Newport trip!

So the time has finally come and me and my wonderful wife get to take a vacation for an entire 5 days!  It's been quite a while since we've been able to get away for any length of time.  Kelly has never been to the Oregon coast so that makes this trip really special.  We will be departing from Lakeview on the 18th not to return until the 22nd.

There also happens to be a little brewery by the name of Rogue… maybe you've heard of it! This trip is destined to include a tour of the rogue brewery, some tastings of their spectacular beers, and dinner at their brewery restaurant.  From looking at their website it appears they have a distillery as well, I'm pretty sure we are going to have to check that out too.

We also plan to go to the aquarium and spend some time walking the boardwalk and visiting some of the many shops Newport has to offer.  Perhaps a delicious glass of home brew at one of the light houses is in order.. we shall see.  I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures and keep everyone up to date.

- "sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer i drink I feel ashamed - then I look in the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams.  If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered.  Then I say to myself, 'it is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams come true than to be selfish and worry about my liver.'"

-Deep Thought, Jack Handy

Top 10/2 List

Flavor profiles vary so much within a given type of beer, and if you sit down with 6 of your friends and all taste the same beer there's a very real chance you will all taste something different.  This is one of the things that I really appreciate about beer new recipes are coming out constantly and while one person may love super hoppy beers another may not.  With all the endless flavor possibilities it is important to keep an open mind and constantly try new beers.  With that in mind here is my top 5 favorite beers so far.

1. Lagunitas Brewing:  Lucky 13 alt beer - a fantastic beer with a sweet malt profile and some citrusy hop presence

2. Deschutes Brewery: Inversion IPA - a very balanced beer with a nice light crispy hop presence, not your typical IPA.

3. Ornkey brewery: Skull Splitter Scotch Ale - a slightly red ale with some dark fruit flavor.

4. Dogfish Head: Palo Santo Marron American Brown Ale - pitch black in color very sweet with some flavors I've never had in another beer.  One of the bigger beers I've tried, weighing in at 13.0% abv.

5. Stone Brewing: Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale American Strong Ale -  If you've ever had arrogant bastard then you know the over the top flavor of this line of brews.  This one is REALLY good, over the top hop and malt flavor with a nice mellow sweet characteristic that I assume comes from the oak barrel aging process.

Well that's my list so far… *cheers* to continuing the journey!

-"I feel sorry for people who don't drink.  They wake up in the morning and that's the best they're going to feel all day." - Frank Sinatra
My Hub

The First Snow of Winter!

Tonight the people in the little town of Lakeview Oregon experienced the first winter snow, while there wasn't a whole lot of accumulation it was enough for us to celebrate by giving mother nature the rebellion she deserves.  Here's a shot of me grillin' up some fantastic burgers outside in my snow gear while the snow falls down around me.








And what makes a BBQ besides the great food?  A Great beer with an amazing friend!  So to complete our metaphorical middle finger to the winter weather why not a nice frosty cold John John Ale from the famous Rogue Brewery!

Picture of me and my #1 beer buddy Erik enjoying a tasty beverage.

So to sum it all up we mocked mother nature, drank great beer, ate wonderful BBQ…. Great night, 'nuff said!

"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer.  Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza." - Dave Barry

The Brewery Show

So I was looking at beer reviews on youtube and happened to come across The Brewery Show.  I liked it so much that I finished all of their shows in one sitting.  It's a really well done show where they travel to different micro breweries in the US, interview the brewers and staff and give you a good back story on how they all got their start... anyway, check it out!

The Brewery Show

KEG SYSTEM!!!!

As you can so obviously see from these pictures

#1 I finally have a keg system!  No racking into a bottling bucket, spilling beer everywhere, filling 50 bottles, and then waiting 2 weeks to enjoy my beer.

#2 I am not an organized brewer!  I have a lot of things going on and I have to be pretty intentional to work brewing into my schedule, but it is always extremely rewarding!

Something you can't tell from the picture is that this particular keg is full of delicious pumpkin ale!  I bought the keg system and the pumpkin ale kit from Northern Brewer and my brewing life is forever changed!

I think the next step is a kegerator and a counter-pressure filler.  Right now I can get away without having a kegerator because we are headed into winter and it is crazy cold out in the shop.  I need the counter-pressure filler because I really like to share my beer and so bottling it out of the keg needs to be a priority.

