Beer Advent-urous

I know there's been a lull in the homebrew posts, but I can assure you that we've been quite busy with some projects, in addition to the holidays.  I'm going to touch on the projects immediately below, but please jump to the Beer Advent section if that's what you are here to read about.

Projects

As for the projects, we've got a Cream Stout/Milk Stout on its way here after Christmas.  We also plan on doing another 1/2 batch of an all-grain.  Our local homebrew store moved locations in Frederick and we have a brewery tour up there in January planned, so it makes sense we get up there and look around and gather up some prime materials.  Not sure what we're doing yet, but would love some ideas from the battery brewing faithful.  Heck, you can even brew with us if you have something good in mind.  If you page through our posts, you will know that our last Milk Stout and a Chai Tea Wheat Beer were our last adventures in all-grain.

The other project is has been a wort chiller.  This is a copper tubing system that is aimed at cooling our boiling wort a lot faster than our ice water baths (especially since we always seem to forget to stash away a ton of ice prior to brewing). This will help prevent bacterial growth (we haven't had "bad" bacteria in our brew, but even non-harmful bacterial can affect taste) and will help avoid some chemicals from forming in a slow cool down process.  I'll post a full blog on it once we're complete.  Right now we've gotten as far as coiling 20 feet of copper and situating exit and entrance points.  We need to figure out the best way to synch it up to the sink to run the tap water through it, and once we do that we'll post a full blog about it.

Holidays:  Beer Advent 

And now to what you're all here for...Beer Advent.  For whatever cosmic reasons, Ed and my birthdays are a day apart, and both 1 and 2 days after Christmas respectively.  We are kindred souls in that our parents have been splitting presents and friends have been ignoring us in favor of Christmas over the past 27 and 28 years respectively.  What better way to make up for those down feelings than to buy each other beer in a advent style!?!?!?!  Better yet, where most people would end on Christmas, Ed and I can alternate odd and even days until ending on our birthdays.  For those of you without the convenience of birthdays next to each other, you follow a more traditional advent set-up and end of Christmas.

The Rules:

Each of us purchase a dozen beers, wrap them up in tin foil, number them on the days they should be open, and exchange them in a ceremony that seems fit.  We set a spending limit at $30, but you could set any limit given your financial situation or taste.  We went to a nearby Total Wine, but any place that specializes in Make Your Own 6 Packs would work great. We required that the final day be a bomber or big bottle beer, but other than that any size, type, flavor, brand was game.  We tried to shop for the other person, buying things we'd think they'd like or find interesting.  If you couldn't fill all 12 spots with the $30, you could fill in the gaps with either homebrew or random beer you might have laying around.  24 days before your end date, you exchange, put them in the fridge, and enjoy a beer every other day (or 1/2 a beer a day if you live close to each other and like me, have found that the beers you bought are all ones you want to try too).

The Game:

Ironically enough, we have close friends (Ed's roommate, and Ed's girlfriend's roommate) whose birthdays are the 4th and 5th, which happen to be 24 days before each of our birthdays respectively.  So we've had to carefully dodge some other birthdays to hold our special exchange ceremony.  We're planning on exchanging later today, with Ed opening his at that time.  We'll keep you posted of all the beers, thoughts on them, and the overall child-like excitement we have about Beer Advent!