Getting ready for a homebrewing day begins a few days prior to the actual brew day. There is a lot of cleaning and sanitizing to do. There is also one task that you may want to do to help ensure a good fermentation later on, and that's making a yeast starter. It's simple, quick and will speed up the fermentation process. It can also help reduce the risk of other bacteria getting a foothold first in your wort.



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Just uploaded about 25 pictures from the All Colorado Beer Festival this last weekend in Colorado Springs. 24 breweries and over 70 beers made for one heck of a nice time. Check out the review and pics at FermentedlyChallenged.com.



http://www.fermentedlychallenged.com/2008/11/all-colorado-beer-festival-2008.html…

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Part II in a 3-part series on the breweries of Longmont Colorado was posted this week. I recently visited the tasting room at Left Hand Brewing and sampled some of their seasonals and recent award winning beers. For several pictures and a video tour - visit the blog post over at FermentedlyChallenged.com.



Part III will be posted soon and feature the new brewing facility for Oskar… Continue

Today begins the first of a three part series highlighting the breweries of Longmont Colorado. The Pumphouse Brewery & Restaurant is the first to be featured. Chipper Dave took the day Friday to visit three breweries in Longmont and chronicled the event. For a review, pictures and video (coming soon) head on over to Fermentedly Challenged.



Part II will feature Left Hand… Continue

I had the pleasure of working three shifts volunteering at the Great American Beer Festival yesterday in Denver. If you want to get an idea of what goes on behind the scenes at the GABF check out my blog entry on it over at Fermentedly Challenged. I took a lot of video last night and will be putting together a short video summary of behind the scenes at the GABF. It was a long day volunteering… Continue

The tapping party coverage article is now up on Fermentedly Challenged. I've posted a summary, some pictures and a 3 minute video of Doug Odell of Odell Brewing Company of Fort Collins Colorado tapping the first bottle of his new Woodcut oak aged beers. The first being an Old Ale. About 10.6% ABV. See the review at:



Fermentedly Challenged…



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My last week's blog post about calories and beer got me to do some serious thinking about my weight. I admit that I'm about 20 pounds overweight and I've love nothing better than to lose some of my gut and drop down to a weight that I haven't been since I was 30. About a 3 weeks ago, I set out on a personal challenge to drop some weight. At my highest weight, I was about 203 pounds and about 27 pounds too heavy according to my doctor.

I'm 6 foot tall and 49 years old and not getting any… Continue

Beer companies and becoming larger and larger. Soon the choices we have for drinking beer may come from just a couple of beer companies - or perhaps eventually just one. Will InBev become much like the BnL company of the recent movie Wall-e? Read all about it on my other column: Northern Colorado Beer Examiner.

I posted an article on the examiner.com/denver site today that spotlights a fairly new start-up brewery in Colorado called the Crabtree Brewing Company. Their beers are only sold in Colorado currently but they are planning to expand to other states in the not so distant future. Check out this hidden gem at the… Continue

Hope all of you enjoyed American Craft Beer Week as I did. I had the golden opportunity to attend the Samuel Adams Beer Dinner at the Rioja restaurant in downtown Denver on Thursday night. Best of all - it was FREE! I entered in a contest sponsored by Samuel Adams to their newsletter subscribers and was shocked when they told me I had won. I grabbed two friends (and 1 extra ticket) and headed down to Denver for a delicious 3-course meal. Got to meet brewer Bob Cannon from Boston Beer. Pictures,… Continue

Thanks to the encouragement of many of you here on Aleuminati, I've been trying many IPAs over the last month or so and I can now say with confidence that I LOVE IPAs! I had my first Dogfish Head 90-minute Imperial IPA tonight and I just loved it! I wrote up a raving review of it tonight on my main blog. Looking forward to tasting more like this in the future.…

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Just had a great visit to one of the newer breweries in Northern Colorado. This one was at the recently opened Rock Bottom Brewery and restaurant in the Centerra shopping complex in Loveland, Colorado. I personally talked with their Brewmaster and got to sample 11 different beers! For a quick summary and review see the blog entry.…

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I had the special treat to sample a bottle of Chimay (Blue) Grande Reserve this weekend. This is a fine example of a Trappist Belgian Strong Dark Ale. If you've never had the chance to try one of these beers you owe it to yourself to buy one. Read more of my review on my blog.

I've added an RSS feed from my blog to my Aleuminati page and will appear along the left column. Or if you want a more easier page to read, head on over to Fermentedly Challenged at http://fermentedlychallenged.blogspot.com/. I'm starting to include an audio version of the blog as well.

Chipper Dave