IMBC Sponsors Team Hype

Only right that I marry my two creative projects. IMBC logos adorning the Team Hype kit and Team Hype logos seen on Carlos' shirt.

Los - The Background

A while back, the IMBC crew learned that a good friend of ours had popped the question and was getting married in December. Immediately, we thought "we have to make a beer for this." So we carefully researched what his favorite style was and discovered that he loved Russian Imperial Stouts, specifically when served with chocolate. So we decided on a RIS. We wanted to add a little extra chocolate favor to it, so we used some pure unsweetened cocoa powder in the boil and a whole vanilla bean during conditioning to help bring out the chocolate flavors we were looking for. Once we had the recipe dialed in, we invited the crew and friends over for a collective brew session. Everything went smooth and we finished up with just under 5 gallons of a great chocolate RIS. It ended up at 9.6% alcohol, which is just about what we were looking for.

Next up, was getting a label together. We decided to go with a minimalist look for it. We took the pic from the shirts we made for his bachelor party and added the basic info for the beer. We left a majority of the back blank so we could all sign it for him. I think it turned out pretty good, and he seemed to really like it. We only labeled 4 of them for now and gave those out to a few select people. The remainder will be labeled shortly and aged for a while until it reaches it's peak flavor. See photos of the labels here.

WE WANT BEER!

Self explanatory.

Los - The Branding

On Saturday, IMBC's first brew project came full circle. We presented our good friend Carlos (Los) with the finished product. From the brew recipe, branding, and shirts the entire package was done in house. For our first run at something like this it came out real nice.

Stay tuned for a detailed post about the packaging.

First Double Batch Brew Day

So, my day job has requested that we provide beer for the office xmas party, free of course since we aren't licensed to sell yet. Of course, the first beer that came to mind was our pale. A smooth, hoppy, amber pale with a heavy dose of dry hopping. It's hoppy enough to please the hop heads, but not too bitter for the rest.

Right away, I thought, this is a great candidate to break in our new system with our first 10 gallon batch. After all, it's the same amount of effort for double the beer, and now that we have the capability, it just makes sense. Its a semi automated, temperature controlled brewhouse with 3 15 gallon Blichmann Boilermakers, 2 March pumps, and Love temperature controllers for the mash and HLT. The gas is controlled via 2 asco valves connected to the Love controllers. In the picture above, from right to left, HLT, Mash Tun, Boil Kettle. This was taken during the sparge, such an easy process with the pumps. The brew day went as smooth as possible. We hit every temp, pre and post boil volumes, and pre and post boil gravities. We ended up with 11 gallons of pale greatness thats happily fermenting away as we speak. It'll be ready for dry hopping in a week or so, then off to the kegs. One for the party, and one for us. I'm sure it won't last long...

Getting Down at Ballast Point

On October 16th IMBC and crew went to Ballast Point's 14th Anniversary Beer Festival. We attended with high hopes of Scott coming away with another win. We didn't win, but that didn't deter us from sampling some of the best Ballast has to offer and some. Drinks were drank, food were eaten, and Jeff was being Jeff.

See more photos on my Flickr.

IMBC wins again!

This past weekend was the Pacific Brewers Cup in Long Beach. We only entered one beer in this one, a weizenbock. Well....the results are in and we got second place in the German Wheat and Rye category! Congrats to us!

Idol Minds Takes First

Over the summer was the San Diego County Fair Homebrew Competition held at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. This is one of the largest competitions and this year it certainly held up to that, with over 850 entries. We entered 7 beers this year and ended up placing 3 of them. We took 4th place for our Belgian Blonde, which we were happy with given the level of competition in the category (scored a 42/50 and only got fourth so the competition was pretty stiff). We got an impressive third place victory for Blackout, our specialty beer (more to come about this beer). As you may know, the specialty category is typically one of the toughest with such a wide variety of entries. Our first place win came for our Schwarzbier. This was a great win for us. Not only was it our first time ever brewing this style, it was our first ever lager. We'll certainly brew this again. We haven't yet decided whether it will be one of our regularly brewed beers, but it will definitely make its appearance from time to time.

We have plans for several competitions coming up in the near future and some further out, and will be sure to update with any future wins.

Winning

Sponsoring all you winners.

Welcome

Welcome to Idol Minds Brewing Company. We are a small soon-to-be start up brewery out of San Diego, CA. We are currently in the process of business/brand development, composing our business plan and getting licensed. As those and any other pertinent steps arise, we will document them here for any other aspiring home brewers/start up breweries to follow and see how the process goes for us (but more than anything it will be a place for us to vent our frustrations during this process). In the near future, we will be building a partially automated brewing structure, while we pursue potential venues. I'll be sure to update with the progress of that build as it comes along. Until then...