February Happenings

February is a short month, but we managed to pack a lot into those 28 days! The month started off memorably, with a historic blizzard hitting Chicago on February 1st. I had just started a new job that day, and fully expected to continue my training on the 2nd. I mean, that's why we have trains around here, right? It snowed like crazy that night, but Joe and I both set alarms when we went to bed that night. The next morning there was snow everywhere, and within a couple hours of waking up we heard Joe's office was closed, and my store ended up closing, too! We met up with our friend Henry, and spent the day playing video games, drinking good beer, watching movies, and playing in the snow! By the afternoon, the snow had stopped, and so many people were out and about, either shoveling and recovering, or just exploring the crazy snow covering everything. It ended up being a fun day!

We've never been big Valentine's day celebrators around here, but we still try to take a little time to enjoy each other's company every February 14th. My view has always been that we love each other every day, and do nice things for each other regularly. We give each other sentimental gifts at Christmas time, and in February we tend to be less inclined to spend money on big gifts for each other. I'm thankful to have such a fantastic husband, and such a healthy, loving marriage, and I celebrate that every day! But if you know me at all, you won't be surprised to hear that I used Valentine's day as an excuse to make us a nice dinner :) I had the day off from work, so it was easy to take the time to plan, shop, and cook up a little feast. It was nice to sit down and relax with Joe when he got home from work... and that is the extent of our lovely little Valentine's day.

Honey, Dijon, and rosemary grilled chicken thighs, crash potatoes, and a salad with feta, walnuts, and cranberries. Also a great excuse to use a couple serving dishes from our trips to Mexico!

We ended the month with a little day trip to Oak Park, a beautiful area just west of the city. I had been talking about touring the Frank Lloyd Wright house for a while, and snatched up a groupon that recently showed up in my inbox. It was fascinating to see the inside of his former home and office, and our tour guide did a great job. They focused much more on the architecture than on Mr. Wright's colorful personal life, but I found the details about the house to be almost as interesting!

After the tour we had a fantastic lunch at Marion Street Cheese Market, complete with some excellent beer. Fully satisfied, we explored downtown Oak Park, and found lots of interesting, independent shops. We had a great day, and agreed we would head back that way once the weather warms up.

Now it's March, and spring is right around the corner... right?!

The Latest from Rockwell Street Brewing

Ok, we're not a professional brewery yet, but we've continued to make progress on our homebrewing. First, we have had a major improvement with our equipment. Joe got a wort chiller from his brother for Christmas, and it's already made a big difference in the two batches we've recently brewed. See how excited he is?

When we're done with boiling the wort, it is important to chill it down before adding the yeast, since high temperatures will kill the yeast, and you can't make beer without it! Before the wort chiller, we did that by making ice baths in our sink. As you can see, the pot is almost as big as the sink, so we had to make multiple ice baths before the wort cooled down enough. This could take up to an hour, and made it hard to find the time to brew on a weeknight. The wort chiller runs cold water through copper pipes, which chills the wort in as little as 10 or 15 minutes. That is a huge improvement!

Another Christmas present was the book Clone Brews, which we've already used twice. It's full of recipes that attempt to replicate popular commercial brews. The choice of recipes is awesome, and we've already picked out a ton of recipes we'd like to try!

This is the ingredients for a clone of Anchor Steam beer, which we decided would be our first clone. I can't say how it is yet, since it's still sitting in bottles getting fully carbonated. It's been about a week since we bottled, so hopefully we'll get to test one in another week or two. We had to adjust a couple ingredients for this recipe based on what was available at our brew store, so I'm not sure how close this will actually be to Anchor Steam. Hopefully it'll be a good tasting beer either way! It's going to be fun to do some side by side testing once the beer is ready.

We also got a sample pack of Boulevard Beer from Joe's other brother, which always makes us nostalgic for Kansas City. It was a treat to enjoy some of it while crafting one of our own brews. House Rule: Always enjoy a beer while brewing.

This is the current state of affairs in our guest bedroom. With two batches in the works at one time, this room might need to officially be repurposed as the brewery room. The Anchor Steam clone is in the bottles, and the bucked is holding the beginnings of a Magic Hat #9 clone. I hope that one turns out well, because it's one of my favorites!

