Barlow Brewing

So search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the many internet marketing things I do for a living, but I don’t let it get into my beer world. I have a blog (you’re reading it right now!) that I am really terrible at updating with any sort of frequency, but I’m not looking to make money or a name for myself with it. It is just for shits and giggles, and for friends and fellow homebrewers who might take an interest in a batch that I’ve recently done.  I’m not mixing business and pleasure.

Having said that, I know there are people out there who want to be found in the search results pages (SERPs), and I’d be doing my fellow beer geeks a disservice if I didn’t share a little knowledge about playing the Google game. And yes, for the rest of this post I will only mention Google. It is still, and will be  for a long time, the 800 million pound gorilla that you need to concern yourself with, and Bing and Yahoo always comply and follow their lead.

And is there a difference between SEO for bloggers and SEO for Beer Bloggers? No, but I like beer bloggers. They are good people. So this is for them.

From a very, very high level, I’ll hit on two easy topics. If there is interest, I can do a few more of these.

1) Using the “Right” Keywords and Making Content “You” Care About

2) <title> tags and Meta Descriptions

Using the “Right” Keywords and Making Content “You” Care About

Businesses spend lots of time figuring out the right keywords for their pages, but they always forget the most important part: use the words that people actually type. Pretty freaking simple, huh? The thing is, you need to look at that during the editing part of blog writing.

If you are writing a post just to pop up in search engine results pages, you will probably not succeed. The topic has to be something that you find interesting. It could be a great question that a friend has asked you that your readers might be curious about, as well. If you find it interesting, then other people will, too, and they will be searching for it.

Write the post and then go back through and look for the big idea and keywords to surface. Think to yourself, “What would I type in a search engine to find this post?” When you have that search phrase, look through the article to see if you have used that phrase and those words.  If you haven’t, then you have a problem that you need to edit yourself though. If you, the author, can’t type a fairly general query and find your own article in the SERPs, there’s reason to think that your readers will either.

Write about a topic that interests you. Something you will have a legitimate amount of energy behind.  Then figure out how to tweak it for search.

<title> tags and Meta Descriptions

The <title> tag is how you are labeling your pages for your readers and for Google. The title tag appears in the blue field above your web browser tool bars. It is also the bold, clickable link for the page in SERPs.

Think of this as making a blatant suggestion to Google as to what the page is about and what keywords you would like the page to rank for. The field is only 65 characters long (including spaces), so make sure all of your words will fit. Also, Google gives more weight to the words in that field from left to right. So put the important words to the far left. In my example above, Rate Beer would be better off putting “Rate Beer” on the far left.

But you don’t need the name of your site in every title tag on your site. Put the name of your blog in the homepage title tag, because that is the place you want users to land when they look for you by name, but you are wasting it on other pages. So, if you have written an article about “The Best Beers from Stone”, DO NOT make your title tag “Your Blog – The Best Beers from Stone.” If you have the space, “The Best Beers from Stone – Your Blog” is just fine.

The title tag should be what the post is about and full the appropriate keywords.  Don’t write a title tag like I would the title of a magazine article.  If I opened up a magazine and there was an article titled, “The Coolest Thing You’ve Ever Seen”, I would read that. But, on the web, no one types the query “what is the coolest thing you’ve ever seen” into Google. That title tag is doing nothing to help the post rank in SERPs so it can be found by readers in search engines.

The title tag is a very significant factor for your blog post to do well in SERPs, but it should be readable and not a spammy bunch of keywords crammed together.

If you want to convince someone to click on your result, the right field to use is the meta description.  The meta description field will not affect your rankings in anyway, but the words in that 165 character field (including spaces) is the reason why a reader might chose your site over another.

Think of this field as pure marketing. This is where you tell them that they are a click away from the coolest thing they’ve ever seen. A well written meta description adds to the “clickability” of your page.  In the example above, Rate Beer has a compelling meta description. Sell your post to the searchers out there.

How do you change your title tags and meta descriptions? It depends on your platform.  It is simple to do as you are creating a post with WordPress and an SEO plug-in. (I use WordPress and All in One SEO Pack) Unfortunately, you’ll have to poke around and find out how to get to your own.

Is this helpful? I can do a few more of these if there is interest. Just let me know and give me some feedback.

