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…