Monday morning update is here!

27 Monday Oct 2014

Tags

alpha brewing company, Bacon and Brown Sugar Storter, bacteria, beer, brewing, craft, craft beer, guy, infected beer, IPA, red, Red Rye IPA, regular, regular guy brewing, rye, Stolze Style Brewing

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, fellow brewers and lovers of craft beer. It is with a heavy heart that I have to report that we lost one of our most anticipated brews. Our Bacon and Brown Sugar Storter, has been infected. Yes, it’s true. We currently have a Sour Bacon and Brown Sugar Storter. Not really a great combination. While we’re not 100% sure at what point the bacteria was introduced, we have a couple of theories. Our biggest regret is that StolzeStyle Brewing and Alpha Brewing Company won’t get to enjoy, what could have been the best beer known to man. She’ll be laid to rest this Friday October 31st, followed by an intense cleaning and disinfecting session.

In death there is life, and we brought new life to a recently revamped recipe. We brewed our Red Rye IPA. I have a few pictures to share with you now.

Looks like we’re brewing an IPA! Some of our hops were provided by Bobby at Music City Brew Supply.

Crushed grains are happy grains.

First runnings.

Last runnings.

Pre-boil in a glass. Just checking the color. Tasted great too! Brian looks like he’s mad at it!

Getting ready to boil.

Cooled wort filling bucket number one. Now that is a beautiful red beer!

Brian manning the chiller, keeping the cool water flowing.

Bucket number two almost full.

Seth checking the final numbers.

Well, that’s it! Another successful brew in the books. We hit our numbers and we dry hop in two weeks. Have a great week everybody!

Until next time…

It’s Monday, let’s update!

06 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by Justin in Brewing, Just for Fun

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ale, beer, blonde, brewing, camping, carbonation, craft, craft beer, D'Arcy's Pint, disc, disc golf, dudes, fermentation, fire, golf, guy, Hot, Hot Blonde Jalapeño Blonde Ale, IL, jalapeño, keg, regular, regular guy brewing, Scheels, secondary, Springfield

This Monday morning update is a little different than the other updates. It’s not all about brewing or brewing activities. All I can say is, I have a DAFCAE hangover.

What’s DAFCAE? It’s the Dude’s Annual Fall Camping Adventure Extravaganza! Every Fall the Regular Guys go camping and engage in all kinds of manly activities. We drink a ton of beer, play a ridiculous amount of disc golf, have massive bon fires and burn random items, shoot things with guns all while eating unapologetically. It’s a weekend of male bonding at its finest.

Seth and I did manage to get some beer related work done on Friday before we took off to the great outdoors. Have a look.

Secondary was complete for the Hot Blonde Jalapeño Blonde Ale so it was time to keg that sucker! Here it is going into keg one.

The beer leaves keg one and then gets filtered.

Then it enters keg two where it’ll be carbonated. She’s a pretty beer!

We also put some stain on our serving station.

Here’s a closer look at the top. Turned out nice!

What our setup will look like on the day of the competition.

Little bit closer.

Even closer yet. The two stands on the side will be for our vote collection containers, one for each beer we’re bringing to the competition.

We also finally transferred the Bacon and Brown Sugar Storter to primary fermentation and pitched the yeast. I have no pictures of that though. Sorry.

Want to see some pictures from DAFCAE? I’m going to post them anyway so you might as well be into it.

Seth brought some wood, this was gone the first night.

Yes that’s a spice rack.

Pallets make good bon fire material.

Not even sure what we’re burning here.

Posing with honest Abe Lincoln at Scheels. Scheels is probably the biggest sporting goods store ever. It has a ferris wheel inside.

Hanging out at our favorite restaurant, D’Arcy’s Pint. Their horseshoe sandwich is actually made by angels. It’s the best thing you will ever eat in your life. Ever.

We found this kitten crying in the woods while we were disc golfing. She was a sweet little thing. After a while of holding her and passing her around to toss our shots she jumped down. We thought she was going to run away, but she followed us through seven holes of disc golf. When we stopped to throw, she stopped and waited. So damn cute. She needed food and water desperately so we took her to a no kill shelter near by to get cleaned up and checked out. The ladies were gushing over her and swore she would be adopted really quick.

We named her Simcoe after our favorite hop variety.

She took a liking to Seth.

I don’t have very many pictures of our camping adventure. When you’re drinking and having fun, the pictures kind of go to the wayside. Maybe I’ll remember to snap some more next year, but probably not though!

I’m going to dedicate this trip to our newest member of the RGB crew. Our Regular Cat, Simcoe.

We hope you find a loving family and have a happy life.

Well, now it’s back to the daily grind, back to reality, back to the day jobs.

Until next time…

Monday means updates!

29 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by Justin in Brewing

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ale, Bacon, beer, blonde, brewing, brown, Brown sugar and bacon Storter, craft, craft beer, draft, draft tower, guy, handle, Hot, Hot Blonde Jalapeño Blonde Ale, regular, regular guy brewing, Storter, sugar, tap, tap handle, tower

It’s Monday morning again and that means it’s time for an update. Friday night we got together to get a ton of work done and quickly realized our workload was going to get a little bit lighter. We were scheduled to transfer the Hot Blonde to secondary, skim, transfer and pitch the yeast in our Brown Sugar and Bacon Storter, and build a serving station for the competition we’ve entered on October 11th.

Brian and I were waiting for Seth to arrive and I decided to check the cooler to see what beer we had left over. When I opened the lid to the cooler every beer inside was frozen and had exploded. This raised a concern. We had both of our buckets of the Storter wort cold crashing in the cooler to separate any fat that may have been left on the bacon. We cleaned up the broken bottles and pulled the buckets from the cooler. They hit the garage floor with a heavy thud like a couple of cinder blocks. They were frozen solid. This isn’t the end of the world, more like a minor inconvenience. A set back. See we hadn’t even pitched the yeast yet, if we had, we’d be in trouble. An entire 10 gallon batch down the drain. This just delays our start of fermentation until Friday. Frustrating, but not a huge deal.

