Inaugural Post!

Hey there!

I am a homebrewer in Alberta, Canada. I've been brewing beer for about 3 years now, and I decided it's finally time to pursue a beer blog. I've learned so much from other bloggers over the years, and I feel it's about time for me to give back to the community. I'm currently pursuing a degree in cellular and molecular biology with a minor in chemistry, so I have some lab equipment and such to play with microbe culturing and such.

I have a deep love for sour beers and wild fermentations, and I'll be working on isolating wild yeasts from time to time so there will be an opportunity for strain sharing in the future. Outside of the few sour and wild ales going on through the year, my go to styles are ESB's, Scottish ales, stouts, IPA's and blondes, and I really enjoy playing with rye malt. I tend to stay away from Belgian ales, but that doesn't mean I don't brew them at all!


As of now, I use a 10 gallon cooler mash tun, an  8 gal aluminum pot, a banjo burner, and glass carboys.

                                                 

Currently fermenting, I have a sour solera (60 litres) that I started in April, which I will pull from every year, and I intend to pull 5 gallons each year and split that pull to bottle half plain and half with some variety of fruit.

I have a sour that I fermented with roeselare blend which I found too bland, so I put the 5 gallons onto 10 pounds of concord grapes. I intend to let it pull those flavors out for the next 2 months before bottling. I have last year's lambic-style beer that I will be splitting onto two different varieties of fruit (post to follow), as well as this year's lambic style (post to follow) and an oude bruin I just racked and pitched the roeselare guts from the grape beer into it, as well as a blend of bottle dregs from oude gueuze tilquin and drie fonteinen.  I also have a belgian dubbel that will be bottled in December.

I currently bottle. I received some corny kegs for a birthday a few years ago, but as a broke-ass university student, I can't afford the CO2 tank, regulators, fittings, taps etc etc that it would take to build a keezer.