What I like most about your site: Grove's Beer Log

Grove's beer log is a wonderful site from Norway with some awesome content from a home brewer and as I just found out homebrewing judge :-) He has a variety of thoughtful homebrewing posts including the following topics:

beer (9)

books (1)

brewing (70)

brews (9)

chilling (1)

cleaning (2)

equipment (23)

events (1)

fermentation (2)

fermenters (3)

food (1)

hops (5)

ingredients (4)

kegerator (5)

kettle (2)

labels (1)

legislation (1)

magnetic stir plate (1)

malts (1)

mashtun (3)

personal (1)

podcasts (1)

process (2)

products (7)

pubs (2)

randall (4)

recipes (22)

styles (1)

thermometers (1)

travel (1)

yeast (2)

Welcome back from your break and keep up the good work!

Cheers!

by special request...

i set the NIN ghosts slideshow to NOT autoplay. now you can enjoy beer bits 2 at work without annoying everybody! i was getting tired of the same tracks anyway ;-)

cheers!

Special Chinookadillo #0 still sitting in the primary...

Yeah whatever, I'm preoccupied with blogging and sittin on my a$$. Yeah, I'm lazy. Chinookadillo is still sittin' there in the primary. Instead of keggin' it I'm drinkin' a Weyerbacher Merry Monks'. I guess I'd rather drink a beer than keg one tonight :-)

Cheers!

What I like most about your site: brewvana

I've decided to take this in a little different direction after reading this post over at brewvana. Rather than the "Best thing about your site" this is "What I like most about your site:"

• thoughtful posts
• candid voice
• not just about beer, think "life, brewing and a beer"
  
• brewing wisdom

Great job Wilson! Keep up the good work. Cheers!

Consider growing your own hops this year!

Yeah, do it! Its easy. This is a great time of year to consider it. What does it take? I'm glad you asked. Here is an overview.

1. find a place with lotsa sun, sandy soil and room to grow vertical
2. order rhizomes or get some from a friend
3. plant when ground is no longer frozen (spring)
4. make sure they have enough water
5. wait for the bines (yes bines) to come up
6. train them on something to get them off the ground
7. wait, watch, wonder
8. pick when they are ready harvest (usually not much first year, typically late summer or early fall)
9. cut back for next year
10. brew some beer with them :-)

Come on its easy. Check out the Hops Growing Resources I have collected.

Cheers!

The best thing about your site: Wort's Going On Here?

Wort's Going On Here? is in my regular rotation for the following reasons. Go check out Jeffrey's site.

• Great name :-)
• Good voice - straight up...no BS
  
• Updates between daily and a few times a week
• Covers homebrew and beer scene
• Humor
• bloggin' since 2005
  

Cheers!

30th Annual National Homebrewers Conference, Cincinnati, Ohio on Thursday, June 19 - Saturday, June 21

The 30th Annual National Homebrewers Conference will take place in Cincinnati, Ohio on Thursday, June 19 through Saturday, June 21. See the website for details...

http://www.beertown.org/events/hbc/

I've never entered my beer in a competition, but, maybe I should. Are you?

Cheers!

Best things about your site: Brew Dudes

Brew Dudes is a site I've recently started visiting

• recently more frequent posts
• straight up home brew talk (good and bad experiences)
• recipes
• ingredient profiles
• good use of tagging on posts

I honestly need to read them a little more.

Cheers!

Finally! BrewPoll is digg for Beer and Homebrewing :-)

Why didn't I think of this? It looks like we now have a way to bring the most popular/useful information in the homebrewing community to the forefront.

http://www.brewpoll.com/

It is a little slow now, but, I hear an upgrade is coming soon.

Cheers!

O2 saturation experiments @ Homebrew Beer Blog

Saw this in my rounds today. Check out Homebrew Beer Blog for some interesting experiments involving wort and dissolved oxygen.

http://blog.flaminio.net/blogs/

Prost!

Tasting the Chinookadillo again...

Still a bit yeasty. The caramel of the special b is there in the end. The hops are definitely there. Not too bitter. I like it. I think this will be delicious once that yeast falls out of suspension and the beer clears a bit :-)

Cheers!

Beer Bits 2 is in Final Gravity's Brew Crew :-)

Marcus over at Final Gravity asked me to participate in an interview of sorts. He just posted my answers on his site. Pretty cool idea :-) Check out the answers from other home brew bloggers too.

Cheers!

Best Thing About Your Site: Exton Beverage Center - Exton, PA

Who?
This is a bit of a local non-homebrew beer play here. Although I have purchased kegerator stuff from there ;-) Anyway, I just stopped over at Exton Beverage Center in Exton, PA. Greg, the owner, was there and we chatted for a bit. He mentioned that he gets hits from this site to his every now and then. I'm happy to help out anyway I can. Gotta support the local guys that deserve it :-)

What do I like best about this site?
It isn't about the site at all really. Exton Beverage Center is a solid Pennsylvania beer distributor (its a PA thing) that handles some of the finest beer you can get your hands on in the state of Pennsylvania. Their sixtel selection has to be one of their crown jewels though. Check it out! They are open in the afternoon on Sundays too (again a PA novelty thing).