Next!

We transferred our Hot Blonde to secondary, not a lot of excitement here. Actually I only took three pictures and, I’m sorry, they aren’t all that good. Here they are anyway.

Fermentation complete, transfer to secondary in 3, 2, 1…

Filling the bucket.

I’m disappointed with this picture because you can’t even see the beautiful little jalapeño floating around. Oh well, another week and it’ll be ready to keg and carbonate.

And now for something new.

We built our serving station for the competition and I have plenty of pictures. It’s not 100% complete as we have some finishing touches to apply, but you’ll get the idea and I’ll post the finished station when it’s done.

Men, beer, and power tools. Doesn’t get much more manly than that!

Until they did this.

Getting started with the frame.

Adding a platform.

It’s going to need a top!

Cutting corrugated steel with tin snips. There were some bloody fingers that night.

Bending the edges back to shape.

I had to add this photo because my fingers look creepily long. Don’t know if it’s the reflection or if my fingers are just creepily long.

Attaching the corrugated steel to the serving station.

Drilling a hole for the draft tower.

Seth’s homemade draft tower in place.

The most Regular Guy looking serving station you’ll ever see!

Seth and I pretending to serve beers. Or just hugging it out. You decide.

Well, that’s it. That was our Friday night in pictures. We’re going to stain the wood, add some cool stuff to the tap handles and put the Regular Guy logo on the front. It’s gonna be tight y’all!

Until next time…

A special Monday morning update!

22 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by Justin in Brewing

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Tags

alpha brewing company, Bacon, beer, brewing, brown sugar, cascade, craft, craft beer, guy, hops, music city brew supply, Porter, regular, regular guy brewing, Stolze, StolzeStyle Brewing, Storter, stout

Are you ready for a very special update? The update you’ve all been waiting for over a month for? Let’s do this! Back on August 15th I wrote a blog post about how StolzeStyle Brewing and Regular Guy Brewing got together to share some beers and stories and ended up agreeing to do a collaborative brew. Need a refresher? You can read the blog post here.

All up to speed? Good! Let’s continue. For the last month I’ve been teasing you and everyone else about the TOP SECRET ingredients that were going to make our “Storter” (again, thanks for the inspiration Alpha Brewing Company!) If you’re asking yourself what a “Storter” is, you either:

A) were too lazy to click the link and read the blog post

2) have never been to Alpha Brewing Company (you’re missing out)

C) have a terrible short term memory and/or

D) all of the above

I’ll do this one more time. A “Storter” is a beautiful combination of a Stout and a Porter. Basically it takes all the best characteristics of both styles and gently and lovingly swirls them together. This is a great beer brewed by Alpha and Eric and Jennifer from StolzeStyle just so happened to bring some along, as inspiration for our own of course!

It’s a fine looking beer and delicious to boot! Now we could have always just taken Alpha’s recipe and brewed it, but we could just go there and drink theirs. So we made some additions and gave it a new twist.

If you haven’t noticed, I’m stalling as hard as I can. Trying to write whatever I can to make you wait even longer to find out the TOP SECRET ingredients that we have been bragging about for over a month now. Do you know what happened to me the day? It’s so damn funny! I was walking down the stairs when all of the sudden I…I’m just kidding, are you ready to finally know the TOP SECRET ingredients? Ok. Remember, this is a Storter, a dark, lovely beer. Rich and roasty. We added brown sugar and…

BACON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes bacon. You heard me right, bacon! Say it with me, BACON! We added brown sugar and bacon to an already perfect Storter recipe. Well, now that the cat’s out of the bag, here’s our night in pictures.

Seth brought over some new toys!

This is our new conical fermenter.

Our new 25 gallon kettle.

Our new mash tun.

Our hops were provided by Music City Brew Supply.

There’s that bacon I was talking about and the brown sugar and hops and the bacon. Did I mention the bacon? I think I mentioned the bacon. Bacon.

There’s Eric and Brian doughing in.

Brian presents his handiwork. He’s very skilled at dumping things into other things.

Jen cracks the whip on Eric. There better not be any grain clumps in there!

The first runnings.

Eric and Brian discussing important brewery related things.

Uh oh! The Brian fans are going to be so jealous!

The final runnings in the kettle, getting ready for the hot break.

Boiling away like a champ! Our one hop addition is in and brown sugar added.

We fill our buckets two at a time! Look closely, there’s bacon in there!

End of the night with Eric.

End of the night with Jen.

There you have it! We didn’t pitch the yeast yet. The beer will cold crash for a bit to let any fat from the bacon separate. We’ll skim it all off and transfer to the new conical fermenter and then pitch the yeast. Then we have more bacon additions coming. We’ll keep you posted on the progress.

Until next time…

Brewing up some new gear!

17 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by Seth in Brewing

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Well it happened again. I said that it wouldn’t…and it did anyways. I got distracted with life for a while, and have been very negligent with my share of the blogging duties. My bad. I’d say that I won’t do it again…but I probably will. I’m a slacker like that.

At any rate…how are things on your end? How are the wife and kids doing? How’s that new lawnmower working for you? Did you ever get around to reading that one book I lent you? Did that rash ever clear up?

Okay. Enough with the small talk. Let’s talk some shop.

After months of planning, sketching and acquiring materials, we at Regular Guy Brewing have finally made some serious headway on a few pretty kickass brewery upgrades that will allow us to boost our brewing capacity up to 15 gallons per batch..or 1/2 a barrel, if you prefer to measure things using brewing volumes. Continue reading →