Wheat Ale 1

Yep, we went ahead and brewed a Wheat Ale I had been thinking about for the last couple of days. What made this batch more fun is we got to use a brand new piece of brew equipment recently purchased, a wart chiller. This item is simply coiled copper tubing with an attachment for a hose on one end and a outflow hose on the other. This allows the brewer to rapidly cool the beer to the temperature that the yeast should be added. For us, this took just under 15 minutes. For comparison, our last batch which was cooled using the ice bath method took over 75. This should give us better tasting beer, and reduce 'chill haze', which is essentially cloudy beer and is only aesthetic.

The recipe we used is basically our own. We modeled it a bit off a clone recipe, but went ahead and changed several things based on our own experience. This should be a light ale, hopefully very tasty over the upcoming summer months.

We're off to the river this afternoon - the first of the weekly Middle Fork Snoqualmie runs we've attended. This is a quick class III-IV run just outside of North Bend, about 45 minutes out of the city. Now that the weather is finally warming up, we should be able to run this more regularly.

Below are a couple of photos from the Green.

Danger ahead, Quig!


Me just below paradise rapid.


Jessica's first time through the Nozzle.