Author: Nick

Released into the wild

It’s been a bit of a wait, but the first reviews of Black Squirrel “Nutter” have been favorable.

This is the second ever batch brewed by Circle Bar Brewery, which is a fancy way of saying me and my compatriots. Special thanks to Dan, Doug, and Gavin who stopped by and helped while away the hours. The day was a bit warmer than the first ever batch, which helps explain why we were accidentally smart enough to keep the lid off the kettle.

Nutter is an extract recipe for a nut brown ale and the first that used LME. The full recipe:

  • 1/2 lbs UK Dark Crystal — steeped
  • 3/8 lbs US Dark Chocolate Malt — steeped
  • 1/8 lbs Weyerman Crisp Roasted 2-Row — steeped
  • 3.3 lbs Hopped Light Liquid Malt Extract — in boil
  • 1 lb Light Dried Malt Extract — in boil
  • 1 lb Sparkling Amber Dried Malt Extract — in boil
  • 1 lb Muscovado — in boil
  • 2 oz Fuggle Loose Pellet Hops at 10 minutes to flame out
  • 1 pkg Coopers Ale Yeast

Specialty grains in muslin bag at flame on, heated to 160F. Rest for 30 minutes and then removed bag and squeezed into wort. Boil for 60 minutes with hops addition at 10 minutes to flame out.

Of note: No boil overs this time! Kit called for a partial boil of 3 gallons and then a top off. Since I have the kettle space I did full volume boil. I believe we used 6 gallons which after boil off and trub loss netted almost 5 gallons of beer. We did get to the 80F pitching temperature (yes, too hot) within 45 minutes. Pitched dry yeast on top of cooled wort (now beer) in a 6.5 gallon carboy. Airlocked and off to the fermenting chamber for three weeks. Ambient temps ranged from 58 – 64 over the period.

Bottle conditioned using 5oz DME (probably 1oz too much given carbonation) and rested at room temp for two weeks.

Tasting notes: Nice pour with possibly too much carbonation for the style. Head retention is passable but not great. Wonderful nutty taste with sweet/spicy finish. At 5.5% ABV, highly drinkable.

I’ll post the pour pictures and additional notes later. Would definitely do this kit beer again but am more interested in moving to all-grain doing BIAB so it may be a different path to nut brown goodness next time out.

Major upgrades on instance transforms

Holy crap. The degree of dislike I have for Windows Installer service is already kind of pegged. An object lesson in overengineering for very little gain. Well, it could work awesomely if it wasn’t a backwater in Microsoftland and if the Microsoft supported authoring framework wasn’t an “open source” initiative that is completely understaffed.

Then there is the issue of instance transforms. Holy mother of god, these make vanilla installers look as attractive as your first crush. This is the way to kludge together support for upgrade installs of transformed installations that don’t unilaterally overwrite every other transformed installation on the target machine.

So—guess what I’ve been working on all day.

Passive pony request

EA: Do we want to use this value? Isn’t it excessive? Shouldn’t we be given a UI to change this value on a per client basis?

Dev: The value isn’t excessive. Some progress was made but we still need a long timeout.

EA: But if we need to change this value, we don’t have a UI to do that. Besides, isn’t it excessive? I thought we got this down to less than a minute.

CM: That value is a system value and should not be futzed with on a per install basis.

Dev: We still need a longer value. Progress has been made, but we aren’t in a position to support a shorter timeout.

EA: Okay. I’ll schedule a meeting to discuss why we need an interface to manage that value then.

More iChat fun

It’s that kind of week already. Logged into iChat in case Elz was lurking and was immediately chatted up by awesomecoleyxo3 who is, allegedly, a 27F. I don’t remember that MOS but the Internet says that 27F is a Vulcan Repairer. So that’s cool, I guess. Anyway awesomecoleyxo3 might need some better off-duty hobbies.

Here is a transcript of our chat:

awesomecoleyxo3@aol.com: hey you

ME: Yo!

awesomecoleyxo3@aol.com: hey i’ve been sitting around sooo bored and figured i’d say hellooo.. hope i didn’t bother u

awesomecoleyxo3@aol.com: there is like no one around to talk to anymore…. 27.f here how bout u??

