Beer Postings

Man beer postings just seem to lack their emotional punch without pictures don't they?

Well tough I didn't take any pictures so I'm just going to have to rely on my words to describe my most recent cockup in brew making.  I was on vacation for the last week, and thusly didn't have a beer ready to go back into the oak barrel when my "guest brewer" got done with it.  He did a wee heavy in it, and delivered it to my home rinsed and waiting for some beer to go back into it on Saturday.  Sadly I didn't have anything for the thirsty barrel so I went about correcting that.  I needed to compress the brew times and I wanted to do an IPA, so I settled on doing a Cascadian dark ale (aka Black IPA).  You can find my recipe here, it was a collaboration with my brew store beer savant and I did it extract for the convenience of time.  All said it was still about 4ish hours of work for a 1.083 syrupy mess.

Because it was a largish batch with high gravity I gave my yeast a head start with some corn sugar and yeast nutrient in about 1/3 of a gallon of water.  Over the course of the brew day I came to discover that my trusty digital thermometer had bit the dust and was reading inaccurately, so I was flying blind for a large chunk of the day.  When the day was done I had almost 7 gallons in my fermenter and that left and uncomfortably small amount of room for the krausen to work.  I stayed up until almost 2am listening to the airlock bubble away happily before deciding it might just stay in there.  When I woke up 8 hours later I had a huge mess, krausen gushing out the top of my bucket and filling my chest freezer turned kegorator.  In all I'd say I lost about 1/2 a gallon of what is going to be 8%ish abv beer.  It was a true day of mourning as I tried to clean it up, split the batch into a second fermenter to try and contain it.  All I can say is Danstar's Nottingham yeast is a monster, it powered through and as of last night was settled down, with the krausen almost completely collapsed, the airlock slowed to a mere bubble a minute or so.  I'm tempted to rack to the barrel just to be done monitoring the damn thing,  but first I have to come up with a way to strain out all the damn hops still floating around in there.  Whole leaf hops are such a pain in the ass.

Any how that's all I've got to say about that.

To ABFTS's question about how the american strong tastes, it's like doing a whiskey drop in a pale ale.  Scotch ales have a darker malt profile (and are offensively bitter), american strong is just a really high gravity pale ale.  Look at the grain bill, it's copper colored wort, and moved more towards amber from the char on the oak.  So far the feed back on it has been pretty solid, my gripe is the head retention is near nonexistent because of the whiskey and oak.  I've probably over compensated on the cascade dark ale, but I like some head when I pour.

Interesting Premise, I don't strictly agree.

The difference or line that I like to draw is that while I may appreciate things cherry picked from other cultures, I don't express that like by adopting it as my own.  Appreciation of a different genera of is not the same as trying to take ownership and combine with other things to make something unique.

The things Portlandia makes fun of really is the most extreme outlandish take on situations that makes them ripe for ridicule.  For instance insisting on meeting the chicken that you are going to eat for dinner.  It's applying absurdism to something the earnest desire to not be so removed from the production of our food.

We're playing a game right now

You what you loose.




You lost didn't you?

Philip K. Dick

I'm not sure why, but I never really read much in the "Sci-fi" genera when I was younger.  I read some of the expanded Star Wars universe, but really that was it for Science Fiction.  As an adult I've sort of stumbled into the genera largely by accident, but I'm enjoying my time here.

The first book for me was from Richard Paul Russo's Carlucci 3-in1[?]. It was in the book bin at work and caught my eye, so I gave it a whirl.  It's 3 books rolled into one and pretty excellent, thought my disclaimer will be the first book stands head and shoulders above the other 2.  The sci-fi book I read last year was Betahuman[?] by Ian Wood, I read it because it was written by a High School friend of mine.  It's a debut novel, written during nanowrimo follows familiar story arc's but manages to add something to the genera as far as I'm concerned.  Really other than smoothing out some of the dialogue, it doesn't need any work.  The last Sci-fi book I read last year was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?[?] from Philip K. Dick.  I watched Blade Runner sometime last year so I was interested to read the book, but Adam Savage prattling on and on about his Blade Runner replica's in 2 separate video's this year really drove me to take the plunge.  The movie doesn't even hold a candle to the sun that is this book.  There are so, so many things that the movie doesn't even try to take on that draw together the plot that Blade Runner failed to make any sense of. If you liked the movie, but thought it was missing something I think you will love the book.

Any how I'm deep in the middle of a Philip K. Dick benge trying to read The Man in the High Castle[?] and I have a few more to follow, but if there is something I just have to read in the genera let me know.

Science Friday

I dig me some science and graphene is definitely a huge area of interest moving forward for the electronics industry, in some respects all industries if the charge profile is as good as they think it is.





via Geeks are Sexy

Holiday Beer

Nothing says holiday spirit better than beer am I right?

Yesterday my Dad and I bottled up my American Strong aged in a whiskey oak barrel.  Topping off at around 9% ABV and smelling (and tasting) strongly of whiskey I'd say this was an excellent showing for my brewing effort.  The side batch of 3ish gallons of lower gravity wort finished carbonating but the one we opened seemed a little flat to me.  I had almost 3x's as much corn sugar in this batch and it took off bubbling so fiercely that it bubbled out of my carboy before settling down.  I'm actually more concerned about bottle bombs more than I am about under carbonation.

So Solstice has come and gone, and that leaves me tapped out for pagan holidays for a while I suppose.  Sure theirs new years eve, which could be interpreted as pagan (or at the very least adopted as) but having a kid seems to suck the fun out of those types of celebrations.  Stay warm and merry, (if that's your thing).

The crud, and other crust

It's stunning how quick and slow things seem to go.  Nothing really to report on any front, I've been wrapping up this and that but mostly moving chairs around on the titanic.  I bottled the side batch of the American Strong, that is really just a pale ale,  I've made arrangements for a guest brewer to host a beer in my barrel, secured enough bottles to get the full batch of the American strong bottled (though I'm going to need more caps and other bits), cleaned up the beer storage area where one of my containers of Starsan leaked nearly a gallon of water inside of a cabinet.  Unplugged my kegorator and am working on a rust and moisture problem that you get from running a chest freezer as a fridge.  Dug out the Navel Jelly to address said rust problem just waiting for the last of the moisture to dry up before I attack the rust and them seal up the seam that's letting water leak.  Finished up my rocket Stove and the stand for placing things above the stove, I just need to run a test burn to verify that the airflow is good and see how well my pots fit on my stand.

Otherwise, I'm getting over some cold thing and getting back into the gym.  It's my first full week back at lifting so I'm sore and hungry and cranky.  In short yeah, just living.


I'll leave you with this gem from Modest Mouse, Heart cooks brain. The years go fast and the days go slow.