Ten Dudes Homebrewing Write-Up

My friends and I all homebrew under the name "Ten Dudes" and there just so happens to be five of us. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but we like that. We're a bi-coastal homebrewery (maybe the only one currently in existence?), with three of us are located here in NYC/NJ and the other two in Los Angeles. We just got our first 'e-ink' thanks to CulturePop who sat down with Josh & Ian, our two West Coast representatives. Check out the full article here: http://bit.ly/efIQen

If so inclined, you can also now follow our homebrewings on twitter via @tendudes.

NYC Homebrew Competition: This Sunday 1/31 at Chelsea Brewing

Hey all! This coming Sunday afternoon, homebrewers and onlookers will converge upon Chelsea Brewing Company in Manhattan for "Homebrew Alley 4", the NYC Homebrew Competition presented by the New York City Homebrewers Guild. The beers in the photo above are the ones my brewing team and I (Ten Dudes Brewing) submitted:

"Number 2" - an English Barleywine that has been bottle-conditioned for 15 months
"Smokey Smoke" - a smoke ale brewed with weyermann and cherrywood smoked malt
"Wedding Wit" - a witbier created for fellow brewmate Tim's wedding
"Kölsch It" - an (unfortunately cloudy) kölsch
"Depressed Umpire IPA" - an American IPA that was just bottled the day before entry

It was $7 per entry with no limit, but since we were splitting the costs three ways we just picked 5 of our homebrews that we enjoy. We were required to submit 2 bottles (12 or 22oz) of each entry which was difficult because we only had a few remaining bottles of the likes of "Number 2" and the "Wedding Wit".

As for our chances? Eh. We could get lucky and place. Our Kölsch turned out too cloudy to win that category. I think our best chances are with our "Number 2" barleywine and "Smokey Smoke Ale". The "Depressed Umpire" could be the dark horse, but having bottled it the day before the dropoff, there's no telling for sure how that will turn out. Even without any wins, it should be a fun time. Hopefully we'll at least get some feedback to improve our future brews.

PS: Don't worry, the homebrews did not stay exposed to the light of that window for more than a few minutes!

Barleywine #3: Transfer to Secondary

We finally got around to transferring our Number 3 barleywine that we brewed a few weeks ago. It had exploded despite our addition of a blowoff tube, so we really braced ourselves when tasting it. Surprisingly, it tasted GOOD! And right now it's sitting at about 8.5%, which is lower than we tried for with the recipe, but we chalk that up to adding 5lbs of malt that was probably too old. After accounting for those 5lbs, we pretty much hit our mark dead on.

You can see above how much trub ended up all over the primary fermenter. I don't think I've ever seen so much of it on the underside of the lid before.

Can't wait to be drinking this in the winter months!