Lake Grove OR

[Fieldblend]

Hello from Lake Grove! We're situated just a little south of Portland, Oregon, sharing the property with a little grove of 200 year-old Doug Fir trees.

I've been making beer and wine for some time now. On the beer side, I started with Papazian's book and malt extracts, and about 2 years ago acquired the items needed for doing all grain. It's a simple setup, using a modified rubbermaid cooler for the mash tun and a couple of 8 gallon stainless pots for heating water and boiling the wort. Since I also make wine I already had a hydrometer, pH meter and thermometers. And plenty of glass carboys and airlocks.

We're fortunate in having our own source of hops -- a couple of vines (Willamette and Cascade) -- and they often determine the style of beer I make, although I'm not adverse to experimentation. I just recently retired so am hoping to have more time for honing my beermaking skills. Looking forward to the opportunity.

Cheers,
Mark AKA Fieldblend

 

[GFHomebrew]

Hello from Lake Grove! We're situated just a little south of Portland, Oregon, sharing the property with a little grove of 200 year-old Doug Fir trees.

I've been making beer and wine for some time now. On the beer side, I started with Papazian's book and malt extracts, and about 2 years ago acquired the items needed for doing all grain. It's a simple setup, using a modified rubbermaid cooler for the mash tun and a couple of 8 gallon stainless pots for heating water and boiling the wort. Since I also make wine I already had a hydrometer, pH meter and thermometers. And plenty of glass carboys and airlocks.

We're fortunate in having our own source of hops -- a couple of vines (Willamette and Cascade) -- and they often determine the style of beer I make, although I'm not adverse to experimentation. I just recently retired so am hoping to have more time for honing my beermaking skills. Looking forward to the opportunity.

Cheers,
Mark AKA Fieldblend

Cheers fieldblend! You sound like one switched on experienced brewer I've never delved into the fine art of wine making I'd love to be able to brew up a batch of nice mellow red wine! At least you don't need to age most beer for as long. Well you'd have patience in spades I think good luck and welcome

 

[jmcnamara]

Welcome! sounds like you'll fit in just fine here

 

[Fieldblend]

Cheers fieldblend! You sound like one switched on experienced brewer I've never delved into the fine art of wine making I'd love to be able to brew up a batch of nice mellow red wine! At least you don't need to age most beer for as long. Well you'd have patience in spades I think good luck and welcome

Thanks for the warm welcome!

In my experience, in some ways wine making is easier, at least as far as hygiene is concerned. Wine has less of a tendency to go bad, maybe due to the higher alcohol and fruit acids in the wine. I pay a lot more attention to cleanliness when I make beer, compared to wine. So if you conquer beermaking, you should be able to take on winemaking no problemo.

 

[jmcnamara]

I don't think I'm patient enough. I can barely wait a weekend or 2 after I bottle or keg to try some

 

[Mark D Pirate]

Welcome to the forum , what styles are you brewing most of ?

 

[GFHomebrew]

I'll put my order in now for some merlot and some friuty Shiraz I'm putty in your hand there is nothing like s fine bottle of craft beer and there is nothing like a fine aged red wine.

 

[Endeavour Brewing]

Welcome to the forum Fieldblend and congratulations on you retirement! I made an elderberry port wine when I was in high school but find beer much easier and enjoyable although if my bees keeps producing as well as they did this year I may try to make some mead.
Happy brewing!

 

[Fieldblend]

Welcome to the forum , what styles are you brewing most of ?

I sort of follow the seasons. Darker beers in fall/winter, lighter (but not TOO light) in warmer weather. Two of my more successful brews were a witbier style that by total accident came out tasting very close to Deschutes Chainbreaker -- the bittering components included grapefruit peel -- and an imperial red that used Simcoe hops.

Most of the time I batch-sparge, doing 2-3 passes to increase efficiency. This works OK for mashes that contain a lot of barley. The witbier mash "stuck" due to the relatively high percentage of wheat so I had to improvise a continuous sparge setup. Since I don't have a good setup for continuous, I find it pretty fiddly to run, particularly when compared to batch (I have to crack the HLT water spigot just the teeny right amount). If I do another witbier I will try including some rice hulls to see if that will improve the sparging process.

Our water comes from deep wells and is fairly hard -- about 110ppm "hardness" according to our water report. The report doesn't break out the Ca and Mg. Just to keep things interesting, it contains a fair amount of calcium BIcarbonate, so the pH goes up a bit when the water is heated up & the excess CO2 is driven out. To this point I haven't checked mash pH to see where it winds up, but, based on the results, it isn't way far off. Good enough for me, anyway .