I just wanted to send a thank you over to the guys at reddit.com/r/beertrade for making this Christmas a little extra merry!
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Update as of today September 8th, 2011. Voting is now open to choose your favorite kegerator!Voting closes Friday, September 16, at 12pm.
So Siciliano's is having an online voting Kegerator contest this Friday over at The Buzz. It's American Idol style, finalists will be announced on Friday September 2nd. Judging for Best of show will begin September 2nd. So if you feel moved, hop on over to The Buzz (Sicilianos's Blog) and vote for your favorite. We are all a little biased over here at maltedbarley.org, but your politics, religion ,and favorite Kegerator are your business, so vote honest. Maltedbarley.org is not big and evil, so unlike certain unnamed big corporations, and big governments, we respect your freedom of choice.
The Maltedbarley.org BBQ and Homebrew Party was a success. We enjoyed my Vanilla Cream Ale, Summer Lemon Wheat Ale, Founders Centennial IPA, and Great Lakes Brewing - Lake Erie Monster. We built a Fondant Cake that tasted better than it looked, homemade vanilla ice cream with homemade vanilla extract, and ate Beer Brauts, Spicy Brauts, Hotwings, Burgers, BBQ Chicken, and more. The Vanilla Cream was rather popular despite the fact that I will never brew it again. While the Strawberries complemented the cream ale, the vanilla just was. There was cream ale, and vanilla. But the two never seemed to quite meet-up in my book. The one success was this - my method for making the vanilla extract and infusing the brew - it worked great. I just need to do it on something dark and chocolaty like a stout, not a cream ale.The Summer Wheat was excellent. I will use a whole bag of lemons again, that's what it takes if you want the lemon to come through. Lake Erie Monster is a great double IPA, and yes it might cause you to slur your words and necessitate someone driving you home. 
I experimented with soaking pecan chips and putting them on the grill in some hole-poked tin foil. This works great and gives your BBQ that something extra special. This years BBQ sauce came out great, while not near as spicy as last year, I still liked it. Next year I think we'll focus a bit more on the homebrew aspects. I finally got my mash tun setup and brewed my first all grain brew, so by next year we'll plan for a full up group all grain brew and invite folks that want to learn to brew, or step up to all grain brewing. 
My beer glasses are in for this years maltedbarley.org Homebrew and Barbecue Party July 9th. Thanks to John Heimark
of Spokane Washington for producing the graphic image for the pint glasses and banner. You can now follow maltedbarley.org on twitter for updates like this one.I was recently contacted by a sales representative from Build A Sign.com. Build a sign makes custom Yard Signs, Signs, and Custom Banners. I am trading them a nice banner for a summer BBQ, in trade for putting up a link to their site. When my banner comes in I will give them a nice little link over on the right hand side of the site. Their prices are very reasonable and it's very straight forward to build your sign. Check them out for your next event:
Update: The banner arrived on time, and it looks great. If you are planning and event, or just looking for additional advertising Build A Sign does a great job. Not only are they fast, their quality, service, and prices are top notch.
Well folks after a few years of down time ( Circa 2007) Maltedbarley.org is back in business. If my site looks a little crazy for a few days it's because I am still working on trying to get the page layout and color scheme setup the way I want it.
