Category: Deep Thoughts

Spamaramma

In the past week, I’ve had more than 2K spam comments submitted against this post of mine from way back in March, 2008. Crazypants.

Anyway, the volume does not slacken and moderating those at 20 posts at a time is kind of a suck. I’ve turned off comments for any post older than 60 days. This won’t mean a whole lot because there’s just over 40 comments total for this blog over the course of its entire run of five years come September. Most of these are me updating the original post even.

Lots to say, little time in which to say it. I hope to catch up brew blogging some time this weekend…perhaps with a homebrew or two. 🙂

Pour reports

It’s been a bit of a slog lately so I’ve failed to report on the last two beers to hit the fridge.

Black Squirrel

The Squirrel is the first repeat brew we’ve tried. The first batch was quickly consumed and highly regarded. The second time around things are equally good. I did cut down on the CO2 volumes because the last go round was a little over-carbed for the style.

It pours smoothly with a slight head that sticks around for just a bit. The flavor has nice malty tones up front that mellow to a nutty finish. The lower carbonation leaves this one with a fairly toothless bite. If the mouth feel was thicker, this would be a dry stout. Very quaff-able and low enough ABV to not smack you upside the head after having a few. I’m interested in trying to port this to an all-grain recipe but am hesitant just because the extract kit is so tasty.

Orange Moon

I’ve tried this one Wednesday evening and am quite pleased overall. The heavy citrus smell that came out of the fermenter was not as prominent as I thought it would be in the final product. I was also expecting a heavier clove kick to it since we pitched Belgian yeast strain. More Hoegaarden than Blue Moon. I think the cooler fermentation temps kept the ester formation to minimum. In the end, we got pretty close to Blue Moon.

Pours a cloudy light blonde with well-formed head that persisted for as long as I had it in a glass. Quite effervescent and highly carbed–almost more a wheat ale than a wit. Next time around I’d carb to 2.5 vols instead of the 3.5 BeerAlchemy suggested. The flavor was not as citrus/clove as I had expected and might be more subtle than the beer I tried to clone. I think I’d consider racking on top of zest in a secondary next time around. The coriander is noticeable and helps boost the fruit flavors. At 6% ABV, she packs a little more wallop than previous brews. Also mostly bottled in half liter flippies so care will be required when drinking these.

I really think I’m going to like this one. Definitely have some tweaks to the recipe and process in mind.

Son of nutter bottled

Bottled the second nut brown ale tonight. Only two more weeks until we can drink sweet nectar of the gods again!

Thinking about doing something a little different with the labels. This will probably make Jim mad but I want to personalize each brew a little more. Anyway, so far I’ve come up with this:

Circle Bar Black Squirrel Nut Brown Ale label

Last few times we brewed in the back yard, I supplied in-the-shell peanuts for snackers. There is a squirrel (brown/red unfortunately) that came down and begged. We finally put the bag of nuts on the ground and let him serve himself. Well, at least until he stopped eating and started burying. No fair taking food home from an all-you-can-eat buffet!

Goal: Make Beer

This weekend I want to brew but I cannot decide. We’re 3 for 5 assuming something strange does not wreck havoc on the Son of Nutter. The two failures were a Belgian wit and an oatmeal stout. I love a good wit and I also love a good stout.

I’m leaning wit right now for some reason. It’s been a while since I’ve had a tasty Blue Moon. Not complaining, really, because that means the pipeline is limping along enough that I’m not compelled to drink store-bought yet. I’ve also been watching the fermentation chamber (read: coal room) temps since the weather became unseasonably warm little over a week ago. With outdoor temps in the 50Ëš – 80ËšF range the coal room has climbed out of 60ËšF range into the 66ËšF range.

Yeast strains appropriate to stouts are still within that range, but I don’t see things cooling off in the near future. I’m hoping the coal room can be kept in the upper 60s and would even be okay with nothing higher than 72ËšF. These are good temps for wits and saisons as the styles encourage fruity esters.

Ultimately I’ll have a temperature controlled fermenting environment. I’ve been pricing used fridges and freezers. Mixing in an external temp controller allows one to tightly manage ambient temps. At that point I can even entertain lagering.

….mmmmm….Czechvar…..

Anyway—I guess I’m just declaring my intent to brew. Going to try stopping by the LHBS during lunch to see what yeasts and grains are actually available. This will probably be the deciding factor in which way I go on Saturday.

Spam and eggs

Getting more and more convinced that there has been a disturbance in the force. Weird Facebook status update emails and now some out of the blue SMS spam. It’s not the first time ever so we’re still in the realm of coinkydinks but as the day goes on the more I feel like everyone’s favorite Sith lord right about the time Luke is slashing up Jabba’s little sandpit party.

At any rate, I found AT&T has a handy anti SMS spam FAQ. Of course, like the inept ISP they are, it’s a friggin’ PDF. Christ on a crutch.

At any rate, forward you spam SMS to 7726 (SPAM on your keypad!). They’ll reply asking for the sender’s phone number. Once you provide that, they promise to bring the wrath of several gods down on the spamming feathermuckers. At least that’s how I choose to interpret “Thank you, we appreciate your assistance.”

