The BrewMates
We met in Tampa and were instantly united by our love of beer. After finishing school, Sarah moved to Philadelphia and Jayson stayed in Tampa for work. One year later, we were reunited in the wonderful city of Washington, D.C. where we decided it was time to take our love of beer to the next level, brewing our own. By day, Sarah is a PR professional and Jayson is a C.P.A. for a small accounting firm. By night, we’re out on the town drinking, exploring the D.C. beer culture and planning our next brew-venture.
Cheers and Beers,
Sarah and Jayson
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Batch #2 of 2012 brewed today. An Irish Red Ale coming soon!
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Sent From Galaxy Mobile
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Exploding double IPA. My 6-year-old niece said, and I quote: “That looks like zombie puke!” Where did that come from?
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Dry hopping. I don’t think I put enough in to make a big impact. I’ll try 3 ounces next time.
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Drunken logic
Jayson celebrating getting in to grad school at Rustico in Arlington, VA. Of course we celebrate with beer. (Taken with instagram)
Some of the #beer selection from tonight. Gotta love our IPAs. (Taken with instagram)
Enjoying a nice dark milk stout before dinner. (Taken with instagram)
Enjoying a delicious Great Divide Rumble, courtesy of Sarah’s little brother, a growing #beer lover. (Taken with instagram)
Moved our Belgian IPA to the keg tonight. It was brewed in the snow! (Taken with instagram)
We’re always looking for fun beer happenings so I thought I’d share this post from the folks over at @DCBeer. Looks like Rustico in Ballston (just right down the street from us - yay Virginia!) will have some delicious Lagunitas on tap tonight. Thanks for the heads up guys and maybe we’ll see you there.
Cheers and beers,
Sarah and Jayson
Today’s “big” purchase. Now we can make a proper yeast starter.
Here’s the situation. Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide. You can respond here or tweet us — @thebrewmates.
We made a yeast starter around 11pm last night, thinking if we gave it about it about 12 hours, we’d be ready to go for brew day today.
We had to use liquid malt extract for the starter because we ran out of dry :(
We have never used LME for a yeast starter before and we scoured the forums and saw a ratio of about 1/3 c. LME for 3c water? So, that’s what we went with. Our LME was a combination of Munich and Light Malt.
Our yeast was a WYEAST 3522 Belgian Ardennes Yeast (we’ve never used this stand before, perhaps it doesn’t get that excited?!?). We gave it a good smack and it seemed to inflate a little bit but definitely not all the way before we pitched it. We kept the yeast in the keezer for about 7 weeks and there’s a chance that it might have gotten too cold.
Gave the starter wort some yeast nutrient and were on our way.
Now, come 5pm, after brewing, we still haven’t seen ANY action with our yeast, 18 hours later…..no action. Realizing that there are multiple factors, does anyone have thoughts, suggestions or words of wisdom for us?
If we try to overnight some yeast come Monday will our wort still be good? If we do overnight some yeast, should we get more yeast and pitch 2 liquid yeast packs straight into the carboy? Also, would we re-oxygenate if we did that?
Brew Day! Just finished our final hop addition on our Beligian Tripel IPA.
Jayson at the 1K Beer Walk. Him and his hat were the talk of the town.