I’m late with my superfluous addition to the three billion lists of the top *whatever* from 2009 and from the previous decade.  Sure many critics, most of them more knowledgeable about music than I, have reviewed the top CDs of last year.

BUT did they tell you which beers to pair them with?   Yeah, that’s what I thought.

And, to be clear, these are the songs and albums that I listened to the most during last year.  I not going to tell you that these were the absolute BEST discs of last year, but they are the ones that got the most airtime on my iPod.

In no order, my top 6 CDs and top 2 singles of 2009 and their beer pairings:

Them Crooked Vultures

I’m onboard with any side project from Josh Homme.  I love the Queens of the Stone Age, and the Desert Sessions are always amazing.  When you throw in John Paul Jones and Dave Grohl, this became a much more interesting no-brainer.

Them Crooked Vultures is swaggering, sweaty and fully aware of their own absurdity.  To quote a music critic, this CD probably took as long to record as it did to write the songs. But that isn’t a slight.  It is a nod to a writhing handful of creation.  It is a night of ecstasy from a seasoned lover who is good about not waking you as they leave.  

Don’t think about this one too hard. You’ll fall off the tightrope suspended between self-loathing and clueless bravado over a chasm of muscular riffs and falsettos.

These songs call for something over the top. Extreme, but following a lust to absurd ends. They are the musical embodiment of the Imperial IPA.  But a balanced Imp IPA is not in order here, no complimentary meeting of malt and hops.  Them Crooked Vultures begs for Pliny the Elder which hits you with so many hops that the resins actually take the place of a malt backbone.

A little “Elephants” is post below. The 1:28 mark is when they lock into a groove.

Grizzly Bear – Veckamist

This was one of the critic’s darlings for 2009. Knowing this, I went into listening to it months ago preparing to hate it.  I was dead wrong.

Swelling harmonies and orchestrations are the backdrop to this soundtrack of a northeastern, gothic purgatory.  “Southern Point” was their only radio single (if you could call it that) that I heard, and that is the one I’m including at the end of this review.  But “Fine for Now” is the song that slays me. It inflates and fills your ears so quickly, convincing and effortlessly.  This sort of subtle genius is beyond their years.

This is the kind of disc that makes you feel insecure about yourself. Most of the songs on Veckatimest are genius.  And the ones that aren’t?  Well, they probably are, too, you just need to work harder to get them.

This isn’t an easy CD to immediately wrap your noggin around. Sour beers were like that for me, but once I “got” them, they really paid off.  Veckatimest is a glorious pairing with a bomber of New Belgium’s La Folie. It is hard to me to score that beer, but it is amazing.  If you don’t like it, you just need to work harder to “get” it.

The Japandroids – Post-Nothing

Garage rock still lives.  Someday, even when garages are full of flying cars and jetpacks, there will still be kids who want to rock and don’t give a fuck what you think.  This duo isn’t full of rage, they are full of impulses.  In “Wet Hair” they sing “Let’s get to France / So we can French kiss some French girls.” My GOD, that is so simple and perfect.

This duo is strong, simple and fuzzy in all the right ways. If you don’t love these guys, we are breaking up and gimme back my class ring you’ve been wearing around your neck on that braided string.

When I was in the same frame of mind as the Japandroids, I didn’t drink good beer. I drank decidedly bad, lager beer. Now that I’m older, I still favor ales over lagers, but I can come back to the lagers, with an older palette, and find something that young me and the old and wizen in me can both enjoy.  The beer that pairs best with Post-Nothing is Great Lakes’ Dortmunder Gold. This beer is a perfect balance between sweetness and bitterness. The CD is somewhere between your dreams and your dwindling optimism in the world.

Young Hearts Spark Fire

Flaming Lips – Embryonic

The Flaming Lips have released some amazing CDs over the last few years that were commercial yet were also genre piercing.  But the olde school fans thought that Wayne and the band had sold out and lost their edge.

Their Embryonic CD is an unsettling return to the Lips of old. Put bluntly, this thing is a brain fuck.  Fuzzy, wobbling and furry.  It is chaos, and an endless parade of friendly stink palms.  But once you let it congeal in your brain, it begins to take shape.  This is not an easy episiotomy, but my goodness you owe it to yourself to let this one come to life.  

