well, it's about time...

Hi.
I've been included in the "contributors" list since the summer, and am now finally getting around to posting. So here goes:

Earlier this year, an idea came up that in order to best celebrate the birth of Nate and Marissa's son we would brew up some beer and give it to them. Joel took it upon himself to go the Parti-Gyle route, for those of you who don't know what that means you should look it up. I mean, you're already on the internet, it'll take just a few seconds.
Just kidding. Here it is. Once you've absorbed that info, I'll let you know that I got the second pull, and with that decided to make a 90 minute IPA in the style of Dogfish Head(which, by the way, is worth every penny that you'll spend on it. In my experience most of their beer is right on target.)
Now, it's also important to note that I was starting with a smaller amount of beer than I usually do: 2.5 gallons rather than the full 5. I didn't really think through this process, and proceeded to make my beer as if it was a full 5...Actually, now that I think about it, I did add some water, but not nearly enough. I think that I started with 4 gallons, and by the time it was all over I boiled off enough to end up with 3.
Anyways, throughout the brewing I found myself saying "fuck it" quite often. I said it when I added the hops (every few minutes for 90 minutes. I used a mix of Magnum, Amarillo, and Fuggle. These aren't the hops that the origonal recipe calls for (Simcoe, Amarillo, Warrior) adding much more hops than what was required for the amount of wort I had going. I also said it when I put in the entire packet of yeast (Wyeast 1099).
In the end, after dry hopping for a couple of weeks, I gave it to Nate. He drank it, said it was fine.
I held back a couple of bottles for myself and just cracked them a few weeks ago. With the amount of sugar in the beer compared to the amount of yeast I found that the end product was too sweet, and although I had added so much more hops than called for it got lost in the yeast.
I've added a photo, courtesy of Nate.

My next post will be in 11 months.