Recent Midwest Supplies Delivery Unbox and the World's BEST Deviled Eggs

As I mentioned last week, I did some major cleaning out in the kitchen and ordered a couple of brewkits online. Between the helpful folks at Midwest Brewing Supplies and UPS, the ingredient kits arrived during the past week. Kinda swamped at work, so mebbe no actual brewing gonna happen this week, but I did take some unboxing pics to share with y'all.

I ordered a Chocolate Covered Beavr Nuts Extract Kit and a Cream Stout Extract Kit, both with the Wyeast Smack Packs recommended for each (Wyeast 1056 American Ale for the choco/pb stout and WL203 London Ale for the Cream Stout.) An ice pack can be added to protect your yeast from temperature variations for a ridiculously inexpensive 79¢. (No unbox pic for the smack packs--they went straight into the fridge.)

So, first up...the Chocolate Covered Beavr Nuts Extract Kit:

I brewed up a batch with this kit last year...I called the end result "B) Endarkenment"  (after the Ray Wylie Hubbard song.) I didn't get any peanut butter flavor at all, but after 6 months in bottles, this turned into a fantastic stout! It improved with each passing month, and just amazed me with how good it turned out. I'm down to the last couple of bottles, and looking forward to seeing if I can do a little better job this time around.

Anyhow, the kit arrived in a rather large box, with a bunch of goodies:

 A huge bag of milled grains (nearly 5 pounds! Gonna be some spent-grain dog biscuits for somebody's mutt! LOL), 2 lbs of Light Dry Malt Extract, 6 lbs. of Gold Liquid Malt Extract, several smaller foil pouches with Chinook and Spalt hops, 4 oz. of cocoa nibs (these will go in a mesh bag before adding to the secondary--learned my lesson well, last time!). They include an appropriate amount of corn sugar for bottling day and a muslin bag to put the grains in while steeping. The kit does NOT include the recommended two 6.5 oz bottles of dehydrated peanut butter powder that will be added to the secondary fermenter. (That will need stirred in better than I managed last time! Huge amounts of pb sludge left in the secondary and very little peanut butter taste in the finished product, i.e., none whatsoever!) The kit doesn't recommend a specific peanut butter powder, but I chose PB2. The jars are the right size, and they contain only three ingredients: peanut butter, salt and sugar. No weird additives that might add unexpected flavors while fermenting:

 I'm going to add 4 oz. of raw cacao powder when I add the PB2 to the secondary fermenter, but that hasn't arrived yet, so you don't get a picture. I am really looking forward to brewing this one up, not only to see if I can improve somewhat on the process from my experience, but because it came out so absolutely awesome!

As I go forward with this brew, I'll add pics and updates throughout the process, as well as repost entries from last year's experience with this kit.

The second kit I ordered, Midwest Supplies Cream Stout Extract Kit, arrived in a slightly smaller box:

 Much more manageable, and could have been tossed in the fridge whole. But who can resist a peak inside?

 Midwest does a great job of packing their kits!

 6 lbs. of Dark LME (Liquid Malt Extract), a pound of milled specialty grains (8 oz. Black Malt, 8 oz. Caramel 80L Malt), another pound of lactose (milk or cream sugar-thus the name. brewer's yeast cannot process lactose, so this will sweeten the beer without adding alcohol.) a small foil pouch of hops, a small pouch of corn sugar for bottling day (often referred to as "priming sugar," just enough to carbonate the end result without adding flavors or exploding bottles!) Midwest also includes a muslin grain bag, to hold those specialty grains as you brew.

No unboxing, but all y'all do get a pic of the yeasty goodness Wyeast smack packs. The London Ale WL023 is on the right. So calm and cool and waiting to be smacked before dropped into the Cream Stout. That agressive unsmacked Smack Pack on the left is the American Ale Wyeast 1056.  That 1056 is already starting to expand, but I've run into that before with this strain from Wyeast. Pain to break the nutrient packet though! I really do like these Wyeast smack packs, it's just nice having such positive verification of your yeast's viability before pitching.

 Ooh, the two-gallon fermenter! One gallon batches without watching the primary like a hawk! We'll see how that works out, but I'd like to start with gallon batches when I bust into creating my own recipes. (or even copying other folk's recipes!)


And for something completely off-topic!!!

 While I was in the kitchen, I felt the need for some devilled eggs. Lord these are tasty!!! And that deviled egg keeper is just the most awesome bit of plastic storage container. Man cannot live by beer alone..

Deviled Eggs Recipe

Half dozen hard boiled eggs
1/4 cup mayo
1 tsp hot mustard
1 tsp pickled jalapeno liquid
1/8 tsp seasoning salt

mix the yolks and other ingredients in a baggie, then cut a corner off to create a piping bag--less cleanup and much easier.And season-salt the whites before you fill them.