This is a bear of a pairing. I can only assume that only spontaneously fermented beers could stand up to this beast of primal glory.  But, in this case, I’ll take a Jolly Pumpkin Madrugada Obscura, which is a soured imperial stout.   The soured, blackness with coffee notes is a perfect echo to the swirling strange of Embryonic.  When you stare into this abyss, it stares back.  And then you two get the munchies.  And there is a certain logic to 2 am molten, hot burritos and cherry Slurpees.

Convinced of the Hex

Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Yeah, this is a simple pick. You might think it is too easy.  Hell, they are using “1901” to sell Cadillacs.

I don’t care. This is pretty and hooky pop. (And from the dreaded French, no less.)  Every year I have a poppy CD that never leaves my CD changer.  If you spend months on end in my player getting sung to (very badly) by me during the summer with the windows and the sunroof open, you got something special, kid.  You’ve heard them by now. Give in to bliss, you pussy.

What goes with a smooth, summer CD?  It has to be the simple pleasure and easy going allure of a hefeweizen. For that, I’m going to go the local Starr Hill’s The Love. Both The Love and Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix are unfiltered, shiny and clean.

Lisztomania

Mastodon – Crack the Skye

Did Phoenix cleanse your palette? Good, because Mastodon is here to brilliantly punish you.

You can segment the music on my iPod into many pieces, and one of them ought to be “Workout” music.  I’m not proud of these songs. One of the bands in this group may or may not be Velvet Revolver.  Let’s just say that these songs get the job done. They are driving, rhythmic, circular and, usually, a bit lightweight. When I heard the critics falling over themselves early last year to praise these metal monsters, I figured I was getting some more “Workout” music.

I suppose you could workout to these guys, but they’ve done something here that deserves much more than your sweaty attention.  There’s shifting keys and there’s danger, but it is all wonderfully balanced.   They are heavy, dense, and they are going to write songs about Czar-era Russia.  Hell, they previously released a disc based entirely on Moby Dick. They aren’t playing games, and you can actually understand what they are singing which is a rare feat in the genre.

What do you pair with a disc that is refreshing a musical genre that has long entered into self-parody? I’m putting this one with something unlikely, but my favorite of Brooklyn beers: The Brooklyner-Scheider Hopfen-Weisse. If you want to rock out to Tsarist Russia songs through the lens of an American rock band, then dig into a spicy, dry-hopped weizenbock . This is solid German brewing capped off with American Amarillo and Palisade hops. Get ready for some truth.

Divinations 

Honorable Mentions:  

Neko Case –Middle Cyclone (with a Duck-Rabbit Brown Ale), Dan Auerbach – Keep It Hid (with a Goose Island Bourbon County Stout ), Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz (with a Lagunitas Sirius Ale), and Jay Reatard – Watch Me Fall (with a Three Floyd Alpha King)

And before I go, the SINGLE of the year:

White Rabbits – Percussion Gun

This is my favorite single from last year. Dueling and concurrent drums, and passionate singing.  Do they mention Lebanon during the song? Just put it on your iPod already.  And a Sierra Nevada Torpedo. Say it with me: CITRA!

Single Runner-up:

XX – Crystalised

This is my runner-up for the single of the year.  Laid back and intense. A stepchild of the The Cure and the Pixies at their most minimal.  “So don’t think that I’m pushing you away / When you’re the one that I’ve kept cloest.” Sip a Foothills Sexual Chocolate.

I was quoted today in a Charlie Papazian article in The University of Virginia Magazine. 

The connection between those two is that Charlie Papazian graduated from UVa in 1972 with a nuclear engineering degree.  If you don’t know anything about Charlie, do yourself a favor and read up on the father of homebrewing, and find out about the significance of his hard work for the homebrewing movement. Here’s a few of the thoughts I shared with the magazine:

When I got my first homebrew kit back in 1995, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing book came with it.  This was before the internet and, later, during the early years when we didn’t know what to do with the World Wide Web. Unless you could hang out in the local homebrew shop, or buddy up with a more experienced brewer, not having that book was like not having an instruction manual.  You were lost.

Books have come out since that time that are more technical, and go much deeper into the science of brewing, but he was the first American to write a book that taught the novice how to brew.

