Beering up the Garden a bit...

Sunny tells me its time to balance the blog with a little beer talk now that we are in a dormant season in the garden, so Keith (in Cd'A), Stickman and I got busy with a 20-gallon batch last weekend. We went with a 10-gallon batch of European Lager that we are bottom fermenting in a fridge in Keith's garage for a true Lager. This beer will take longer because it ferments in the 55-58 degree range, where most beers ferment at 65-70 degree range. I think this will be our closest attempt yet a faux Stella Artois...  

The other 10-gallon batch is a German Hefeweizen. This beer should be bottled next weekend, and we should be ready for tasting in Stickman's driveway on Sunday, Dec. 12th. The Lager wont be bottled until at least Christmas weekend. If it is ready by then, we should be able to crack open a few bottles of that beer on New Year's Eve! We'll keep our fingers crossed on that one...

(I'll put up some better pictures once Daisy Girl sends them to me)

And the winners are.....

Here are the results of the great pumpkin weigh-in:

In the family category, we have son-in-law Dan as our 1st place winner. His guess was 162 lbs. Dan, you win $25.00!

Our 2nd place winner (and our youngest winner)  is my great nephew Bradyn. His guess was 172 lbs. Bradyn, you win $10.00!

In our friend's category we have our 1st place winner as the lovely Kerri Thoreson. Her guess was 152 lbs. Kerri, you win the satisfaction of being the closest guess in our friend category : )

Our 2nd place friend winner was Keith Allen. His guess was 167 lbs. Keith, you win the satisfaction of being the 2nd closest guess in our friend's category : )

And the real weight is............. 158 lbs!

Not as big as we had hoped but we doubled in size from last year's pumpkin. I'd say that's not too shabby for our 2nd year of growing them. Next year we will shoot for 200 plus.

Thanks to everyone for participating!!!!

The Weigh In

It has become a fun family tradition to grow giant pumpkins. At the end of the season we have this little contest called "guess the pumpkin weight".  The person closest to the actual weight wins a monetary prize. This year the prize is $25.00 for the closest guess or $30.00 if you are spot on the weight. Last year's largest pumpkin weighed in at 76 lbs which we thought was a decent weight considering we are new at giant pumpkin growing. http://bentsbeergarden.blogspot.com/2009/10/jack-2-before-after.html

I guess we learned some stuff about growing them because this year the pumpkin looks to be at least double the size from last year. For the sake of fairness though, my dad is keeping the pumpkin weight a secret. In order to accurately weigh it he had to drive it through the local landfill scales. This year he placed a "floor" of 150 lbs on the pumpkin because so many guesses were way under the actual weight.

Yes, this is a family game but I consider my blogging friends to be family too....(you just don't get the prize money lol! ) so what's your guess??? Results to be posted on November 12th.