Brewing for PCTBB

9 full carboys! And only one open keg. Time to do some drinking! (And bottling.)

• Starting at the left: PCTBB beer #2, Baltic Porter
• 2 cornies: Flanders Red (brewed in Brooklyn), Berlinner Weisse
• Back row: Flanders Red, Berlinner Weisse, Flanders Pale
• Middle row: Deliverance Kentucky Sour x2, Brett strong saison
• Front: PCTBB beer #1

I just finished brewing my second beer for the homebrew side of the Portland Cheers to Belgian Beers festival / competition. This is one of the coolest ideas I've ever seen for a beer event, and one that could only happen in a brewtopia like Portland, Oregon. I will be entering at least 2 beers, and I want to keep the recipes secret until after the competition because I know of at least one local beer judge that reads this blog. Since they will be entered in the Belgian specialty beer category, I will have to specify the "style" of beer I am brewing, and I want to make sure my beers are judged without a clue of who brewed them. I'll post those 2 recipes after the competition on May 1st, along with a tasting.

My friend Forrest was in town this week, and he helped me brew a 10 gallon batch of the Deliverance Kentucky Sour, which I will post soon, along with catching up on some tastings of recent beers. I also need to try my saison Dupont "Clone" against the real thing, and let me tell you, although I'm wild about the bottle conditioned version, it's very different from Dupont.

Work is going well, I've helped out at probably 8 different breweries bottling beer with Green Bottling recently. Things are going slow but steady on opening for Breakside. We just took a look at the brewery space yesterday. The floors still need to be sealed and we need to build a temperature control room for the 60 gallon plastic conicals, since they are not jacketed. I'm going to try to find fittings for them this week so we can attach a blow off and CO2 line, drill a hole to fit a racking arm, and construct a dump valve for the bottom. We are probably going to put the stand on casters so the conicals can be moved in and out of the cool room, taken out to room temperature for the last few days of fermentation, and then crashed in the walk-in. I'll try to post some pics of the Breakside setup as soon as I get my girlfriend's camera battery fixed and the place gets a little better set up.

EDIT: If you are brewing for PCTBB I'd love to hear what you are brewing or your experience with the yeast in the comments.