Two unrelated things…

First: Weird coincidence time! I’ve been reading Zodiac where one of the baddies is a company named Forex. I got spam today from a betting service named Forex. There was a weird moment where I couldn’t figure out why a betting service was dumping PCBs and why they wanted to contact me. Like maybe they were going to do me in like they’ve been trying to do in Sangamon Taylor.

Second: …

…

Well hell. Was so involved in the first thing I completely forgot the second. All I remember about it was that I wanted to file it under “Rants” and it came up while I was reading Facebook at work.

It’s Friday! Let’s go out and have us a good weekend, shall we?

Peachity peach

Like I said, we played brewery all weekend long. The last thing we accomplished was setting up to make peach wine. The must is currently airing out and the fabulous Elizabeth will add yeast tomorrow and get things cooking.

Here’s what we did:

Ingredients

  • 96 oz peach cubes and juice
  • 48 oz peach pureé
  • 3.75 gallons water
  • 11 lb white cane sugar
  • 3 tsp acid blend
  • 4 tsp yeast nutrient
  • 2.5 tsp pectin enzyme
  • 1/4 tsp tannin
  • 5 Campden tablets, crushed

Bagged the peaches in a muslin bag and mixed all the ingredients. We’re letting sit about half a day or so to let the Campden tablets do their thing and then adding yeast.

This should sit in the primary for about two weeks–we’ll probably rack it some time around the first of April.

Second racking should happen around 6 May.

Third racking and fining agent should happen around 3 June and we’ll look to bottle on 24 June (depending on gravity readings).

When we add fining agent we’ll also throw in 1.5 tsp Potassium Sorbate to reign in the yeast. If need be, we’ll back sweeten as well. This should be flavorful dessert wine (not unlike the gooseberry). Elizabeth intends to use this as a spritzer come August, but I’d also like to hold a few bottles back to enjoy in late fall / early winter.

Also…someone needs to remind me to do a write up on the black currant wine currently sitting in secondary in the basement. It had a nice ruby sheen to it when we racked it yesterday. Tasted pretty heavily of fusel alcohols and yeast when sampling from the gravity reading. Current SG: 1.011. Should be ready to fine next month and bottle some time in late April. Looking at a drink date in late fall for that one.

Nutty for nutter!

Courtesy of Butter, we brewed up another batch of the Black Squirrel Nutter. The first one was such a hit and it was gone far too soon. Everyone agreed that we needed to do that again.

So after sufficient recovery from the previous night’s festivities had happened (and thanks, Jeremy, it was awesome to be included in your birthday festivities) we all trucked down to LHBS and picked up some essentials.

Butter grabbed another nut brown ale kit. I grabbed some C-Brite and 5/16″ tubing. Elizabeth tried to grab the mayorship, but I’m still a few steps ahead on that count. The high point of the trip being when I was presented a “key” to the store in honor of my Foursquare mayorship!

I love that place.

So on to brewing. My notes are pretty sparse, so it was probably a good time. Dan was great on the regulator button–we only flamed out once and that was due to him being pulled in several directions. Doug was appointed to the waterboy position and did yeoman’s work with the wort chiller.

Oh, yes, it was the debut of the wort chiller. 25′ of 5/16″ copper tubing with sweated connectors for garden hoses. PHENOMENAL! We went from full boil to 70ËšF in less than 15 minutes. Yeast was pitched and it was burbling away when I peeked in this morning.

For completeness sake:

Fermentables

  • 1/2 lb UK Dark Crystal
  • 3/8 lb US Dark Chocolate
  • 1/8 lb Crisp Roaster 2-Row
  • 3.3 lb Hopped LME
  • 1 lb Light DME
  • 1 lb Amber DME
  • 1 lb Muscovado (Dark Brown Sugar)

Hops

  • 2 oz UK Fuggle

Mash Schedule

Put specialty grains into the muslin bag and added to 7 gallons water. Heated to 160ËšF and then rested for 30 minutes. Removed specialty grains and squeezed bag for maximum extraction. Flame on to near boil then added can of LME, both pounds of DME, and the sugar.

Brought to boil and started timer for 45 minutes. At 45 minutes, put the wort chiller into the kettle to sanitize. Always smart to connect the chiller to the hoses before dropping into the kettle. That bastard gets hot quickly.

With the chiller in the boil, boil another 15 minutes. Add hops and continue boil for another 2 minutes.

Cranked on the faucet and watched the temp of the wort drop to 70ËšF in less than 15 minutes. AWESOME!

Drained chilled wort into sanitized bucket and pitched Cooper’s Ale yeast–1 packet dry yeast. Covered and put in the coal room. Looks like almost 6 gallons of beer (whatever happened to my 1.5 gal/hr boiloff?) with an OG of 1.048. This is a few points lower than the predicted 1.050, but we’re also a bit higher on the volume. I think this will all work out wonderfully in the end.

So…like I mentioned, we all want to fast forward about five weeks from now which is when this should be chilled and served. Thanks again Dan and Doug for the help.