Not beer-related, but here is a nice slice of what "local" is about here on Long Island.
From the Northport Farmers' Market...



For more about the Northport Farmers' Market, see Our Northport or Village of Northport

Meanwhile, back at the nanobrewery....
I'm cleaning kegs to carbonate and condition the Hellsmoke Porter. Bottling to follow shortly. I'll be sending out word of where these bottles will be available soon. I would have taken care of all this over the last weekend, but there was a delay due to the greenhouse effect. Not the global greenhouse effect, but the preparations I'm undertaking for the greenhouse we're about to build in our back yard. Leveling out the area and preparing the foundation took up the weekend. So, I'm playing hooky from the day job today (after a late night of watching election returns), and playing a bit of catchup.

This week should see me kegging up the Bitter Wheat test batch experiment (A.K.A. "Grodziskie") as well as that first production batch of the Hellsmoke Porter. The Hellsmoke will be bottled up after some time carbonating and conditioning in the corny kegs. Commercial keg options are being explored this week, I should be finally pulling the trigger on a couple of "sixels" soon.

Next on Deck: Wheatley Hills Weizenbock

Once the big fermenter is clear of the Hellsmoke Porter, the next production batch will be the Wheatley Hills Weizenbock. I had planned to have two more large fermenters by now, so as to keep the production batches rolling along. I'll get those extra fermenters once money loosens up a bit.

A little Long Island history
The Wheatley Hills Tavern used to be on Post Avenue in Westbury, and a few businesses (and a golf club) in the Westbury area still bear the name. The original Wheatley Hills is in England (I'm not sure if the good folk there would appreciate a German-style beer bearing their town's name). There is also Wheatley Heights in Suffolk County. "Westbury" and "Salisbury" on Long Island were also named for original places in England by English settlers here in the 1600s -- after they took over western Long Island from the Dutch, who in turn muscled out the original Lenape people.

A glimpse of Wheatley Road circa 1906
The Vanderbilt Cup Race was held from 1904 to 1910, and was a pretty big deal at the time. It was the first international automobile race held in the U.S., and Vanderbilt had the Long Island Motor Parkway built partially for the race itself.

The film below is from 102 years ago, and shows a hairpin turn at Wheatley Road in Old Westbury.



For more about these early 20th Century races, check out the excellent The Vanderbilt Cup Races site.

The test batch with the new smoker worked out well. In a couple of weeks, the first beer to hit the shelves (and possibly a bar or two) will be the Hellsmoke Porter.

Stay tuned for more on when and where to be on the lookout for the following label...

Meanwhile, the experimental dry stout is in the fermenter. More on that to follow. The addition of that mystery (for now) local ingredient needs to be approved by the TTB.

Another hint on the mystery ingredient (besides it being local): It's heavier than smoke.