Cheers!

The best thing about your homebrew site...

Yep that's what I'm gonna tell you. I've let my list of links I'm checkin' out get too big. I need to harvest some of those and move them on up to my regular list or something. While I'm sorting through this stuff I'll post what I like about your site right here.

Maybe I'll come up with a new way to categorize them. We'll see.

Cheers!

Via Mich. Beer Buzz: Brewer's Blog's All Grain Brewing Slideshow

I enjoyed this slideshow form a blog I never heard of, Brewer's Blog. Is it me or does everybody have a homebrew blog now? Whoohoo! The more the merrier.

http://blogs.hundredmonkey.net/brewingiseasyslideshow.html

Cheers!

Thanks Michigan Beer Buzz for the tip.

Special Chinookadillo #0 Early Taste...

Sampled the Chinookadillo tonight. My taste buds aren't quite up to par yet, due to my cold. As far as I can tell there are enough hops from bittering and aroma perspectives. The yeast has some work to do yet, but, even now it doesn't taste too sweet. Cool. I'm excited! This ones gonna pack a punch too. Its getting close to 8% abv.

Cheers!

Philly Beer Week &The London Grille & Eastern State Penitentiary

Here are some pictures of the day :-) Wonderful beer from Stoudt's Brewery including the Michael Jackson tribute beer Big Brother Pils before the tour...wow perfect start. Back at The London Grille Willie Sutton was waiting for us followed by Smooth Hoperator and Stoudt's Fat Dog. Food was delicious!

Anti - SPAM Bots & Human Intervention @ Home Brew News

I'll be quick. Gotta get my sleep. Upon arriving back home I find that Home Brew News is no longer SUSPECT! I'll admit it was kinda cool being on the wrong side of the anti-SPAM bots for about a day or two. Seems some real people (you know humans) looked at the site and used their grey matter to see things more clearly. I'm back in business baby! Anybody want to be added? Just leave a comment or email me.

It has to remind you of the Matrix a little....

Special Chinookadillo #0 update...

Its in the basement fermenting. Yeah, didn't look at it yesterday, but, the day before it was overflowing a bit so I attached a blow off tube. Hopefully it isn't too cool down there. Gotta keep that yeast goin' :-) This is where my proccupation with other things helps me get through the fermentation process. I just kinda forget about it for a while. Just think billions of little yeast cells are eatin' up all that maltose right now to make alcohol and CO2. How beautiful is that?

Also, I'm takin' some non-beer geeks to The Whip Tavern for a British beer dinner tonight. I'm really looking forward to it. I'll send up to the minute updates vias cell phone txt msgs to my sidebar and over at Beer Crier. Well, I'll probably send at least four updates. Its hard to txt and eat at the same time ;-)

Cheers!

Caramel, Chinook, light malt, Special B and Amarillo all went in the kettle.

A friend and I grabbed a growler of Victory St. Victorious from the brewery stor and headed back to my house. Never made this beer before. I'm still brewing by the seat of my pants. I had some ingredients. I needed to come up with a recipe. If my BeerSmith notes are correct, this is what I put in there...

• Wyeast 1056 American Ale Yeast
  
• 6 lbs light dry malt extract
  
• 6.6 light liquid malt extract
• 1 oz. chinook hops pellets (bittering)
  
• 3 oz. amarillo hops pellets (flavor, aroma)
  
• .5 lb caramel malt 10 l. (steeping)
  
• .5 lb caramel malt 120 l. (steeping)
• .25 Special B malt (steeping, took a chance with a typically Belgian beer malt {cringe})
  

The hop schedule for the Amarillo started at 30 min and was weighted more towards the end.

• 65 minute boil
• chilled with immersion chiller & tap water
  
• 5 gal. boil
• added enough tap water to 6.5 gallon carboy to pretty much fill it
• no yeast starter, the activator smack pack was very distended and ready to go in 4 hours
  
• Original Gravity 1.082
• Carboy airlock started bubbling after eight hours lag time due to the wort being a bit too cold when I pitched the yeast. Then I put it in my basement where its around 65. Not exactly text book, but, should be fine.
  

This batch will probably be for a friend. He's getting a tap system and asked if I would brew him a batch. I should have about a gallon left after filling his corny keg :-)

Plans for the next brew. I'll probably look to harvest this yeast and make a ten gallon batch to split into two. I like the back to back brewing, because the yeast cells are so plentiful and fermentation starts right away. So maybe the next one will be something chocolaty for my wife?

So what do I call it? Special Chinookadillo #0? Eh...what's in a name?

Cheers!

What's your favorite way to introduce somebody to brewing?

Have you introduced anybody to brewing? I usually just invite people over to the house when I brew. How did you do it? A party? A one on one session? Buy them a book? Lend them your equipment?