And of course, we're always collecting more bottles. There is a bit of a growler surplus at the moment, too, which two from Goose Island and two from Half Acre. Time to buy more beer to fill those growlers, don't you think?

Cheers!

Merry Christmas!

We went to St Louis to spend Christmas with my family this year, and it was so much fun! We hadn't spent Christmas with my family since 2006, when we attempted to celebrate Christmas in our small apartments in Kansas City just days before our wedding. Being at my parents house this year was just like old times, with a couple sorta crazy husbands joining the mix (see below for kiwi juggling proof of the crazy husband issue).

The main focus of our holiday weekend was food and beer, obviously. The apple didn't fall far from the tree on this matter, and my whole family tends to focus on these two elements at any get together. Sadly, our holiday beer wasn't fully conditioned in time, but Joe and Dan took a trip to the grocery store to make sure we didn't get too thirsty! I also shared some of my pickled vegetables from this summer, which everyone gobbled up. I think the dilly beans were the crowd favorite, and I really loved the dill carrots, too.

We went out to our favorite pizza place, Pi, on the 23rd, courtesy of my grandma. It was a delicious meal... I love their deep dish! It's always fun to hang out around the Delmar Loop area in St Louis, where this pizza place is located. We got a little silly waiting for our table, though...

Brendan & Colleen, in the cozy waiting area at Pi.

We got a little picture happy!

My parents enjoying the Schlafly Christmas Ale.

We got dressed in our Sunday best on Christmas Eve, and went to Mass. Then we came home to eat a fantastic Italian feast. Christmas morning meant TONS of gifts to open, then some lazy time in our pajamas while we checked out all our new goodies. We ate some more, had some drinks, and just soaked up a relaxing day together. What a great Christmas!

The guys cleaned up pretty well, huh?

Rockwell Brewing: Winter Spiced Beer

Merry Christmas!

We decided a little late to take a stab at making a Christmas beer, so this batch has officially been renamed as a "winter beer". We've only tasted an early bottle or two, because the bottle conditioning is still underway. The added carbination will make the final product more balanced, but it seems like the tastes we've had are very promising. We wanted it to have lots of spices in it, and the orange peel added a great citrus note. This will be an enjoyable quaff for the bitter winter months ahead.

We found the recipe on brewmonkey.com, a website Joe found recently. The site is full of great sounding beer recipes, contributed by homebrewers from around the country. Santa also brought Joe multiple beer books this year, so expect some tasty batches from us this Spring!

Here's the link to the recipe.

Thanks for helping us with the bottling, Henry!

It's important to enjoy a brew while doing your own homebrewing... and this batch's beer of choice was Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA :)

Soaking up the holiday season

I've spent today getting ready to head down to St Louis for Christmas, and I couldn't be more excited! Christmas is my all time favorite holiday, because it ends up being a full month of celebration with friends and family. When you toss in our anniversary (4 years on Dec 29th!), and New Year's Eve, it ends up being a really fun and social time of year.

The kick off to this season is of course Thanksgiving, which we spent in DeKalb with Joe's family. The star of the weekend was Liem, our little nephew. He was a lot of fun to watch and snuggle with, and has already changed a lot since we first met him in September. His parents are doing great, too, and it was fun to catch up with this side of our family!

The new mom!

Oldest & younger brothers... forever bonded after a summer of living together in Kansas City :)

Post-turkey poker playing. Joe kicked ass!

A few days after Thanksgiving, we were back home and I was craving leftovers. So I decided to roast a turkey breast, bake some stuffing, and have a second Thanksgiving dinner just for Joe and me. It was a feast, and the leftovers kept us happy for days!

The book club that brews together...

Last week the girls in my book club got together to discuss our latest reading. As we discussed the book (A Walk in the Woods, which was good, but no Neither Here Nor There), we veered off into many other topics of conversation. Someone mentioned that the group had originally wanted to plan lots of social get togethers in addition to the book club meetings, and that we should try to get back to that focus. I thought this was a great idea, because the ladies in this group are a great bunch, and I would love to hang out with them more than once per month.

The next day I got an email from Jess, who had just hosted the book club. She noticed that many of us either brewed our own beer or were interested in learning how, so she invited everyone over to brew with her and her boyfriend Natan, an experienced home brewer. I wasn't scheduled to work on Sunday, so it worked out perfectly!


