Homebrew Master's Dinner

Crown Valley 2nd Annual Brewmaster's Dinner Oct 8th

Tickets go on sale for Crown Valley 2nd Brewmaster's Dinner Sept 1st.  If you purchase tickets by Sept 15th and use code "10810BREW" you get a 20% discount.  Make sure and tell them you read about the Dinner at SEMO Craft Beer!
Cheers!

From Shannon at Crown Valley Brewery:

Crown Valley Brewery will be hosting our second annual Brewmaster's Dinner Friday October 8, 2010. We will have a happy hour between 6-7 PM and dinner will be served at 7:30 PM. Dine with our Brewmaster Carl Wiersma over four delicious courses, three courses will be paired with one of Crown Valley's Beers and then the other course will be paired with the winning beer from our July Homebrewer's Contest. Tickets go on sale September 1, 2010 and tickets are $50.00 per person. If you book before September 15, 2010 and mention the code 10810BREW and this website you will receive a 20% discount. For more details about the Brewmaster's dinner go tohttp://www.crownvalleybrewery.com/ . If you have questions please feel free to contact Suzane Shannon at sshannon@crownvalleywinery.com .

Here are the four courses and the beer pairings as of right now, though these are subject to change.

Appetizer

Red wine marinated beef strip steak topped with porter sautéed mushrooms, and Big Bison marinated bison strip steak layered with caramelized mushrooms garnished with a mushroom cap stuffed with the caramelized onions.

Plowboy Porter

Salad

Iceberg Wedge with beer (bleu) cheese dressing and bacon

BrokenTreaty Wheat**(craft beer winner)

Entrée

Pan seared pork chops with apples & cider Served with celery root mash and asparagus

Hard Cider & Farmhouse Lager

Dessert

Raspberry and Chocolate mousse rosettes with black sesame butter crunch cookies

Sweet Raspberry Wheat

Next brewing date

There are discussions of Nov. 6 as a possible brewing date. Whatever we decide it is probably best to make sure we have the necessary space and fermenters. I would like to brew 10 gal of the Tripel and 5 gallons of an amber ale. When we get Matuz's fermenter back we have the following: 3 10 gal ferm., 3 5 gal ferm., and 2-3 glass fermenters (although for proper secondarying probably 1 available.)

Additionally, if we need space for wine to be chilled at 30-40 F, there will be room in the freezer shortly.

4 days until hell unleashes its fury.

Two Things: Bottles & Shirts

Bottling beer. That's what is going on at the Rover Shire on Wednesday afternoon in Won'tzville, MO. 150ish bottles of Witbier. I hope people dig it. Not to sell the guys' recipe up too much, but it is more smooth and flavorful than any beer I've gotten at the store.

In "Holy Crap, Our Friends Are Awesome" news, our buddy DAJ2 of Jeff City designed some kickbutt shirts for us. Thanks for taking the time to design them and get em out there, buddy!

Watermelon Concerns + Pear Success

Matuz and his wonderful wife called me the other night with concerns about the watermelon wine. It's been sitting at his place in the secondary and he feared it had spoiled when he opened it. It was yellow and the smell was rough. I did a lot of research before I saw/smelled it myself. Research online says at this stage it's supposed to have an unpleasant odor and the red "pigment" should be falling to the bottom, leaving it looking an odd pale yellow.

Last night I checked out the watermelon wine and brought it over to my place. Yes, the smell is pretty unpleasant, but the advice I read online yesterday seems to mirror what I've read on other sites, "If you're thinking about tossing it because it smells, don't do it! It will turn out ok as long as you're sure it fermented quickly." I know it has fermented, because the hydro reading went from 1.100 to 0.900 in just over a week, so it should have a high enough alcohol content that nothing's going to spoil it.

So, my conclusion yet again is that I've got to be patient and ignore my instinct to pass judgment on the wine too quickly. The good news is that, once the secondary is open for a short time, the smell dissipates and all that is left is the wine smell.

Finally, we (the soon-to-be wife and I) made a decision yesterday to serve the 2010 Pear Wine (casually known as "Horse Piss") at the head table for toasting at our wedding reception next month. Of the wine's we've made so far, this Pear Wine has been the consensual favorite.

We have about one gallon left of the original three gallons we started with, so we're probably going to use it at the head table and then let our parents/grandparents try it. Hopefully we'll have some left after that... Until then, it's sitting in a refrigerator to keep it consistently cold. That has seemed to make the taste much more crisp over the past month or so.