ME: Oooh. It’s that kind of chat!

awesomecoleyxo3@aol.com: ohh cool so whats up??

ME: Can you post some shady links and implore me to visit them?

ME: Still thinking?

awesomecoleyxo3@aol.com: well ii have an idea if u wanna have sum fun!!! i was gonna get on my cam and “unwind” a lil u should cum join 😉

awesomecoleyxo3@aol.com: l joined this awesome sitethat is just like fb but w/o the annoying kidz.. wanna check it out???

ME: I see what you did there.

ME: Clever.

awesomecoleyxo3@aol.com: it only takes asecond to signup and it’s 100% free 2!!! http://badUrlHasBeenRemoved.com/ just click the ‘Join Free’ at the top of thepage

awesomecoleyxo3@aol.com: once you signup u’ll be allgood and u can join my private chat and tell me what 2 do 😉

ME: I think I’ll pass. Can we just chat?

awesomecoleyxo3@aol.com: ya you will need a card of sum kind but they wiII not charge u anything!!!!!

ME: What kind of card?

ME: And, really, I just want someone to talk to

awesomecoleyxo3@aol.com: i can not wait this is going to be sooo much fun… wait till u see what i’m wearing right now lol i think u’ll like it;)

ME: Cinnabon? Cuz I’m kind of hungry and didn’t have time to pick up some peanuts from the Kum ‘n’ Go on the way in to work this morning.

awesomecoleyxo3@aol.com: are u in hun??? i’m going to go get some “toys” but ill brb and hopefully u’ll be in when i get back hurry uppp

ME: Oooh…that hurts. Women should never ask “are you in hun?” because, well, that’s just plain demoralizing.

ME: Also, is your ‘P’ key sticky? My kitteh knocked over a glass of koolaid on my favorite keyboard last summer. No matter how many times I cleaned that keyboard some keys just stick. Especially in high humidity.

ME: Hey. Do you like the silent membrane keyboards they make today or are you more of the old school, buckling spring type?

ME: Because I loves me an M Series keyboard.

ME: They’re more resilient. And the tactile feedback lets you know you’re *typing*. Know what I mean? I really really like them.

ME: Hey. Are you there?

ME: Man….just like my ex. All fun up front but no follow through. Meh.

For Elizabeth

Q: How do you get four elephants into a Mini?

A: Two in front and two in back

Q: What game do four elephants in a Mini play?

A: Squash

Q: How do you get an elephant into the fridge?

A: Open the door, insert the elephant, close the door

Q: How do you get a giraffe into the fridge?

A: Open the door, take out the elephant, insert the giraffe, close the door

Q: The lion decided to have a party. All of the other animals showed up except for one. Which animal did not show up?

A: The giraffe because he was stuck in the fridge

Q: How do you know if there are two elephants in the fridge?

A: The door won’t close

Q: How do you know if there are three elephants in the fridge?

A: There will be one elephant waiting in the Mini

I freakin’ love elephant jokes!

Random things

Here are some random things that probably deserve their own posts but life has conspired against this.

  1. I walked in to the men’s room at $LOCAL_GROCER–a 1 and 1 set up. There was a pair of legs visible under the stall wall and the urinal was empty. The odd thing? The stall door was wide open and there was weird grunting coming from the other side of the wall. I did not tarry.
  2. The brewing room smells marvy what with a Belgian Wit, Nut Brown, and Gooseberry wine all burbling away.
  3. While WIX v3.6 is pretty much awesome when looked at from the perspective of WIX v3.0, it is still Windows Installer we’re dealing with. Which sucks.
  4. Being the mayor of places on Foursquare creates more obligations than one might expect. Well losing a mayorship makes one more inclined to visit a place than one might normally be. Why is it important to be mayor of the Bag ‘n’ Save? Especially when I cannot do anything about grunty open stall? I do not know.
  5. Rick Santorum headlines are pretty much always unintentionally funny these days.