Tag: Toast and Salt

Grain rich, beer pour

Stopped by the LHBS while oot and aboot today and picked up the following:

  • 10 lbs US 2 Row
  • 1 lb US Crystal/Carmel 80L
  • 1 lb UK Chocolate Malt
  • 1 lb UK Black Malt
  • 1 lb UK Torrified Wheat
  • 1 lb US Flaked Wheat
  • 1 lb CN Flaked Oats
  • 1 pkg Danstar Nottingham Dry Yeast
  • 1 oz Fuggle Loose Pellet
  • 1 oz Nugget Loose Pellet

Combine that with some brown sugar and spring water to be acquired from the grocer and we’ve got fixing for the next Circle Bar Brewery batch. It’s to be an oatmeal stout based on a recipe I found online. That one had a slightly more complicated grain bill and called for Cluster hops for bittering. I collapsed the UK Pale Ale and Pale malts into a bog standard US 2-Row malt. I also subbed out Nugget for the Cluster. With a much higher AA content I’ll cut the amount of hops by 25% at the bittering addition. I’ve christened this one Toasted Otis in honor of the late Otis “Oats” B. Toast, Esq.

Currently the recipe looks like this:

Fermentables

  • 10 lbs US 2 Row
  • 1 lb US Crystal/Carmel 80L
  • 1 lb UK Chocolate Malt
  • 1 lb UK Black Malt
  • 1 lb UK Torrified Wheat
  • 1 lb US Flaked Wheat
  • 1 lb CN Flaked Oats
  • .25 lb Muscavado (going to substitute dark brown sugar)

Hops

  • .75 oz Nugget loose pellet
  • 1 oz Fuggle loose pellet

Doing BIAB for this one. Plan is to heat 8.25 gallons of water to 158F and dough in. Cover up and let it sit for 45 minutes. Give her a stir or two, verify the temp is okay, and then cover and rest for another 45 minutes.

Mash out at 170F by lifting bag and letting it drain and do a bit of squeezing to get all the goodness we can out of this. I’ll probably sit the bag in a bucket and collect a little more wort to add at the 45 minute mark.

Start the boil timer at 60 minutes when we clear the hot break. Add Nugget hops at this time. Add the Fuggle at 10 minutes to flame out.

Cool wort in water bath until we hit 70F and pitch yeast.

Looking at three weeks in primary before even checking on SG readings. Carb to 2 volumes and serve some time near the end of March if we’re lucky. BeerAlchemy shows we should expect:
5.5 gallons
OG: 1.064
FG: 1.014
ABV: 6.6%
IBU: 38.1
SRM: 37.2

Pretty much right on the high side of the standard across the board.

The biggest problem right now? It’s a tie between not having my bad sewn (so improvising) and finding the time to run this batch. I can improvise a bag by cutting a largish piece of voile and just folding in the corners. Not sure I can fit this in around an auction that I want to attend tomorrow. There are a few Guinness plastic crates and an “Antique Grain Mill” advertised. Werry interested in the mill if it looks serviceable. A bit interested in the crates because it’s nice to have crates I’ve found.

Otis Has a Birthday

Hey Otis.

It’s yer birthday.

Go Otis.

It’s yer birthday.

Partyboi!

The Toaster marks two years with us and somewhere between four and six IRL. No party for the Cat Box Raider—and he is certainly ripe today—this year. We didn’t mark Morton’s in August so it just wouldn’t be fair. At any rate…

Go wish the blockhead happy birthday yourself…

Praise the Roof

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

The Elz and myself went out to draft a baseball team in lovely Chicago. It’s an annual migration for myself and given the events of the last two years, an annual migration for Elz as well.

Observations about Chicago:

  1. Your lodging dollar goes a lot further in the suburbs than it will in downtown Chicago.
    1. Duh
    2. But, seriously, $99/night for the full business class traveler experience. I thought about loading up books from Project Gutenberg and printing them willy-nilly because free printing was an included room perk.
  2. Holding the season opener at Wrigley is a rather silly idea.
  3. The lynch pin of my draft strategy went for $8 more dollars than I had given myself as the strict upper limit for a player. This led to a messy draft that I don’t have sufficient preparation for to properly judge. It could either be a long year (most likely), a mediocre year (the best we can hope for), or the best team accidentally drafted (LOL).
  4. Getting out of Chicago always takes longer than anticipated even though the expected crapular traffic on the Ryan never really materialized. Instead it was the Eisenhower that screwed us out of 45 minutes of our life

We continued on to Elizabeth, Pennsylvania for a few days of family-oriented frivolity. I wish I could say it was the most incredible experience of my life, but I wasn’t expecting that anyway. Instead I met some really nice folks who took me in with bemused arms and I learned a great deal about my newest infatuation—ham radio. I will be adding this to the stack of pursuits I already juggle, but have always wanted to do so. Having someone take me by the hand and show me around the block was exactly what I needed to get me off my ass.

On the trip out things got a bit silly as we ended up two and a half hours later than expected. The anxiety level in the car was increasing with every mile until we called a truce. Then Elz did the “raise the roof” gesture and said “raise the roof” in respect to something. I, on the other hand, thought she said “praise the roof” which both of us found to be incredibly more humorous. We then spent the remainder of that dark night on the back roads of southwest Pennsylvania running through various ramifications related to substituting the current monotheist deity of choice with the simple, humble, all-protecting roof. More on that later…

Really, lots more later… My UTS is really acting up with the two straight days of poor posture and driving with my elbows propped on door handles and center consoles. Still, wanted to say that we’re home safely and had a great trip. The Picts might just muddle through another year and avoid the cellar (we’ve posted anywhere between 3rd and 7th so far this week) so I consider the trip a success.

Also, the puppies are racked out on the bed after a hard week at the kennel and if I expect to get any space of my own I’m going to have to force my way in soon before positions become established.

My Kleenix Overfloweth…

The ragweed / whatever-the-heck-it-is that is making me sneeze and snot on everything, both vertical and horizontal, absolutely needs to stop. Mowed the yard yesterday and got about three minutes into the second bag o’ grass (heh) before the uncontrollable sneezing set in. Thought I was going to blow a gasket. Went inside and grabbed the fake-a-dryl which got me through mowing at least. I started moving the mulch/compost pile neé Brian’s dumping ground into reasonable piles of like materials. Then Elz comes around the corner with some water and talks me into going to the dog park instead. Not a lot of talking needed to happen mind you.

So we get in the Egglet and wrangle the dogs into back seat and strike out for NW Omaha. I swear we’re about three blocks into the drive and Elz is all, “let’s just go around the block and head home.” The goal, apparently, was to keep me from swinging an ax—that which gave me a 14 day stiff neck of biblical proportions.

Instead of the dog park, then, we head off to get frozen custard for ourselves and, in a moment of weakness on my part, for the dogs too. The Toaster knows how to eat off a spoon and was able to get through his custard with nary a drip or spatter. Dr. Salt, on the other hand, was a hurricane of sloppy eating. Dribbles all over the sidewalk and his beard is entirely matted now. Looks even scruffier than usual, which is hard to do.

So then we head home, which is where this story is going ultimately. No sooner do I get in the door than the antihistamines went in to full effect. It was like I was operating under seven to ten feet of cotton balls soaked in ether. I’ve never been so hammered by those things before in my life.

Which scares me. Because I had to take one this morning just to start to feel like I could get to work. I can’t imagine how non-productive I’ll be in about two hours…