On a side note the selection at the local meat locker keeps getting better.  It's really hard to get a decent selection of craft beer in such a small town (which is part of the reason I brew my own) but the lakeview lockers continues to take my suggestions and order in some truly great beer.  Tonight I picked up some delicious Lucky 13 a fantastic brew from Lagunitas Brewing Co., some Double Bastard from Stone Brewing Co., and some Old Foghorn from Anchor Brewing which is quickly becoming a favorite barleywine style beer for me.



  So as you can see here this is my little keg setup, full of deliciousness and just waiting to be fully carbonated.

Before I took this picture I didn't realize that it took a while for beer to carbonate in a keg so this is the picture of the first glass of flat beer ever poured from this setup.  Although it was still pretty tasty I didn't realize you could have this much head on a beer and the beer itself still be flat...... but you can.... and I did.

This is just a little picture of where I blog and taste beer with my friends and family.  Our big shop out in the back yard, no AC in the summer, no heating in the Winter.... I wouldn't have it any other way!

Deschutes Brewery

             As promised I am finally going to post some pictures of mine and kelly's VIP tour of Deschutes Brewery in Bend Oregon.  First a little bit of back story.  I know that me and my lovely wife are not the only ones to ever receive a VIP tour to the Deschutes Brewery but for us to get hooked up in this way simply because Kelly used to work for the Meat Lockers is a really cool opportunity and was a lot of fun.  Not that one needs an excuse to visit Bend, but this made our little weekend out all the more special!

As you drive in to the Deschutes Brewery you are greeted by some beautifully large grain silos housing the delicious "fruit" of the beverage that is housed within these walls.  

Between here and the next picture we walk in to the main lobby and are greeted by the friendly staff at the Deschutes Brewery and offered some tastings of their amazing brews.  We gaze around at all the swag, all the normal brewery stuff, pint glasses, t-shirts, hoodies, and await our tour.

The tour begins and the first big stop is right here where all the magic happens.  We are told the story of the company that designs the boilers and mash tuns and such for Deschutes Brewery.  It's a pretty amazing story involving millions of dollars, shutting down highways for transport, and overseas commerce.  The company that designs these tanks is one of a kind and each of these tanks is one piece of seamless stainless steel, making them simple to clean because of the lack of space for contaminants to get stuck in. 

 Heres a little peek in to one of the tanks.  To be completely honest I'm not quite sure what this one is used for and while I may grasp the general procedure for brewing beer, I can't for the life of me remember what this tank is for. (beer geeks everywhere are laughing at me).

 Hops glorious glorious hops!!! Here is a picture of Deschutes Brewery's hop storage room.   We actually got to split open and taste one of the whole flower hops, it's bitter as one would expect and it smells like delicious beer!

 This is my very favorite picture of the tour!  I'm pretty sure our tour guide told us this is a secret room just so we'd feel special but if not then I'm about to spill the beans!  When you go down stairs in the brewery the tour guide shows you the room where all the employees gets a free pint of beer after their shift is over (one of the perks of working at Deschutes Brewery).  In this room you will see a door marked "restroom".  Well as the picture tells the story it really isn't a restroom, it's a staff tasting room.  In here there are many kegs hooked up with a few beers that the general public doesn't get to taste on tap (but we did)!  On the door is a dry erase board with the names of the brews that are on tap.   Some of the names are simply employee nick names for common brews, all of them are delicious!

Finally to end this blissful journey, a picture of my handsome face holding a sampler platter from the Deschutes Brew Pub.  You can get an amazing plethora of brews for a fair price at the brew pub along with some of the best food you could ask for.  If you venture here I recommend the garlic burger... this burger is seriously so good it will hurt you! Served on their fresh focaccia bread, a perfectly juicy garlicy flavored beef burger and beautifully displayed with their scrumptious french fries (or another side if you are silly enough to not like french fries).  The final word on the matter is, if you are in bend EAT HERE!

Thank you all for reading and for your interest in my blog, until next time enjoy your fine craft brews and hope to hear from you soon!

No excuse!

So, as I sit here finally updating my blog that I appreciate so much I totally realize how much I've neglected it.  It also occurs to me how lame it is to write 2 blogs in a row about how I've neglected my blog so on that note, I really do care about blogging and keeping everyone up to date, but I refuse to make commitments on blog dates.... the end.

