CCHBS News for July 2003
- July 19th Hours - PG Summer Party!
- July Recipe Specials
- Name That Beer Contest Winners!
- Honey - Straight from the Bee
- Whirlfloc and Brewpots Now in Stock
- Brewed on the Fourth of July
- Spotlight on Water - 2003 Culver City Water Report
Summer Party Hours
We will be closing at 3PM on Saturday July 19th for the Pacific Gravity Summer Party. If you haven't already joined Pacific Gravity, this should be all the excuse you need!
July Recipe Specials
The Pacific Gravity September style of the month is Wheat Beers so we're featuring those again this month. The recipes we're featuring are Yellow Brick Road Wheat, Wit Men Can't Jump and Old Gringo Honey Wheat Beer. The first two are on sale for $22.00, and the third will cost you $26.00.
Yellow Brick Road Wheat used to be known as Westside Wheat and is very versatile. Ferment it with an ale yeast and you've got and American-style wheat beer. If you want a Hefeweizen, use one of the many German wheat beer yeasts. Add some fruit extract and you've got a fruit beer. Just let us know the style you want and we'll package it for you. (Fruit extracts not included in the kit price.)
Our second summer recipe is Wit Men Can't Jump, formerly Wit's End Belgian White. Also known as Witbier, the best known commercial example is Hoegaarden Wit. The addition of coriander and orange peel makes this a refreshing, but still interesting beer for hot summer days.
Finally, we have Old Gringo Honey Wheat Beer - a recipe that we didn't develop in house. For the past couple of weeks, we've had a Honey Wheat beer on tap that was brewed by one of our regular customers. If you've had a taste of this beer, you know why we liked it so much that we decided to make it the first of our new $30.00 recipe kits, due to the inclusion of 1 lb. of honey in addition to the 6 lbs of malt extract. But for the month of July you'll be able to buy it for only $26.00. Who's the Old Gringo? Drop by the store any Saturday afternoon and you'll find out!
Name That Beer Contest Winners!
As you may have guessed from the names of two of our styles of the month, we've chosen 2 winners for our Name That Beer contest. First prize goes to Dean Sussman for Wit Men Can't Jump. Dean won a recipe kit for the beer he named. Second place was claimed by Luis DeStefano for Yellow Brick Road Wheat. Luis wins a 6 lb. jar of the extract of his choice.
We had some other good entries, so we're going to award a 1 lb. bag of DME to anyone whose entry we decide to use to rename a recipe kit.. Keep watching for your chance to claim your prize.
Whirlfloc and Brewpots in Stock
Two of the items people have regularly asked about have been Whirlfloc and Brewpots. Many of you new brewers have asked about stainless steel brew pots, so we ordered some. Both 20 quart and 30 quart brewpots are in stock, but they won't last long. Whirlfloc is a clarifier, like Irish Moss, only in tablet form. Because it's a tablet, it's much easier to use. No measuring, no rehydrating, just drop it into your boiling wort.
Honey - Straight From the Bee
We've reached a tentative agreement with a local beekeeper to start stocking fresh honey. The varieties have yet to be determined, so you'll have to come into the store to see what we have stock.
Brewed on the Fourth of July
As we hinted last month, while our front door will be closed, we'll be spending the day celebrating our brewing freedom out back in the parking lot. We had a good time during our non-club brew on June 21st, so bring your brewing setups and join us! And if you have any last minute brewing needs we'll still be glad to open the register and help you out.
Spotlight on Water - 2003 Culver City Water Report
Contrary to our assumptions, Culver City water is not fundamentally the same as the water supply in Western L.A. The water report is a little hard to decipher, since Culver City gets its water from no less than three different sources. A conversation with a representative of The So. Cal Water District indicated that the primary source of supply was the Jensen plant. Since it provides 70-80% of Culver City's water, we're providing the average mineral content for this plant below. If you don't know what those values mean, we recommend consulting John Palmer's How to Brew and watching for an upcoming issue of the Paciific Gravity Gazette for practical examples of how to use these figures:
- pH - 8.25
- Chloride - 83 ppm
- Sulfate - 57 ppm
- Calcium - 26 ppm
- Magnesium - 14.5 ppm
- Sodium - 63 ppm
- Hardness - 125