It was a busy weekend with a nice social dinner gathering with a few
friends Saturday night. We ended up singing Karaoke with Lindsey till
1am from our laptop in the living room while drinking homebrew! ("Come
on Eileen....") It has turned somewhat cold and rainy in Portland,
which is quite a shock from the 65 degree and sunny days we were starting to get used to. The weather is sort of dreary except that most Portlanders are
glad to have the rain.. I've read that we will have a pretty dry summer with
water shortages if we don't get significant rain now.
I bottled a pale ale Saturday, which should be interesting to taste in
a couple weeks - it fermented almost completely in about a day!
I just brewed a German Altbier which is happily burbling away and
spilling foam out of the airlock. Supposedly if you ferment in a
bucket you have enough headspace to handle the foam but lately the
beers seem to be foaming over pretty heavily. Perhaps I should start
making slightly smaller batches, but then again it's always nice to
have more beer rather than less for the same amount of work. The
kolsch sitting in the carboy in the basement is getting relatively
quiet and staying right at 60, supposedly this sort-of "lagering"
phase improves the taste. I'll probably bottle it soon, I'm getting
anxious.