Bluebonnet Brew Off

With two pretty successful homebrew competitions under my belt, I’m looking at entering the biggest one in Texas, which is also the largest single-site homebrew competition in the United States, the BluebonnetBrew Off.  As far as I can tell, there isn’t a max number of entries a person can have, but last year they cut off total entries at 1525!  That’s a lot of beers!  

I’m going to enter the saison that’s finishing up fermentation for sure, and hopefully I’ll be able to get three bottles’ worth of the quad out of the keg.  We’ll see, it’s feeling pretty empty!  I’m also planning on brewing a Dunkelweizen (German dark wheat beer) this weekend (probably Saturday), and I’d like to get one more in after Christmas (something that’s good fresh, so an IPA or a Pale Ale, most likely).

Here’s the recipe for the Dunkelweizen I’m brewing this weekend:

DONAR DUNKELWEIZEN

7lbs Wheat malt

5lbs Munich malt

.25lbs Chocolate malt

Mash @ 149 for 60 minutes

60 minute boil

1oz Tettnanger @ 60 minutes

1L starter of either Wyeast 3068 or WLP300 (supposedly both are the Weihenstephan strain), pitched at 70°F

The Donar is a reference to a German self-propelled 155mm howitzer, named after the Germanic pagan god of thunder (analogous to Thor in Norse mythology).  That’s where the name came from.  Took me a while to figure out an artillery themed name to go with this, but it seems to fit pretty well, and rolls off the tongue pretty well, too!

Also, as you may have noticed, there’s a new Recipes section in the menu bar.  I’m going to be posting my recipes there from now on, so anyone who wants to is welcome to try to duplicate anything I’ve brewed.  Right now, I haven’t added very much, just Fiddler’s Green and Donar.  I’ll add more soon, I promise!

I’ve put a bottle filler on my Christmas, to hopefully make it really easy to fill bottles for competitions, or for taking beer places (tailgates, parties, etc).  That should help me avoid overcabonating problems like I had with Canon de 12 at Operation Bravo earlier this month.  I’m still kicking myself over that.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!