Dom's Bitter

Nearly the ides of November, Thunder and Mrs. Thunder congregated at the Boomer Dome for a night of tomfoolery and brewing. We feasted on Moroccan dishes which showcased fresh farm veggies from Parker Farms in Lunenburg, MA. A little pumpkin bread courtesy of Ms. Boomer with fresh whipped cream finished out the meal. Post nosh, we brewed.

Boomer Dome had not seen a brew in months, and thankfully Thunder delivered on the equipment. Sanitized, full of food, and ready to brew.

The beer is an English Bitter - modeled after the delightfully creamy Boddingtons Pub Ale. The recipe is as follows:

4 oz Crystal 60 Steeped @ 150 Degrees F, 30 minutes
1.4 oz Black Patent

Sparged grains with 1 gallon water at 150 Degrees F

4 lbs Munton's Extra Light DME
1/3 lbs Invert Sugar (Lyle's Golden Syrup)

1/2 oz Kent Goldings Full 60 minutes
1 oz Fuggles

1/4 oz Kent Goldings 12 minutes
1/4 oz Fuggles
1 tsp Irish Moss

1/4 oz Kent Goldings 3 minutes

Wort chilled with 365 brand Spring Water. Let sit overnight, yeast pitched in morning.

Yeast: Windsor Brewing Yeast

It's 7 PM on November 13th and she's bubbling like champagne...

Ruby One

Because it seems that everytime I go to the brew supply store there are twice the amount of brewers as before, I just want to make one thing clear: Thunder Boomer has been brewing now for almost 2 years. So we need to do an anniversary brew sometime soon.

That being said, Boomer was tied up with entertaining Irishman (read: terrorist b/c they're not American) for the weekend so I decided to host a brew session before Hong Kongapalooza on Saturday night. Loren (a.k.a. Dr. Butter), Marcus (a.k.a. The Bow Hunter) and Andy (a.k.a. Pigeonbush Brewing Company), all equally accomplished brewers, partook in the brewing of an ESB. Ingredients were simple:

1 lb 60 L Crystal

1 oz Cascade full hour

7 lbs of generic John Bull, one light, one amber last 20 minutes

.75 oz of Chinook at 12 minutes

.75 oz of Cascade again at 4 minutes (continuously hopped)

Muntons dry yeast after carboy was cool enough to pitch. Blow off tube was essential. I also steeped the grains for an extra half hour.

We traded a few stories about brewing but mostly just hung around and chatted about myriad things like Andy's conda, 8-pt bucks, psycholigical clients, boobies, beers and what kind of costumes we would put on for Hong Kongapalooza. Amazingly, very little Red Sox talk occurred even though it was only 6 days before that they won the WS for the SECOND time in FOUR years. Weirdly, we talked about the Bruins, however. Go figure.

Enough is enough. The point of this posting is that, with veteran brewers on hand at all times, brewing become a social event. It is probably what all the new folks I see in the store are aspiring to.

Aspire away. According to thee NYT craft brews are on the rise nationwide.

That's all the news from Thunder Dome.