Affiliation with Homebrew Supply

My fellow readers,

For the past 3 years, I have been bringing you beer reviews on this website and I still have that excitement of sharing my thoughts with all of you today just as much as I did when I did my first inaugural post. Since then I've been running this website with just a laptop, camera and of course, beer. During this time, the number of craft breweries, along with craft beer drinkers has grown exponentially. Since the popularity of craft beer has risen dramatically, so has the popularity of this website.

For the past couple of years, I have been trying to figure out was I can benefit financially from all of this. Since I'm running this website on the Blogger platform, the preferred choice for generating revenue is Google AdWords. However, AdWords currently prohibits ads on websites that promote the sale of alcohol, and it has cost me quite a bit in missed potential revenue. I've been approached in the past by numerous different companies have offered me money to do promotional posts/spots on this website, but all of these companies had virtually nothing to do with beer so I ended up turning them down because I felt it went against the very purpose of why I created this website.

That puts me in a truly unique position: I want to be able to generate revenue but I want to be able to do so without having to sell my soul for it. Plus I want it to be relevant to what I write about. Running this website certainly isn't free, so what do I do?

Well, recently the guys over at Homebrew Supply approached me and asked if I could become an affiliate of their's and do advertising for them on my website. After much consideration, I have decided it is something that I feel very comfortable with advertising on here because not only does it relate to what I write about but it also allows me to start generating revenue. Plus long time readers of mine know that I have been a huge supporter of upstart breweries for a long time and I strongly encourage anyone who has dreams to be a brewer one day to go for it.

So what's going to change? Absolutely nothing! I'm still going to do beer reviews & articles but you'll now see some banners throughout the website for Homebrew Supply and that's pretty much it. Again, I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't feel it wasn't relevant to the content of this website and I feel it strongly relates to what I write about and I'm pretty excited about all of this.

Be sure to check their website out, they have a very good selection of ingredients and equipment to choose from, and plus they have supplies for home distilling, which is something that I haven't seen as of yet.

As always, thank you all for your continued support and remember the immortal words of Hunter S. Thompson:

Good People Drink Good Beer.

Cheers,

- Nick

Sam Adams LongShot Magnificent Seven Review

Name: Sam Adams LongShot Magnificent Seven
Style: Imperial IPA
ABV: 7.8%

Every year, Samuel Adams releases a few beers as part of their "LongShot" series. The concept behind the series is to allow award winning homebrewers to share their creation with a beer drinking public. The one I have here today is called "Magnificent Seven" which derives it's name from using seven kinds of hops and not the totally awesome movie which the name comes from. It is brewed by Zach Adams, who has absolutely no relation to the actual Sam Adams (Not that I know of anyways.)

Magnificent Seven pours a mildly hazy orange color with a fairly high amount of visible carbonation and tons of lacing. The head itself is rather soapy and but leaves behind some pretty good lacing.

The aroma starts us off with a mild citrus hop & caramel scent. Behind that are some toffee, piney hop and malty notes, all of which are also fairly mild.

The flavor has a strong bitter piney hop/resin, & light citrus taste with a slight caramel maltiness. This is rather bitter but at the same time there isn't a whole lot going on here in terms of flavor.

The body is quite heavy and thick at the same time and the carbonation comes off as moderate. For some reason, I feel the body makes the overall taste a bit more off than it already is.

Magnificent Seven nails the bitter aspect of what to expect out of an Imperial IPA but it forgot to bring along the rest of the flavor (namely the malts) which would have balanced out the said bitterness. It isn't an awful Imperial IPA but I would pass this up if I were to be offered this again.

Sam Adams LongShot Magnificent Seven - 6/10

My First Homebrew! (Which doesn't suck!)

Today I'm going to change things up just a bit, for I will be looking at my very own homebrew! As for a review, I have something special in-store so stay tuned!

For my birthday last year, I received a homebrew kit from Northern Brewer and it came with a starter kit for some Caribou Slobber, which is Northern Brewer's clone of Big Sky's Moose Drool. Well, about 3 weeks after I got it, I tried my hand at homebrewing. Upon taking my first sip, I quickly realized something went horribly wrong. I was expecting a nice brown ale, but instead I got a rather sour, lemon-like flavor that reminded me of a Berlin Weisse. I love my Wild Ales and all, but this was horrible! Using my CSI-like detective work, I pinpointed where I had botched it up completely.

Amongst my missteps:

• Boiled for way too long
• Possible contamination of equipment
• Improperly bottled the beer, caps were attached loosely instead of being secured properly
• Left it in the below freezing temperatures of our garage.

Reeling from my failure, I sort of forgot about homebrewing and moved on with other things that were happening in my life at that point.

Fast forward 6 months later, I am moving my stuff around the house and noticed my homebrew kit was amongst the boxes I was moving. I opened the box, saw my equipment, which had gathered dust and I said to myself "Eh, why not?" I made the drive over to Northern Brewer and picked up a couple of kits to try out and experiment with. I picked up a Sierra Madre Pale Ale & White House Honey Porter kit to experiment with, so I decided to try out the Sierra Madre kit first to see how it would go this time.

Sierra Madre is Northern Brewer's answer to the West Coast Style Pale Ale. When brewing this, there were 4 hop additions added into this. Since I'm not 100% familiar with what hops do what or what they taste like (aside from Fuggle Hops), I could only assume it would have a citrus like characteristic to it.

Even though it's wort, it's already better than my first failed batch.

After letting it boil, cool off and siphoning the beer into the jug (AND making sure that I avoided the pitfalls of before), I wiped the sweat off my brow and had a beer after the process. 2 weeks later, it came time to siphon the beer into the bottle and bottling it correctly.

Well, here we are 4 weeks after I first started the brewing process and finally able to try out the result of my efforts.

Behold!

Well it certainly has a different smell to it; It has some very strong caramel malt notes and the hops are very fresh-smelling! But I'm not getting any sourness, so....yay for progress? Well enough stalling, let's taste the damn thing; You know.....for science!

Pretty much like the taste, very strong caramel malts up front and the citra-hop taste is very fresh but not quite as strong as the caramelized malts, in fact the combined flavors give it an almost Mango-Like quality to it. Fruity-tasting with a bit of caramel and piney hops! Body is more on the heavy side, and the carbonation is mild.

I thought it was pretty good, all things considered. It tasted like a Pale Ale, albeit a bit more fruity than I'm used to. I'm also not sure what the ABV on this is, but I got a good buzz going after having a bottle of this stuff.

Wanting a second opinion on my efforts, I gave one to my stepdad to see what he thought of it as he has homebrew experience. His verdict? For a first timer, very good and tasty. A little maltier than most Pale Ales out there but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

Overall, I'm glad it turned alot better than my last effort. This Monday I will be bottling my White House Honey Porter and will have a look at that once it's been bottle conditioned long enough.

Cheers!