Cheers!

Oh right! This blog is about homebrew :-) Well, I'm brewing this weekend!

Yeah, I think it's about time. I have an American ale yeast, light dry malt extra, light liquid malt extract, all kinds of specialty grains and plenty of Cascade, Fuggles and Hallertau hops pellets and um...that might be it.

Ah what to brew....what to brew. Session beer I think. Perhaps I'll brew a ten gallon batch. I'm back baby! Gotta get that yeast starter going tonight.

Cheers!

Blogger Flags Home Brew News as SPAM Blog :-(

Seems the anti-SPAM bots (think sentinels from the Matrix) over at blogger have deemed my news aggregation over at Home Brew News suspect. While some do question my sanity and well...my good looks. I think we all know HBNews is not a SPAM blog. I am getting permission for every feed I add. Kinda was a bummer, but, I can see why they do it. (Hey, I took the red pill didn't I?)

Now I just wait as a human goes and checks it out over the next couple days. Meanwhile if you want your blog headlines to be posted just drop me a line :-) I can still do that.

Cheers!

Check out the homebrew links I've recently added

Maybe its just me, but, there are home brewing links coming out of the wood work. Some have been around for a while and I just never heard of them. Check 'em out --->

Cheers!

Are you a home brew blogger? Join Beer Bits 2 Home Brew News!

Get the headlines of your blog posted on the Beer Bits 2 Home Brew News page! Just leave a message here for me or email me. I have a few feeds up already. Go check it out.

Cheers!

Short Post ;-) A call out to all you home brew bloggers.

This is for all those bloggers on my Favorite Homebrew Sites list. I'm working on a way to aggregate all the home brew blogs into one page. This would make my surfing faster and give me a view of the Home Brew Blogosphere. Again this would be just Home Brew blogs. I was just going to do it for me, but, I thought y'all might be interested too. It would be similar to RSBS over at Beerinator, but, not that purty at first :-)

The thing is. I don't want to republish your content without you permission. If I get enough of you opting in I could have a BETA up in a day or so. Of course you could always change your mind later and ask to have your content removed.

Let me know if you're in. If you have questions, let 'em fly!

Cheers!

Five Second Poll @ Beer Bits 2

Why the hell do you read this site? I have a poll over there in the sidebar on the right --->

I blog for me and I blog for you. Tell me what you like. Take the poll. If your thoughts are better expressed in your own words, I'm always interested in hearing what you have to say.

Thank you for reading Beer Bits 2 :-)

Cheers!

Brewin' an All Grain Strong Golden Ale with Dell :-)

I wound my way up to Dell's house. What a wonderful Sunday morning for a drive. Coffee in the cup holder. iPod jacked into the Speed 3. Cell phone with me for updating Beer Crier. By the time I arrived Dell was well on his way and a fellow homebrewer was breaking his equipment out too. Burners were out, brew kettles in position, grain was milled, water was almost to temp. So this is what Dell's home brew setup looked like.



Today he brewed a ten gallon batch of Belgian Strong Golden Ale. Dough in was upon us with a mixture of malted barley, rice hulls and wheat. Dell worked the mash paddle like he had done this a few times before ;-).







After an hour or so a fourth homebrewer showed up. A long time extract brewer he's looking for tips on going all grain. Sounds familiar. We chatted about using coolers during the mash and setting up a three tier system and much much more...




I hung around long enough to see the mashing process including dough in, the mash and sparging of the grain. Here is a video of his sparging setup.







I left before the boil for another commitment. Thanks Dell for letting me witness my first in person all grain brew! Oh wait, before I left Dell showed me his pellicle. Actually more than one ;-)


Cheers!

The Beer Smith Blog is well...pretty cool...

Brad Smith dropped me an email about how much he liked my Hop Growing Resources page. Which made me really proud :-) Brad Smith is of BeerSmith fame. I've written about BeerSmith before over at TBL (I thought I wrote more about it here...besides this comment and this) I use it to keep track of my batches and to make recipes. As with most software tools like spreadsheets and word processors I just don't get to exploit the features as much as I should. I'll have to remedy that.

So I checked out the blog over at BeerSmith and well it doesn't suck. Actually its quite good for being so new. For example the article Top 10 Tips for Home Brewing. I added the blog to the list of sites I'm checking out. Keep up the good work Brad!

Cheers!

Beer Bits 2 has a Google Page Rank of Four now!

Not the coolest thing in the world, but, definitely important to me. Google's page rank is an indicator to keep an eye on as you grow your site. It hasn't taken very long for me to get there with Beer Bits 2, about 6 months I guess. That is much shorter than the first time I did it. Why? Probably because I learned some technical lessons and partially, because I understand blogging better now. I'm not sure how long it will take to get to a page rank of five, but, I'm thinking six months to a year.

With 200 plus posts so far I think I'm still posting once a day on average since the inception of the site :-) And now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Cheers!