We started it on the 5th and bottled it Wednesday, so it should be ready just in time for Thanksgiving. I have a ton of unused bottles sitting around, so I will likely brew something else in a couple weeks.

Check out The Smith Family to see what else we’ve been doing.

As for the homebrew, I still have a lot left and have slowed down a little with drinking it.  My next brew will probably be a brown ale in October.

In this photo: Red Lager and Brazilian Coffee Beer.

BEER mom says her dad wants to watch me make my next brew. I recently ordered 10 lbs of Kona coffee, so a Kona coffee beer isn’t out of the picture.

As for Kaden, he’s finally getting more teeth and will be 17 months next weekend.  The last 17 months have been amazing. I am definitely glad we had a boy first instead of a girl. Here are a few pictures from the last couple months.

I will share more homebrew pictures next time.

The coffee beers I made previously were all Stouts, which is darker, and more like a Guinness.  I chose Porter this time to have a slightly lighter beer to compliment the lighter Brazilian coffee beans I had on hand.  If all goes well, we will be bottling the beer this weekend and will end up with a dark amber, Brazilian coffee beer that has a bit of a nutty taste.

Over the 4th of July we took the new car on our first family roadtrip, which was a nice 14-hour car ride to Grand Lake, CO and back.  Kaden didn’t mind the ride too much until the 13th hour or so each way.  BEER mom has a vacation recap and pictures on his site and hers.  I will post video once I covert the DVD.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Lagers take about 3 months to condition while ales only take a week or two.

This time requirement is the main reason everything I have made so far has been an ale, along with the fact that it would require another 3 or 4 cases of bottles.

We bottled the sparkling ale Sunday and I went ahead and brewed the lager last night.  This way I have something to drink while I wait.

The ale, or sparkling beer, as I decided to call it, will be ready around the 27th.  The lager should be ready for bottling this weekend, so I will probably buy bottles from my local homebrew store tomorrow.

In case you are keeping track, the sparkling beer was BEER dad brew #14 and red lager is #15.

Like a modern day Noah, but crafty, I have been saving two of every beer I’ve made.

Not including the coffee beer I just made, there have been 12 in all, and my intent is to drink them before my coffee beer is gone and my sparkling ale (which I am making later) is ready to bottle.

The brews I’ve made so far are:

1. Nut Brown Ale
2. Espresso Stout
3. Amber Ale
4. Wheat Beer
5. Coffee Beer
6. Amber Bitter
7. Amber Bock
8. Porter
9. Espresso Stout (w/ Wichita Coffee)
10. American Ale
11. Amber Wheat
12. English Bitter
13. Coffee Beer (w/ Wichita Coffee)

(Disclaimer: That was BEER mom 18 months ago when she was still pregnant.)

I am looking at kegs and additional brew pots to make the process a little smoother. If you have suggestions or homebrew recipes your spouse likes, let me know.

On a side note, I recently picked up a few additional homebrew related domain names I hope to do something with soon. These include:

• OpenSourceBeer.com
• HandcraftedBeer.com
• Homebrews.org
• CiderBeer.com
• EspressoStout.com
• DraftCider.com
• EnglishBitter.com

and the others we already owned:

• BeerCompany.org
• WichitaBrewing.com

The homebrew store closest to us appears to be going out of business, or at least shrinking their stock each time I visit, so I might make one of them into a local homebrew store/website since there isn’t one anywhere nearby.  If you have ideas for them, those will be appreciated as well.

I haven’t been able to take pictures yet, but believe me, it is dark, and very tasty.

We used drip brewed coffee this time rather than espresso, so I am calling it a “coffee beer” instead of another “espresso stout.” The Sumatra also has a bolder, almost smokey flavor that makes the beer taste more like a lager than a stout or ale.  We ended up with 68 bottles this time and are leaning towards another amber bock for June.

My English Bitter is ready and so is Laura’s Easter basket. She hasn’t seen it yet, so no telling her what she got.

Kaden missed last Easter by mere minutes, so tomorrow he will be crawling around the living room in search of eggs containing his favorite snack. We also got his one year old pictures back, which I know everyone is dieing to see.

More can be found in his photo album.

That’s really all the excitement that’s been going on here.

Laura has been looking at cars and I have been enjoying the new job. Kaden is finally starting to stand up and manages to get himself “stuck” several times a day because he forgets how to sit back down. He usually does that in his crib, but let’s us know after a few minutes.