Whew, I'm back from a short writing hiatus. Between the holidays, getting a new puppy, work, and just not making the time, it's been a little while. On the bright side, I have been brewing in the meantime, so I'll have a bunch of new content up shortly. For the sake of keeping thing chronological, let's start with this Scottish I brewed to have on tap for Thanksgiving and Xmas.

UPDATE: Alright, thanks for the wait guys; we have two winners!

Amarillo - Jacob Dennis
Citra - Steve Greco

Drop me an email at bertusbrewery@gmail.com with your shipping addresses, and I'll get the hops in the mail. Thanks again to all who entered. Hopefully we'll do something like this again in the near future!


I've mentioned it a few times, but I buy 98% of my yearly supply of hops in bulk after the harvest. I love the flexibility this yields, as I always have what I need on hand to brew what I want. I'm usually pretty good at accurately estimating how much I need, but this past year I bought a little too much.

So with that said, I'm happy to announce that we're doing our first ever giveaway! I have 8oz ea of 2012 crop year Amarillo and Citra taking up space in the freezer, and I won't use it before the 2013 crop shows up. They've been vacuum sealed in my freezer since harvest last year, so they are as fresh as year-old hops can possibly be. You guys have really helped make this blog what it is with all the suggestions, questions, comments, and support, so I wanted to say thanks.

Here's how it'll work: If you wish to enter, please leave a comment on this post with either the word 'Citra' or 'Amarillo'. You can only enter your name in for one or the other; I'll delete both entries for duplicate posts.

Entries will be accepted through December 9th, and two winners will be selected on December 10th. We'll get in contact after that, and the hops will ship out later that week.

As much as I love all you International readers, I regret to say this giveaway will be for US residents only. Sorry guys.

Finally, I wanted to say that I've received a ton of great suggestions and requests for the blog, both via email and in comments, recently. You guys have some great ideas, but it's often hard for me to either remember them, or keep them organized. So I'm going to create an additional page at the top of the site for suggestions and requests. That will help keep me organized, and hopefully I can dedicate some more time to those posts. Keep an eye out for it in the next few days. I can't promise that I'll get around to all of them, but I'll certainly try.

Thanks again for the support everyone! Cheers!

Between brewing a lot of clone IPAs, and then beers for the wedding, it's been awhile since I've brewed an IPA of my own. The timing is good, as now is also a good time to finish using up the remainder of my 2012 hops before the new 2013 ones come in. Also, we're going to be camping this Thanksgiving with the in-laws, so I'm going to make this a 10 gallon batch, and bring a keg out for the weekend.

Fall is in full swing here in Phoenix. Our definition of Fall is quite different from a lot of the country (80s and sunshine), but the nights are cooling off, which is putting me in the mood for a dark roasty beer. I started flipping through my brew log looking for some inspiration, as I often do. Literally 50 pages deep, still digging for something, I realized it had been nearly three years since I last brewed a milk stout. A milk stout it is. Never one to leave well-enough alone, I decided to throw in some cacao nibs as well; Milk Chocolate Stout does have a nice ring to it.

Cheers!

Alright, one more non-beer related post before we get back to the regularly scheduled programming. I know it's been a month since our Wedding weekend, but there were a few more cool things worth sharing from it.

I'm on a quest to brew a really tasty low gravity Pale Ale. I want something in the 1.035-1.037 range that has the hop quality of an IPA. To be perfectly honest, this recipe has been harder to put together than I thought it would be. Last time I brewed this, it was a little rough around the edges. I've since tweaked the recipe some, and we're giving it another go.