Last weekend, I bottled my first batch of beer in years. For my birthday I received a gift certificate to a home-brew store in Rancho Cordova that I did not know existed. Not knowing where my recipes are (I still haven’t found them), I asked for a stout kit. The guy there was really friendly and helped me pick out a kit for me to get back into the craft.
After some challenges, the beer finished brewing. Brandon and I went back to the same home-brew store to buy some bottles and bottle caps. I wanted my first batch put into fresh bottles, mainly to minimize my frustration level… I hate cleaning used bottles. The bottling went as expected. No broken bottle tops, no leaking beer all over the kitchen floor.
I’ve got the bug back. I want to brew more beer! My hefeweizen recipe is pretty simple to remember, so I jotted it down. I had to look up the hops names, they are German noble hops. I also had to look up the yeast. I knew “kinda” what the strain was, but I wanted to be exact when I went to purchase it.
I convince Jen that she’s been in our COVID shelter too long and needed to get some sun, albeit smoke-filtered courtesy the Glass Fire in Napa County. We drive to the place, located in a seedy strip mall between a laundromat and some sort of meeting hall, and IT’S GONE! The sign is gone, the place is stripped clean, and it looks as if someone was painting it for the next tenant. Even the phone number doesn’t work.
If I find out what happened, I’ll post an update. The guy who originally sold me the stout kit did say they were in the process of moving, but I hope his business wasn’t another COVID victim.
Anyways, there’s a home-brew place in Folsom that I like that I started going to a few years back. With Brandon learning to drive, I think we’ll take a trip out there today to get my hefeweizen supplies.