May the Fourth Beer with you

This year National Homebrew day celebrations falls on May 4th.  Shared only with another big holiday - Star Wars day, which coins the term "May the fourth, be with you."  National Homebrew day is actually May 7th, however, the closest Saturday surrounding it generally gets deemed as the Big Brew Day.  It's a day where homebrew clubs get together to brew high alcohol beers and Homebrew stores teach the craft of brewing to new people.  I unfortunately, in my 3 years of brewing have never been able to coordinate my schedule to sync up with this holiday.  One day, I will, but for now I will just have to obey princess leia and have a homebrew.

I did want to take this time to check in on and evaluate things based on my 2012-2013 brew schedule.  As you can see by the updated table below, I did not stick to my plan.  I did give myself the right to make changes, but  it really boils down to not being able to brew as often as I'd planned.  I started a new job in August and have had to work quite a bit more than I expected.  That, coupled with my lengthy commute lends to very little time for brewing. Another reason I have brewed less is because my consumption has been low.  I always talk about brewing smaller batches, but I never follow through...I always seem to want to fill the keg to the brim.  I might need to change my way of thinking and move back to 2-3 gallon batches or so.  Also, might need to start bottling some as well - I would say 75% of my homebrew gets consumed away from my kegerator.  This means more time cleaning, sanitizing, and filling bottles from the keg...if I just bottle I can alleviate all that!

The last two beers in the schedule are doubtful at this time, because my wife and I are in the process of buying a house!  This will be exciting as I should be revamping and creating a new brewery setup, however, it will delay wort production for a few months!

Competitions 

I got my scoresheets back from the regional rounds of NHC (National Homebrew Competition) and I will go into detail on those later, probably once I get feedback from all the other competitions I entered.  The other competitions entered are the Spirit of Free Beer and the Battle of the Bubbles.  I will be stewarding the Spirit of Free Beer as well, so be on the look out for some competition related posts in the future...Stay Tuned!