That being said I have been really busy on the brewing front.  We've got a trippel finished and bottled and tasting delicious (seriously this is one of my favorites that we've done so far and we have a pumpkin ale that is currently in secondary fermentation until we keg it.... yes I did say keg it!!! I finally had the funds to buy a keg system, needless to say I'm pretty stoked about trying it out.

For anyone who doesn't know being able to keg my beer is going to cut down significantly on the time it takes to go from beer brewing to beer drinking!  Rather than go through all the hassle of bottling and bottle conditioning each batch of beer, as soon as it is done I put it in a keg, force carbonate it, and a couple of hours later drink it!!! Super Cool!!!

So lets take a brief glimpse into the future of home brew bros and brew bros ministry.  The home brew bros are doing great, I've been working 2 jobs for the past few months and brewing in my spare time.  Still hoping to open my own brewery some day and enjoying the in-between time.  I've come to the conclusion that it is definitely cheaper for me to start out by brewing soft drinks (ie root beer) and move on to alcoholic beverages such as beer, so I am making preparations to start brewing and selling some home made root beer in large part to fund the beer brewery that I hope to have in the future.... anyway, that's all for now, hopefully soon there will be some pictures of tours and such. l8r!

Back Again.... Finally!

Yes, I realize I have neglected my blogging duties for far too long now, but I am back!  Obviously the last post I did was about our finished first batch.  Since that time I have lost steady access to a computer (which for very apparent reasons I need for blogging) and have recently reacquired access buy purchase of my own laptop (finally!).

Anyway enough of my excuses and back to the matter at hand, Great Beer!!  We've since brewed a few more batches of beer, a breakfast stout, a honey brown, and a vanilla porter.  All of the batches thus far have gone fantastic but the winner hands down has to be the vanilla porter which we are planning on doing again very soon.  On the brewing horizon are three kits we've recently purchased.  The first is an irish red ale, followed by a belgian tripel (which will take about 3 months), and finally an amber ale.  We now have the ability to facilitate more than one batch at a time which will really step up production and the amount of people we get to share out beer with.  Slow and steady is the name of the game for us when it comes to eventually running our own brewery/brewpub given that we have pretty limited funds at the moment and a limited crowed since we live in the middle of nowhere Oregon.

Also on the horizon are going to be some brewery/brewpub/sports stadium trips with hopefully a video blog starring yours truly and one of my very best friends Erik Larson.  I have managed to turn Erik into quite the beer geek and he has managed to turn me into a half decent sports nut.  I have some pictures to put up about mine and my wonderful wife (kelly's) trip to bend and subsequent VIP tour of the deschutes brewery.  For now, I'll do my best to keep you updated on the daily brewing activities and stay tuned for what is sure to be a fairly entertaining video blog..... hopefully.

1rst Batch Update.

Well our First batch of beer has been complete for a couple of weeks now and I have neglected to post about it, but with the first batch done and 2nd well on it's way I figured it was time.  Bottom line is that it turned out great, much better than I would have imagined for a first batch.  Very drinkable, very creamy, and very stout, just like you would imagine cream stout to be.
          That being said, i think we can do a lot better.  As I mentioned in a previous post we added about a gallon or so too much water to this batch, and you can taste it.  It was far from a ruined batch but I really want to revisit this one and see if we can do a better job.  I love sharing this batch with people and getting their points of view on it, it has been a highly rewarding endeavor.
           With Irish days coming (Irish days is Lakeview's version of St. Patrick's Day, except we find an excuse to stretch it out for multiple days) I would really love to brew this again and share it with as many people as possible that are in town for Irish Days.  We have almost exactly a month to have the brew ready, which could theoretically work so long as I get the ingredients ordered and make it as soon as they show up, we'll see what happens.

       


         Here is me and a great friend of mine, my Syrian brother Ami enjoying one of my home brews.  Not only is Ami a great friend but also a very talented drummer who as been volunteering doing worship with me my wife, and the others in our group for a couple of months now.  It has been great to sit down and get to know him a little better over a beer lately.
       