And he gave us the phrase: “Relax, Don’t Worry, Have a Homebrew.” That might sound trite or too hippie in today’s society, but it was just what the new homebrewer needed to hear. Brewing great beer requires meticulous sanitation and attention to detail and, if you think about it too much, you become overwhelmed and paralyzed with worry.  Charlie gave you the confidence to just brew, and get better at it each time.

In the big picture, he founded the Association of Brewers, which later turned into the Brewers Association, and the American Homebrewers Association.  These are important organizations that protect the rights and interests of craft and homebrewers.

The brewing industry has changed, too. Every year the big American breweries lose market share, but craft breweries are growing in leaps and bounds.  These craft breweries were started by homebrewers who were bored by what the big boys were making.  These craft brewers went pro, which is every homebrewer’s dream, and they embody Papazian’s creativity, work ethic and sense of fun. 

He’s the father of American homebrewing, and he continues to be important to homebrewers and the brewing industry today.

But you know all this already don’t you?  Don’t you?

The University of Virginia article about Charlie Papazian

This update is more thinking (or is it typing?) out loud about split batches.  In an effort to get a lot of brewing experimentation and testing done in a short amount of time, I’m splitting batches and that began not long ago with the splitting of my barleywine.  Part of that beer was bottled according to plan and a portion of the barleywine is being aged a little longer on bourbon oak cubes.

Right now, I have a traditional saison in primary and I’m determining how I want to break that one apart.  I’ll post the recipe for it on a later update, but it is your garden-variety saison homebrew from the 10,000 foot view.  Lots of pilsner malt, some wheat, a pound of cane sugar (to dry it out) and a few other specialty grains.  I also threw in 2 pounds Golden Promise just to add a little malt weight to the mix. 

The secret ingredient for my saisons is a touch of acidulated malt.  The acidity of that specialty grain adds a subtle complexity in the finished beer, but sticking your nose in a bag of this malt is like inhaling fresh sourdough.  At first I only used 2 ounces per 5.5 gallon batch, but lately I’ve been using 4 ounces.  I might have gone a little higher with this brew, but part of the experiment is the souring of the saison with brett, and I didn’t want too much noise coming from the sour malt.

I brewed up a 5.5 gallon batch on Sunday (8/2/09), and it has been in primary for four days.  The original gravity was 1.068, I pitched a built-up starter of WLP565 into the carboy once it got down to 75° F, and then I pitched a package of Safale-05 after the first 48 hours of active fermentation.   Saison yeasts are notorious for pooping out too early, and I have been burnt before, so I usually pitch something strong and neutral to bat clean up for the saison yeast if it decides to die on me.

At this time, I’m looking to split the batch three ways:

• Segment A (Control): 1 gallon will be bottled and carbonated in the usual way for the style
• Segment B: 3 gallons will be racked in a smaller carboy and I will pitch brettanomyces bruxellensis (medium intensity brett – WLP650) on that and let it sour
• Segment C: 1 gallon will be racked it a wine jug and I will pitch the dregs of a bottle of Jolly Pumpkin La Roja (American-made Flanders Red) on that

I’ve tried the Bruery’s Saison Rue a few times over the last few months, and I like that beer a lot.  It is unusual because of their use of rye malt in the brew, but they also add brettanomyces at bottling to sour it ever so slightly.  It is a solid and very balanced beer, but I wanted a little more sourness in my version.  For that reason, I want to give segment B a little extra time before bottling for the brett to do its thing.

Segment C is just a spur of the moment decision since a good friend brought down some Jolly Pumpkin beers, and I’ve been loving then so far.  Building up and pitching those dregs should add JP’s brett, pedio, and lacto cultures to the saison, and I’m most excited to see how that segment turns out.

Down the road, I’ll be looking to use the 10 pounds of cherries I acquired a few weeks ago, but I think those are better used on a Belgian dark strong or golden ale.

Stay tuned, and any thoughts or comments are welcomed.

And so Beergate is upon us.  And why should be care is a natural question.

Much has been made about the invitation from President Obama to Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley to meet over a beer.  And just as much hype has been heaped upon the beer choices that these men have made.

The choices for this historical summit are:

President Obama: Bud Light

Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. : Red Stripe

Sgt. James Crowley: Blue Moon.

As a craft beer fan, none of these beers stand out stand out as particularly good beers.  Well, in the case of Red Stripe and BL, the choices are downright bad.

