Because Sex Panther really is a good name for the beer, and because I like to make these labels here it is… Sex Panther!
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I signed up SecondFloorBrewing.com at Google Analytics yesterday. It is a pretty extensive system for tracking statistics surrounding your website. Since I have installed it, we have had 10 visitors. One from Canada (who knows?) and nine from the United States. If you pull up the map you can see, in varying degrees of green, what percentage of your visitors come from what states. This picture is small but you can see New York, Virginia, and Maryland shaded with light green and Pennsylvania shaded with a dark green.
Hmmmmm, I wonder from where in PA all of these hits could be coming. Oh, if you click on the state you can see the city at which the IP address is registered.
All from York. Oh, I see… Thanks Groupie Jess! It is upon us… Rejoice!
Things CeePeeeeeeeeeZee doesn’t tell you about yeast: if you decide to go crazy and add more malt extract, you will need a lot more yeast if you still want to make beer. I had to read this on the yeast manufacturer’s website. I’m worried about Red. Next batch I am putting a yeast colony equal to the population of earth into the brew. Six billion yeasties into the brew. Ah Twitter… FOLLOW US! NOW! I know most of the lingo had been taken already but what do you call it when I post about Twitter and then Tweet about my post? I plan to do this often so I will need a easy to pronounce, easy to remember word that will piss off less than 50% of our readership. It should combine “post” or “blog” with “tweet” or “twitter” and possibly with “circular” or “loop.” Any geniuses reading this can feel free to post their ideas. If no one comes up with anything I’m going with “Twirclog.” Twirclog Alert! We have three four followers on Twitter. FOLLOW US! NOW! The only one we don’t know is MDBeerSpotter who has a very important hobby job. It appears that he walks around town peering through the front windows of bars to see what is on tap. I like it. This information will definitely be useful. Somewhere out there are pictures of the brewing process for batch three. It is pretty much the same as the others. Our camera-person duties continue to rotate depending on the poor unfortunate soul who is there during the brew. We might just save up those pictures and combine them with our Halloween / H1N1 celebration / Parker’s Porter tasting party pictures. Big T is dropping knowledge all over the place. I propose a meet and drink whenever we both have a new brew. Parker’s Porter tasting and label coming soon… “I don’t always drink beer. But when I do, I prefer Just The Tip Ale. Stay thirsty, my friends.” — Papa Deller
Before beginning I would like to say that Just The Tip Ale was about 10 times more delicious after sitting in the refrigerator an additional week. I think it added all sorts of sweetness and some other sort of fruitiness to an already delicious beer. I don’t know why. It is not in CPZ’s book. It might be the only thing not in CPZ’s book. We passed out three half gallon jugs of JTT. I am now waiting for endorsements from those three drinkers. If possible I would like pictures from those select three with their jugs. Just a reminder, you do not get a five cent refund for returning the jug. You do however, get to stay on the tasting rolls of SFB. Return the jug and we will refill it with our next batch, just like the milkman. OK, on to the meat of TMQ. We brewed batch three this weekend. It is designed to be a red. There were are couple firsts that occurred during this brew that I would like to highlight. 1A. For the first time there were other people at Tom’s when we went to buy supplies. I guess the place is pretty popular. We were third (I think) in line when we got to the basement. While waiting we got to taste another home brewer’s beer. It was supposed to be a pumpkin ale I think. It did not taste like pumpkin. Tom told the dude there was a slight pumpkin taste. I think Tom was being slightly dishonest. I tasted nothing except beer. It was bland beer at that. I am glad we got to taste someone else’s home brew because it made me realize that our stuff is better than at least one other home brewer’s stuff. It also taught me that brewing beer is all about throwing as much malt and hops into the brew as possible. His beer was light and weak. JTT had all sorts of flavors. I don’t know if they were all good . Good or bad, there was something to taste in there. That is always better than too little taste. I refuse to brew (or drink) Bud Light Lime. 1B. While at Tom’s I got to taste some of the malted barely. Apparently CPZ doesn’t specify the color scale of the crystal malt he tells us to use. I had Crystal 60 at Sam Adams the day before so I declined that. I tasted Biscuit, a type of