Bottled the Stout / Brewed the Extra American Pale Ale / Quandary

Bottled the stout two nights ago. For some reason, I am losing an average of a half gallon of beer @ transfer. Might not sound like much, but its almost a 6 pack! I'm going to start brewing 5.5-ish gallons. Had a taste when checking FG, which was right on target @ 1.012. Slightly less booze than the Brickhead Blonde. (~4.5% ABV) It was actually great as is, had that nice crisp mouthfeel that I love in a Guiness.

I will also use this opportunity to say that traditions in brewing/drinking are often kept alive for the wrong reasons. For instance, "British Bitters are better at room temperature, as thats the way they have always been drunk". Ahem. Yes, they are not my favorite to begin with, and to have them at 70-75 degrees is just about the most un-refreshing thing I can think of. I like beer cold, whether its a stout, an IPA, a porter, or a Corona. Maybe I don't get as many of the upfront aromatic notes and flavoring hops, but I feel as though I get enough. I guess I'll have to push back my timetable on becoming a judge @ the Denver Beer Festival.

Also brewed an extract brew purchased at Annapolis Homebrew modeled after Dogfish Head "60 Minute" IPA. One of the few problems I have with this store (they make their own extract in house, which is AWESOME), is that they do not tell you the specific ingredients in their brewkits. I'll have to email them.

In any event, this is an aggressively-hopped beer, to which I am likely going to add extra dry hops while in the secondary fermenter (the kit comes with some hop pellets which are added to the primary after 5-ish days), but I also purchased 2oz of whole, vacuum-sealed Mt. Hood hops, which have an International Bitterness Unit (IBU) of 4 to 6. I am going to put these into a muslin (cheesecloth) bag and submerse in the brew with the secondary.

I also think I may have found an easy way to lager a brew (ie brew a lager)...going to run it by some of my beer brewing cronies, but
http://brewphileatthebrickpile.blogspot.com/2010/03/bottle-stout-brewed-extra-american-pale.html

Oh ya, I did promise in the tagline of this blog that there will be some mis-adventure. Here goes:

-Was supposed to brew the Extra Pale Ale last night.
-Started.
-Have a standard sink with a basic adapter, to which I have a Brita faucet filter hooked up (primarily to get rid of chlorine and some other junk in our tap water)
-After removing and replacing it so much (with bottle washers and wort chillers - another post on that topic soon) it became worn
-Walked to Ace Hardware to buy a new adapter
-Returned home, installed
-Brita still spewed water everywhere...like a male, I tried screwing it in further, thereby stripping the threads and rendering my filter useless
-Go buy another Brita filter @ same Ace Hardware, install, begin brewing
-As I was about to add a muslin bag of steeping grains, i noticed small ball-bearing-like objects at the bottom of my brewpot
-My thermometer had broken
-Walk back to Ace to get another floating thermometer. They have candy thermometers (temp doesn't go low enough), nine varieties of meat thermometers, external, ambient thermometers, none that float...

I came home and cracked a Brickhead Blonde. Then another as I watched the Sabres lose to the Caps. Some days you eat the bar, and some days....well....she eats you.