But what is important about beer for this conversation?  Beer is still considered the beverage of the common man.  Metaphorically, we still call blue-collar workers “Joe Six-Pack”, although the Republicans may have ruined that for all of us. 

Beer is still the drink you reach for at a backyard barbeque, or at a baseball game.  Wine and liquor are a bit more formal.  You break those out for special occasions or structured events.  Beer, in this context, is about three men sitting around a table and working through differences.  Stepping beyond ceremony and just hashing things out like neighbors.

I think beer is the perfect choice for this situation and the environment that Obama is trying to create.  Obliviously, he could have chosen a much better beer than Bud Light, and frankly it behooves his images to move up to a Dale’s Pale (in a red, white and blue can no less) or a Sam Adams (brewer AND patriot) beer.

During the presidential race between Bush and Gore, polls pointed to George W. as the candidate that the typical voter would like to have a beer with.  I imagine that Bush would pick something as disappointing as an AB product, too.  I know they are human beings, but I think we all have to right to expect a little more of our presidents.  Certainly one of Obama’s advisors could have suggested something from his hometown of Chicago.  Maybe a nice beer from Goose Island.

I think Obama is a smart guy, but he isn’t the common man.  And, to be clear, I don’t really want him to be.   

It is common is for candidates running for office to be sorted into the “wine track” for upscale voters and a “beer track” for the blue-collar voters.  I’m naïve enough to hope that there is a common space between those two tracks that lends itself to some great craft beer. 

You want someone smarter than yourself to run the country, but the wine track guy is not someone I would immediately understand.  Seeing Obama at a White Sox game drinking something that actually deserves to be savored would actually speak to me.

My latest homebrewing MO is to split and play around WITHIN batches as much as possible. 

The latest one is my American barleywine that just turned 7 months old.  It dropped from a 1.110 down to a 1.023 and finished at an 11.6 ABV.  I bottled ~4 gallons of that batch with oxygen absorbing caps, and then waxed the tops to let them age gracefully.

The last gallon I racked onto a ½ ounce of American oak cubes that I steamed and then marinated in Blanton’s bourbon for almost 12 months.  (I can’t say that leaving them on the bourbon that long actually does anything extra special.  It just sounds cool.)  I’m going to age that for a few weeks and then bottle that last gallon.

I imagine that it will taste nothing like it, but this is somewhat inspired by Lost Abbey’s Angel Share.  What I tasted of the flat barleywine that I bottled, it was slightly sweet with lots of dark fruit flavor and only a slight alcohol warming.  The hoppiness is fading quickly, and the bitterness is softening.  I’m curious to see what the oak and the residual bourbon does to this brew.

I still have some blue wax that can use to bottle the last gallon, as well, but I’ll have to drop a yellow crayon or something into the wax to make those look a little different.

At the end of the year, I can try one of each and compare and contrast. 

Looking to the future, I’m planning to brew my yearly saison this weekend, but I will split that one at least two ways.  The control part will be a standard dry and spicy saison.  Into the remaining beer I will pitch brettanomyces after primary fermentation.  For that I have a tube of White Labs WLP650 brettanomyces bruxellensis, but I might try to also culture up another strain of “wild” yeast from a commercial bottle for a third segment.

After that, I’ve got 10 pounds of cherries that might go into some big, Belgian ales.

Those will all be future posts.

What more is there to say?  It is American.  It is Badass.  It is Redneck.  It is a lager.  All of those things are fine individually, but only Kid Rock could pull them together to make magic.  And how could the label NOT look like a belt buckle?

Fans that go to Kid Rock’s shows in Comerica Park on July 17 and 18 will get to try it first. 

Isn’t going to the show in the first place punishment enough?  I hope they have staffed the medical tents at the concert appropriately.  They should look like M*A*S*H units before the opening act is done.

I think Jamie Foxx put it best when he said “let’s stop all of this white-on-white crime.”

This event has been postponed until spring 2010.  The latest post about the World Beer Festival – Richmond.

I heard about this last month, but I figured it would be worth a post if you hadn’t heard about the World Beer Festival – Richmond that is being put on by All About Beer magazine on August 29, 2009.