Here are a couple of shots of our first batch,  as you can see, visually is it what you would expect of a cream stout, black with a nice think foamy head.  One picture is obviously of us floating a bottle cap on the head of this beer which was pretty interesting because I've never tried it and it worked marvelously.  Anyway, things are going great, I just obtained the book How to Brew: Everything You Need To Brew Beer Right The First Time by John J. Palmer, it has been extremely informative and interesting so far, I'm looking forward to applying the knowledge and sharing with everyone.  

Home Brew Ministries is Born!

          Over the past couple of days I've felt that I have been hiding the real reason for this blog so today will be a coming out, of sorts.  There are plenty of blogs out there for every person that has read my blog to go to and find out about the brewing process so I prefer not to bore you with details you probably already know.  The real reason behind me learning to home brew goes beyond just my taste for the delicious nectar, beyond the fact that I find the science and art of brewing fascinating and straight down to my faith in Jesus. 
          My savior has set me free, because of that freedom I can enjoy adult beverage in health and in moderation.  Not only can I enjoy beer in health and in moderation but I hopefully can draw other people into relationship and friendship with me that need that health and moderation modeled for them.  Beer is a ministry tool for me.  Main stream Christianity has in large part demonized alcohol, even called it sinful.  My question to you is, can a bottle of beer sin?  I think not!  Perhaps that is a conversation for another time, right now I'll stick to the task at hand, letting you in on my deep dark secret plan to develop friendships and relationships while people sit and share a home brew with me.
         It may come as a surprise to you, but the other guy you see in the pictures of us brewing.... that's my pastor.  He has done a great job at teaching and practicing moderation and he fully supports my home brewing endeavor.  The church hasn't done a good job of loving those that enjoy adult beverages.  For some reason it has become something that is tucked away, not to be shared, hardly to be spoken of, for that I am sorry.  I aim to change that through my endeavors in the town in which I live and by building an online community of people that can support the goals and vision that I have.
        This doesn't mean that my blog is going to turn "preachy" and that I feel the need to evangelize to everyone that comes across my blog.  It does mean that I would like my blog to become a whole lot less about the brewing process and a whole lot more about the great people I get to share this with and build friendships over. 
        Can beer point someone toward Jesus?  I don't know... can great food?  can art?  can music?  I believe so, hopefully you do to! 

Bottling Day!

This is our sanitation bucket with iodophor

 Finally the Day has arrived to bottle the brew!  We sanitized all of our equipment and went to town filling our bottles with creamy stouty deliciousness.  There's not a whole lot to say about the sanitation process, we use an iodophor solution 1 cap full for every 5 gallons of water.

We added our priming sugar to the bottling bucket and began siphoning.  Originally we were going to drain the beer from the fermentation bucket to the bottling bucket using the spigot but after a little test into a measuring cup we found that far to much of the sediment was making its way out of the spigot so we decided to just siphon from the top down.



After siphoning we found that our bottling wand didn't fit directly onto the spigot but the problem was easily solved with a small piece of vinyl hose and we began the bottling process.  If you have nice new carpet it's probably a good idea to put a bucket underneath the bottles while your are filling them because there is bound to be some spillage.

Just a couple friends enjoying bottling day and looking forward to the fruits of our labor.  We did try a small taste of the young beer and it tastes a little watery which we kind of expected due to the fact that we added about a gallon or so too much water to the fermenter.  I think that much of this problem will be solved once the young beer is carbonated as I know this will add a lot to the mouth feel, I'll let ya know how it turns out.

 

New Equipment 2!!

Well I said I would post some pics of my new toys so here they are!

This is a nice pic of the huge pile of stuff we received. I'm so excited to put it all to use, it's nice to have some glass carboys so that I can actually witness the fermentation and all the other cool stuff that goes down inside that amazing container!

I'm sure you've all seen pictures of kegs, carboys, bottles, tubes and corks before, but hopefully you'll indulge my whims to show all of this off!
I know that this will be enough for me to brew for a while and hopefully be enough for me to get enough brews under my belt that I can start entering some competitions which is really what I want to do in the end.

New Equipment!

The other day we got a call from our friend back in Colorado who is getting out of the home brewing game. It sucks to see a fellow home brewer stop but his loss is our gain! We got a screamin' deal on a TON of new equipment. I'll post pictures of all of it later but we should now be able to have 3 brews going at once and enough bottles to last us for a long time! I am super excited!