toasted barley, and a few others. Some are good to eat, some are not so good to eat. All are good for brewing, so they say. We haven’t used them all yet… …or there are just wordpress spammers out there. Our lastest comment from “Hobosic” is from an IP address located in Amsterdam. At least thats what the whois on his comment info tells me.. If any of you Second Floor Brewing faithful out there missed it, check out the nonsense English on the Sam Adams Brewery post comments page. I like to think that he or she is trying to express a bittersweet sentiment. Let me know if I’m wrong Hobosic, but I think you enjoyed the post but just wished you could have been there at the brewery with all of us. I can see you now, social engineering tour group members’ email addresses, slipping advertisments for Viagra into the donation box, handing out “Ugh! Get Rich Quick. So clear positively.” flyers to everyone on the way out. But since spammers, I assume, like beer just as much as normal, rational human beings, please Hobosic, spread the word! Tell all the spammers you know. SFB worldwide, boats and hos… boats and hos. Overall impression: worth the trip…
Especially if you are interested in brewing, as I am of late, the tour is short, to the point, and a pint of free beer. Just a short ride on the T from downtown, and an even shorter walk down a brick sidewalk, the brewery doesn’t stand out from the rest of the town. It seems small, I was half expecting Willy Wonka. It probably is small, the tour guide Andrew told us (beer in hand) how the company does most of its production brewing in two additional facilities in Ohio and Pennsylvania. He also told us about the four ingredients and four vessel process used to make their award winning beers. After my reconnaissance, it was on to the tasting room where we sampled Boston Lager, Oktoberfest, and Boston Brick Red, a variety of Sam only available on tap in Boston, in 7oz souvenir glasses. During each tasting Andrew showed us how to evaluate the beer and which flavors and aromas we could expect. The tasting room is square and has a bar in the front with five Sam Adams varieties on tap. After the tasting we returned to the lobby where we donated a few dollars for local charities and filled out a comment card. My comment went something like this: ”The tour was informative. I am going to steal your brewing secrets for use in my own homebrewing venture. Thanks. Check me out @ http://www.secondfloorbrewing.com.” So if you are Andrew the tour guide’s boss and are now reading this post, give us a comment please and then spread the word!
A select few I’m sure. If I was not out there on the net, constantly looking for beer news to post here, I don’t think I would have known about it. Tom had a few flyers on his desk at The Juices and Berries Emporium. I think there should have been better advertising. Have you seen the site? Go to BaltimoreBeerWeek.com for one video and zero pictures. Where were the street teams? I need pictures of beer lovers enjoying themselves! At least good ole Rob Kasper of Kasper on Tap had a few posts. I was at Max’s on the first Sunday of Beer Week. It was just like any other day except they had some extra mini-kegs on the bar. Dear Baltimore Beer Week, I need more fanfare! –Love Dan P.S. Nice background on the web site. Just The Tip is a success! A few days removed from the tasting party, I still agree on how delicious Just The Tip Ale is. To those who shared the Ale with me, you need no further explanation. It was good. To those who could not be with us during this historic occasion, I have devised five reasons how I (and you) could know, without having had one drop of Just The Tip, that the beer was a success. 1. Its creators deemed it drinkable. This is our first beer. We do not know what we are doing. The fact that it did not make people E-mmediately puke, nor make any one’s head explode after drinking, should be reason enough to deem it successful. I have heard so many stories of people’s first batches being pond scum, being beyond disgusting. This point might be our biggest success until the day we create a mature, truly enjoyable beer. 2. It got people drunk. Yea! Its actually beer… or something close enough to beer to be called beer! Beer contains alcohol, the first of the three beer maxims. Because we used the aquarium hydrometer during the brewing of JTT, I was unable to obtain an accurate specific gravity reading before we added yeast. Therefore, I could not determine JTT’s alcohol content. However, toward the end of the evening there were definitely some drunk folks doing whatever it is drunk people do. That’s all I’m going to say about that. JTT contained alcohol. Case closed. |
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Who among you knew that Baltimore’s first (and soon to be) annual Beer week just happened?