Joe was especially excited to help with the process, because Natan does all grain brewing, which is a more advanced method than the extract or partial mash techniques we have done. It involves more equipment, which requires some upfront costs that we haven't been willing to commit to yet. Natan has done a bunch of DIY projects to get his equipment in order, and seems to be so comfortable with the whole process. He really knows his stuff!


This is Jess showing off the new tool Natan made for sparging the grains. It involved welding and making tiny holes in a metal pipe, so I don't see Joe and I making anything like this in the near future. Overall the process is not too different from what we already do, once you get to boiling the wort then it's all the same steps.

(Side note: Jess is an amazing host, with major cooking and baking skills. I am pretty sure I will never turn down an invite to hang out at her house. She made a fantastic veggie platter that I couldn't stop eating, and some addictive pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. And another amazing baker in the group made chocolate cupcakes with stout... so appropriate for a brew get together!)


Here's most of the set up for all grain brewing. Basically, hot water goes into the top, then slowly drips into the grains that are in the bottom container. The water seeps through the grains, making the wort. Then you boil the wort, cool it down (Natan had a nice homemade wort chiller, too), add your yeast, and let it ferment. There you have it-- how to brew in 100 words or less).


All grain brewing is done in bigger batches than the other methods, so most people use a turkey frying burner to boil the wort. This is best done outside, away from any nice kitchen equipment or finished floors, cabinets, etc.

Last but not least, if you're going to be outside brewing some beer, you might as well smoke some meat, too. The grill smell had me drooling!

Joe and I haven't brewed for a couple months, so I thought this was just the motivation we needed. I think we'll brew this Sunday, and my vote is for a spiced Christmas ale. Tis the season, right?

Cheers!

Checking in...

Ok, so I haven't posted to this blog in a while. Life has been busy, we haven't been brewing, I've hardly kept up with my other blog.... blah, blah, blah. No excuses, I'm a slacker! So, how about a few life updates? Here's what we've been busy doing:

We did a Brown Line Pub Crawl at the end of August. It involved taking the L from stop to stop, visiting various bars along the way. This picture was taken at Scott's, a gay bar, pretty early in the night. They actually played "It's Raining Men" while we were there! After this the pictures got more embarrassing, but we did have a really fun night!

We went to St Louis for a quick visit at the end of September, and decided we were overdue for a visit to the Anheuser Busch brewery. It's still pretty gross beer, but it was impressive to see such a big operation. Very different from the microbreweries that we usually tour! The property of the brewery was really nice, with old brick buildings and nice landscaping. It was fun to see, but it's still very unlikely that you'll catch Joe or I sipping on a cold Bud.

My Dad and I posed by the international beers, now that they're owned by Inbev. Much more our taste!

We did a quick stop in Columbia, to relive our college days for an afternoon. Campus was so different, because they've done a bunch of construction in the last couple years. It was fun to wander around, and made us very nostalgic for the good old days. We had lunch at the Berg and walked by the columns, and deemed it a good little visit. I'd love to get back to Columbia for a full weekend at some point, to see a football game and visit more of our favorite bars and restaurants. Go Tigers!

Then we drove across the state to visit our new nephew in Kansas City. Liem was such a cute and snuggly little baby, and Joe and I really enjoyed seeing him. His parents were doing great, and it was a nice opportunity for us to get together with a few of our siblings.

In October, our friends Mario and Steph got married. It was a beautiful ceremony and reception, held at Mario's parents house in the country outside of Chicago. Mario is a chef, and made most of the fantastic food. Steph worked at Goose Island, and was able to brew a beer for the wedding. The setting was beautiful, and they did an amazing job with the decorating. Needless to say, we enjoyed ourselves that night!



At the end of October I ran the Go Go Green 5k in Lincoln Park. It was nice weather, and not too crowded of a race. I didn't get to train much in the weeks leading up to the race, so I was pleased to manage to run the whole course without walking. I'll never try to say I'm a hard core runner, but I do love the feeling of running a 5k every once in a while!

We're planning to brew with some friends this weekend, so I'll try to remember to take a few pictures to share on the blog. Also, I'm hoping we'll have the time and extra cash to brew something for ourselves pretty soon. My vote is for a spiced Christmas ale!