Spruce Trail

We tried a beer from the LCBO a while back that used spruce instead of hops! And it was meant to be drunk at room temperature. We really liked the taste and were very interested in the idea of brewing our own beer with spruce. We liked the idea of doing something a bit different and as an added bonus, hops are quite expensive and spruce is free since we have a HUGE spruce tree in front of our house.
We took some tips from the internet, especially this guy. You should only use the new tips in spring (luckily we decided to do this back in May, just in time to pick those tips) and you should use about half an ounce per gallon. And other than that, Kevin just made up his own recipe - very adventurous for such a newbie beer brewer. And we called our beer Spruce Trail.
So we made the beer and it seemed to work and we got to taste it last week. It is delicious. We tried it 3 ways: room temperature, cold, and in between. We both liked it best at room temperature just like the original. Kind of nice to have a beer you like to drink at room temperature, frees up some fridge space at least. But not such a great summer beer.
And with the spent grains this time I made chocolate chip cookies using this recipe. They turned out great, tasted like a healthier granola-y version of chocolate chip cookies.

Hop, Drop, and Roll

Kevin and I have been drinking our first beer that we have brewed without a kit. We did use malt extract as opposed to just buying the grains like one awesome homebrewer that we met does, but using the extract seems to be the norm for even very enthusiastic homebrewers.

This new adventure in brewing meant looking at recipes, sourcing ingredients, being at the stove for hours, and getting to be just a little bit creative. Actually I should scratch out the bit about looking at recipes, sourcing ingredients, and maybe even the creative bit because Kevin's cousin Brandon, of Lord Toffsbury fame, did all that for us. Thanks Brandon! He made a delicious version of the this recipe and of course we knew we wanted to do the same. The recipe is the Imperial Pale Ale from Sam Calagione's Extreme Brewing, a book that we have recently purchased and just love, it seems to be the book for homebrewing. Here is the beer bubbling like crazy, it was really fun to watch and hear!
It tastes delicious! We are extremely happy with it. And super hyped to do more brewing. I am also hoping that this ability to make our own delicious beer will curb some of our LCBO spending. Oh, this batch of beer is of course called Hop, Drop, and Roll. We love the hop puns that are so often used in naming extra hoppy beers.With the spent grains (we use malt extract plus a little bit of actual grains for improved taste), I made bread. I just kind of improvised a recipe that was half white and half whole wheat flour. It turned out well but had a bit too much taste to really go with any of the things that I usually like my bread with, will be experimenting with other spent grain recipes in the future.And, because I am all too aware that as interesting as I may think my life is most of my readers are much more interested in Henry's (they are his grandparents and aunts afterall), here are some pictures of him from yestereday.
PS - Happy Canada Day! We will start celebrating as soon as Kevin and Henry get out of bed.

A Trip to Paris

We had the best day out today. We took a drive to Paris, Ontario and also made some stops at Brantford and Cambridge.

First off, the drive from Waterloo to Paris was lovely - the nicest drive I've ever done in Ontario I think. It was all along the Grand river with views of the river down through the bare trees. On the way we had to stop and get out to take pictures when we saw these 4 vultures hanging out on some crates. At first all four were spreading their wings but I didn't manage to capture that.


Paris is a really nice small town about 45 minutes from us right at the intersection of 2 rivers. We walked all around the small town and looked around the shops including a couple of thrift shops.


We got to see an example of this rare building style that uses field stones.


We had a nice pub lunch. Henry was a little angel in the pub. He tasted some fries but lost interest in them as soon as I pulled his current favourite food out of my bag - orange.


Brantford didn't have much for us to look at. It did have an LCBO well stocked in beer for Kevin. In Cambridge we also stopped off at the Grand River Brewing Company store to pick up even more beer. And Henry got to stretch his legs a bit.

When we got home Henry practiced walking around in his rainboots that we bought him today, Kevin looked up his new beers on RateBeer, and there was still time for some playing.

Cool Bean Stout

We bottled our Cool Bean Stout last night. We bought a stout kit from the grocery store and added a bottle of vanilla and some cocoa powder.

It was great after our experience last year bottling - this year the siphon actually worked, made it seem so easy in comparison. We didn't add sugar to the bottles (to referment) so it won't be fizzy and we decided that meant we could use wine bottles and the corks wouldn't pop out. But we also did some beer bottles for smaller portions to give away. Luckily I had found a capper at our thrift store last week.

It's not supposed to taste good for at least another week. But we tasted it last night. And it was alright. Definitely hoping it tastes better. Kev said he could taste the cocoa vanilla, don't think I could. Anyway it was fun and I am so happy to have a hobby that Kevin and I like to do together.

Beer Bottling

We brewed some beer with a couple of Kevin's cousins over the past week. We used a kit from the grocery store and were able to borrow all the equipment. So it cost $21 for 23 litres of beer. All we had to do really was a lot of sterilizing and siphoning. Siphoning turned out to be a huge deal because we lost the suction almost after every bottle for some reason. But it was fun anyway and now we have another couple of weeks to wait and it will hopefully be good for drinking.