Blue Ribbon Biscuits

                                          Dorothy won the blue ribbon at the Tulsa State Fair

                                                        for her buttermilk biscuits

 August 13, 2023, the family celebrates my 78th birthday.

                                            Karon, Becky, Dorothy

                                           Burk, Bill, Kelly

Gracen, Jenna, Me, Hunter, Marley

Brewing After a Break

 Last spring I was preparing to brew an American lager for the state fair competition in Tulsa when the pandemic was making itself known. Soon the competition was canceled and I stored the beer ingredients in the freezer. I had been making batches of beer followed by more batches of beer for two years and I needed a break. Once summer was done and the gardening and yard work was behind me until next year I decided to do a little brewing. I had been following traditional recipes all this time so I decided to create my own beer.  I had the ingredients for a classic German pilsner so I used those, but instead of using the traditional noble hops I tossed in Cascade a hop used  in some of the popular west coast ales. I fermented it at ale temperatures and it is now conditioning at room temperature for a couple of weeks. Sometime next week I will take a precursory sip just to see how things are coming along.

Five gallons of homebrew happily fermenting

This batch yielded 45 12 oz. bottles. They've been

conditioning and carbonating for a week. Another 

week should do it. Of course, the longer they condition

the better quality the finished beer.

Blue Ribbon

After a year of brewing ales and lagers I entered my latest lager into the homebrew competition of the Tulsa State Fair.   I won first place in the lager category.

Continuing the Brewing Process

Learning to brew beer is an interesting enterprise. There is always new information to absorb and put into the process of perfecting your latest concoction. Also, for me personally, I enjoy designing the bottle labels.

This is the second beer brewed. It's a Belgian ale I name the Wayward Redhead because it was supposed to be a blonde ale and turn out to be red.

This is the best ale so far. It's my version of a California Common recipe. I call it Oklahoma Steam.

Then along came a version of a Kentucky Common.

2nd Batch - Home Brew

I was up this morning before 6am sanitizing bottles  in preparation for filling them with my latest batch of brew. By 10am Dorothy and I had 8 twenty ounce bottles and 33 twelve ounce bottles capped and ready to condition.

This is the color of the final product.

The beer gets siphoned from the large bottle into

the stainless steel bottling kettle where it is mixed

with a sugar and water solution. This solution feeds

the residual yeast in the beer producing carbon dioxide

which carbonates the beer. 

As Dorothy filled the bottles I capped them.

In two weeks these will be ready to drink.

Listen........

I have come to the conclusion that the polarization that exist between the American people is not so much Republican vs Democrat, conservative against liberal, nationalists vs globalist. The actual schism is between rational, critical thinkers and true believers (as defined by Eric Hoffer).