious beer isn't enough. After doing our research, the Brewski Bros have decided to live the American Dream and venture into the art of home brewing. It had been an idea contemplated for a while, and we decided it's time we get into making our own delicious beer. Well what to brew first? There are plenty of delicious styles to be brewing, but an interesting beer from Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head caught our attention... a blood orange hefeweizen. Wheat beers are very refreshing on a sunny afternoon, and the blood orange adds a nice little touch to it. With that said, we got to brewing!



As the wort boiled (a wort is the liquid that contains the sugars the yeast will be munching on to produce alcohol... in other words, unfermented beer), we had ourselves a grand ol' time getting all the rinds off the oranges and orange peels. Unfortunately, we were too busy mending the cuts to our hands from trying to flay the rinds from the orange peels with steak knives to take pictures... but when the job was done, the tea of orange and orange peel was ready to go.
As you may be able to tell by the above photo, those are not blood oranges. Due to blood oranges being just out of season, we were not able to acquire any within the Columbus region. The oranges above are some Valencia oranges... we added a few orange wedges and some peels to the carboy. However, some organic blood orange juice did the job very nicely in place of actual blood oranges.
And here's an uber exciting picture of the wort getting its ice bath.
Finally, we pitched the yeast and chucked it on in to the carboy and sat back to wonder at our marvelous wort. In roughly a week this beauty will be ready to bottle.
Currently, the wort is sitting in my closet fermenting. Bottling may be coming up this weekend since the fermentation is substantially slowing down. Soon we will be enjoying our hopalong hefe.

Also, we have some events coming up on the horizon:

1.) This coming weekend, our next brew session will be coming up in which we will start brewing our paleolithic imperial pale ale.

2.) June 28th is another field trip for the Brewski Bros in which we will be going to Ale Fest! Woohoo! Look for some beer reviews and pics of the adventure.

3.) Finally, a trip to Barley's Smokehouse and Brew Pub will be coming up as well. We have high hopes for this place, and expect it to blow Mulholland away.