According to their website, they’ve hosted 16 beer festivals in North Carolina, and now they are setting up an event in Virginia.  The details are pretty sparse right now, and none of the breweries have been identified.  All we know is that it will be on Brown’s Island on 8/29/09, the tickets will go on sale sometime this month, and there will be two sessions with the general admissions tickets running $40 a piece and the VIP tickets will be $75. (I’ll hold off judgment of the VIP price until I know more specifics about the bells and whistles of that ticket.)

It will be nice to have a big festival come to semi-central VA, and I look forward to seeing what breweries sign up to be part of this gig.  I’ve heard the Brown’s Island can get hot and buggy during the summer, but that is nothing I know from experience. 

The only downside for me is that James River Homebrewers Club is holding their Dominion Cup homebrew contest that same day, and I’ve volunteered to steward in that competition.  It should be a very busy day of celebrating commercial and homebrewed beer in the commonwealth, and I am looking forward to it.

I’ll let you know more as it trickles down to me….

This one is my first attempt at a Flanders Red.  And with how much I’ve been digging on and obsessing about sour ales, it was only a matter of time. Although this one will test my patience in aging it full term.

I brewed it on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend (5/23/09), and the base formula was riffed off of Jamil’s Recipe despite the fact that his grain bill seems a little complicated for the style.  I played it loose with the base grains, and used some of my British Golden Promise instead of Pilsener malt.  I rounded that out with Vienna, Munich, Wheat, Aromatic CaraMunich and Special ‘B’. 

I also used hop plugs for what might be the first time in my ~14 years of brewing.  Now that my keggle is up and in action, I might be leaning more towards whole hops over pellets since they should filter out better with the new set-up.

The game plan here was to control some of the sourness by initially fermenting it with a clean, American yeast.  So the original gravity was a 1.058 when I pitched the Safale-05.  I let that go for 48 hours and then I racked it into a secondary, which is my wild and funky PET container, and pitched the Roeselare blend.  (The Wyeast 3763 Roeselare is a Rodenbach blend of lambic cultures and lactic bacteria.)  By that time, the batch had fermented down to a 1.026, and I figured that would give the wild bugs a lot of sugars to slowly eat through over the next 18 months.

It is standard to age these beers in oak barrels as well, but that is a little harder to do on the homebrew level.  To compensate for this, I added 1 ounce of medium toast French oak cubes to the secondary.  My twist is that I first sanitized the cubes by steaming them, and then I soaked them in pinot noir for about a month before pitching them in the secondary.  This is not a standard practice, but the Flanders Red style is red-winish and often called the “Burgundy of Belgium”.  Inspired the Avery Brabant, which is aged in zinfandel barrels, it seemed like an interesting thing to do.  I’m hoping it’ll add a tiny bit more complexity.

One week down and 71 one more to go.  Damn.

And, yes, this already has been named “Stupid Sexy Flanders”. (Thank you, Matt.)

This coming weekend I’ll being hitting the SAVOR Craft Beer and Food Experience.  This is the second year for this Washington DC event, and I’ll be driving up to check it out.  The gig is based around pairing gourmet foods with the appropriate beer.  Well, actually, the other way around.  There will be a lot of breweries represented that I have had before, but I will be concentrating on the brews that do not typically make it from the west coast to Virginia.  I love the east coast brewing scene, but I’m excited to try some of the hop-heavy and sour beers from the west sayeed.

This is will also be a chance to hang out with some of the rock stars of craft brewing.  To insure that I get the proper amount of that, I am also attending the Lupulin Reunulin the night before at the RFD.  In attendance that night will be Tomme Arthur (Lost Abbey), Vinnie Cilurzo (Russian River), Adam Avery (Avery Brewery), Rob Tod (Allagash) and Sam Calagione (Dogfish Head).  This bunch is sometimes referred to as the “Brett Pack” after their group trip to Belgium a few years ago and for their love of brettanomyces.  These guys are supposed to have a lot of great stories which bubble out during these sessions.

I only got into one salon, but it is the beer and cheese pairing with Greg Koch of Stone Brewing, so I know that will be a lot of fun, too.

I will be hitting these events with some close friends and hopefully meeting up with some beer lovers I’ve met through the internet and Twitter.  It will be a very interesting, and liver killing weekend, and I will be tweeting (BarlowBrewing) as much as I can and hopefully posting pictures later.