Dog Fish Head 'nuf said!

Honestly I had never really tried or thought much about Dog Fish Head brews until I saw the show Brew Masters on Discovery. The show is actually part of what inspired me to start my own home brewing. The show is interesting it does a great job at showcasing all the quirky people in charge of the Dog Fish Head brewery, along with some of the creative process and business aspects that come into operating a micro brew. Also their beer is fantastic!

Tonight I cracked open a bottle of their Palo Santo Marron. It pours really dark for a brown ale and has a super thick creamy head. It smells sweet with a little touch of citrus hops. As good as it smells it tastes even better, sweet with vanilla, caramel, and chocolate. I'm not sure exactly what flavors are in it from the Paraguayan Palo Santo wood barrels that it is aged in but it is delicious! It leaves a taste in your mouth like you just ate some ice cream. It is creamy, finishes smooth with a little bit of alcohol flavor. Scary amount of drinkability because it is 12abv.. be careful with this one, it is incredible!

The Great Brew Pub Adventure In Klamath Falls

Today me and my wonderful wife decided to make the hour and a half drive to Klamath Falls from Lakeview. Since Lakeview isn't exactly the mecca of culture, brews, fine dining, or most any form of entertainment we indulge ourselves with these trips to Klamath about once a month in order to save our sanity and enjoy some of the things a slightly larger town has to offer. In this case the highlight of my day was our lunch date at the Klamath Basin Brewing company's brew pub, The Creamery.



If only for the brew pub then the trip was WELL worth the time. We walked in and were greeted by our extremely friendly server Lindsay. We started things off with a tastey Crater Lake Amber Ale. The amber ale had a light amber color as most of them do, very clear not hazy at all, a light refreshing taste with notes of citrus and a bit of a hoppy dry finish. It had about 1 finger of head with light lacing throughout.








After the Amber Ale it was time for the main course. My wife went with the pulled pork sandwich and after much deliberation I settled on the pub steak sandwich. They were both OUT OF THIS WORLD good! The kind of good that makes you hate all other sandwiches because they can never live up to the splendor that is this sandwich that has so gloriously found its way to your watering mouth and into your soon to be full belly! But of course, talk is cheap, so I'll show you!
















After our delicious meal I finished things off with an even more amazing brew. It was the Klamath Brewing Company's vanilla porter. I am a really big fan of dark beers and porters fit well into that category and this was probably one of my favorite all time porters. It pours black with not a little bit of head that dissipates quickly with very little lacing. It smells of sweet malts, roasted barley, and strong on the coffee. The taste is slightly hoppy with a lot of sweetness to balance it out, vanilla and coffee finish it off beautifully.

This brew pub comes highly recommend by me, so if you ever happen to find yourself swinging through Klamath Falls Oregon, stop by and enjoy a lovely brew, some delicious food, and some friendly staff. Everything was so good I couldn't pass up bringing home a few bottles of their Drop Dead Red, I'll let you know how it is when I can give it a proper tasting, until then keep enjoying those home and micro brews and I'll keep filling you in on my experience!

Lagunitas Imperial Stout

Another beer review here for ya.

Very Dark beer, with not a whole lot of head retention. Maybe a finger of head when you first poor which reduces fast and leaves lacing throughout.

Smells pretty sweet to begin with, but opens up as it warms up. As it warms up I smell more roasted malts and alcohol, the alcohol smell got strong enough that it actually made my eyes water.

Great roasted malt taste with some dark fruits and some licorice. Finishes with a slightly hoppy and alcohol taste.

Medium mouth feel, great taste but somewhat low on drinkability due to the alcohol. This newer bottle is 10.14 abv.

Serving type: bottle

First Beer Review

I completed my first beer review on BA today, thought it would be a good thing to post.


Deschutes Brewery Obsidian Stout.


A(appearance): Completely dark, about 1 finger of caramel colored head with lacing that hangs around throughout.

S(smell): Roasted barley with some sweetness too.

T(taste): Very roasted flavor, finishes smooth with a pretty strong hoppy flavor.

M(mouthfeel): Full bodied and thick mouthfeel, not syrupy but creamy.

D(drinkability): Fantastic drinkability with no over-powering flavors. Goes down easy, just an all around great beer!

