Retirement starts on Wednesday. That means I will have free time for hobbies. At least, I should have free time after the house closes and we are actually living in the Durango. We still have a 2500 square foot house to try to fit into a 10x12 storage unit and about 2 weeks to do it in.
I spent Sunday afternoon on one of my hobbies. I bottled one batch of beer and then brewed another.
I bottled a batch of Whispering Wheat. As you can tell by the recipe name, it is a wheat beer. I didn't add any fruit to this one so it is a basic wheat with the addition of sterling hops added during fermentation. This is one of Jan's favorite recipes and I have brewed it a couple of times before. This time I tried something new. I bought a 1 gallon growler from Growlerwerks.com. Their growlers are CO2 pressurized so I can carbonate in 3 days. I will let you know how it tastes later this week. I also bottled the rest of the batch, but they won't be carbonated for another 2 weeks.
Brewing is a fun hobby, and it doesn't take up a lot of time. A basic recipe will take about an hour to brew and get into the fermenter. A complicated recipe can take 2 to 3 hours. All you do for the next 2 or 3 weeks is let it sit in a dark place and wait for the yeast to do it's thing.
Bottling takes another 1 or so and most of that is sterilizing everything. So for 2 to 4 hours of effort, I can get enough beer to last a couple of months.
I also brewed up a recipe I haven't tried before. This one is called Blackeye Bock. It is a darker than usual bock. Bocks are dark lagers to begin with and this one uses darker malts to get a darker color. I have never tried a bock before so this will be new experience for me. The timing of this batch is pushing it a little. It will be ready for bottling on April 12. We are scheduled to close on the house on April 13. The house will be emptied and cleaned by then, so I will have to bottle and then clean up everything and that will be the last things we take out of the house.
Bottling a batch of beer will mark the end of one phase of our lives and the beginning of a new one. Cheers!
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