Serving type: bottle


It will be interesting to be able to look at this in the coming month/years and see how my palate has developed to pick up on some of the more subtle tastes of a given beer.

New Beer!!!

Today I put in my order at Northern Brewer for my second beer kit. The site was a recommendation that I found on the BA (Beer Advocate) forums. The site seems well put together and professional and they have a ton of beer kits, equipment for all types of brewing and setups. I'm really excited to get this next kit brewing.

I went with their Honey Brown Ale Extract kit. For now until I have some more money for an all grain brewing setup I'm going to stick with extract recipes. The kit once again comes with all the ingredients and instructions on how to make it. The Cream Stout I'm working on now has about another 3 or so weeks until its done and this Honey Brown is going to take about 6 weeks total. I'll keep you all updated and I'll get some more pictures up when I get the next kit. Also I've got a glass carboy coming which will be cool because that way I can actually see the fermentation happening.

Not a Total Loss

I've been posting on the forums over at beer advocate and asking questions about our brewing mistake. Most the replies have been pretty positive and they tell me that it's not going to be a problem. I guess we will find out right about the same time we get to taste the beer. It has been one night but I can see carbonation bubbling up through the airlock, this is a really neat process and I'm loving all that I am learning.

Day Number 1

Today we began our journey into home brewing greatness. It has been our desire to pull the trigger on this endeavor for quite a while. This past weekend we decided the waiting would end and we bought our first home brewing kit from Reno Homebrewer in Reno Nevada. The staff was extremely helpful and informative and their prices reasonable, they also had a wide selection of micro-brew beer. The kit includes all the ingredients for your selected brew type, two 6 gallon buckets (one for fermentation and one for bottling), two spigots, an air lock, bottle filler, 5' of tubing, bottle caps, bottle capper, Byron Burch's "Brewing Quality Beers", and printed instructions on both how to brew the selected brew and how to use the equipment. The following will be the step by step process we followed to brew our first beer. Right or Wrong, these are the steps we followed and I will share all triumphs and failures with you in hopes that we become better brewers.

Step 1/2. Sterilize all equipment you are going to use in this process. We used Iodophor, 1 cap full per 5 gallons of water.


Step 1. Boiling the water in a large pot. This is pretty self explanatory, we used a large stock pot and filled it to within 2 inches of the top and boiled the water. Be careful on this step, it's easy to underestimate how much space your ingredients will take up, you don't want this to boil over on your stove, it wouldn't be pretty.

2. After we brought the water to a slow boil we added the 6 lbs. of amber malt extract. If you are using a large jug of the extract like we did you may want to set it in a sink or bucket full of hot water to make it more viscous because this stuff is really sticky. We waited for the malt extract to mostly dissolve before we started adding other ingredients. I'm going to include adding the other ingredients into this step because we added them one after another. I will however include a list of the ingredients we used.
6 lbs Amber Malt Extract
1 lb Black Malt
1 1/2 lbs. Dark Dry Malt Extract (powder)
1 lb Flaked Barley
2 oz. Cascade hops (pellets)


3. We let the wort "boil" (I use the term boil lightly because it wasn't actually boiling) for an hour at about 200 °F. During the boil we watched the wort go from having a very thick frothy "head" to having almost no head at all. I don't know what causes this but I think it has something to do with hitting the "heat break".
















4. After the boil we took the wort and poured it through a strainer into the sanitized bucket. We had a semi-hard time with this because we had a pretty small stainer and the wort is pretty thick so it wasn't easy to get all of the liquid out.


4 1/2. We poured enough sanitized water into the wort to bring the temperature down to below 90°F. This is the temperature that is safe for the yeast.


5. We put the yeast in the wort. In order to do this I simply spread the yeast over the top of the wort and left it. We put a lid on the fermenter and stuck the air lock in the lid. The air lock had a splash of cheap vodka in it per the instructions. I'm assuming this is to protect the wort from contamination. We then stuck the fermentation bucket in a corner of the house that stayed between 60 and 75 °F again, according to the instructions.

Failure #1. Tonight we realized that we did not read the side of the bucket and although we thought we were filling it to 5 gallons we actually filled it to 6 gallons. We aren't sure what this will do to the brew but we are hoping it will still turn out all right. I'll let you know what happens.