Brain Enema of a Savage Mind

New year, new beer!

This year has started out really good in terms of beer for me! Other things haven’t been bad either, but I’ve hit the ground running in terms of both one of my most favorite hobbies and professionally as well.

In terms of homebrew both my wife and my parents gifted me with shiny new homebrew toys. From my parents I got a really nice Monster Mill 3 grain grinder. My wife got my a Bayou Classic SQ-14 propane burner. While I’m the one who does most everything in the kitchen from cooking to cleaning, I know she’s happier to not have to maneuver around me on a brew day just to get a snack or some milk for Gabriel. So now I’ve been working on moving my brewing experience to the garage. It’s a little colder, but there’s a lot more space, and it is much easier to clean things up afterwards.

The first new brew day in the garage wasn’t smooth sailing. I knew there would be some extra work figuring out how to deal with new processes and set things up in a new space. What I hadn’t been counting on was my mill utterly failing. At first the free spinning rollers wouldn’t spin. Then nothing spun and the torque from the drill tried to rip off my thumb. Fortunately I let go of the drill quick and the mill simply tipped dumping grain all over. I had been smart enough to use old musty grain to test the mill out with before putting the good grain in. Occasionally I can be forward thinking. Anyway after about two hours of banging on it finally fixed the issue (the hopper needed to be bent in a little bit as one of the edges of the hopper was just barely touching the roller, but created enough friction to keep it from moving). Once working it was great! Sadly my first brew day was hours longer than even brewing in the kitchen had been. Fortunately my second garage brewing attempt was much better, and was about an hour quicker than I’d normally have; and that’s even after doing a 90 minute boil on a bunch of pilsner malt!

Professionally speaking I’ve been the assistant brewer at Rogues’ Harbor Inn for roughly 9 months. The start of this year saw the release of the first beer that is based off my own original recipe! My first ever commercial brew was a Robust Porter. It’s a little different than the homebrew version that I made. I generally get much better attenuation at home than I do at the brewery. As a result the commercial version of my porter was a little sweeter, but that actually worked out well. It accentuated the chocolate malt and gave it a nice espresso and chocolate character. The homebrew was a little more roasted since it finished drier. I’m happy with my first commercial recipe and I certainly hope other people have been enjoying it as well!

I’m hoping this trend continues, not just in my beer related portion of life, but in all facets of my life! I could use a really good year since the second half of last year was less than stellar for me.

Cheers!

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Fondleslab? Seriously?

I’ve never liked the term “slate” when it comes to devices like the iPad. Of corse for many geeks “tablet” makes them think for the old Windows unwieldily touchscreen devices. I’ve also heard them refered to as “slabs” which I just find to be atrocious. Now I’ve been exposed to a new term for them which makes every inch of my soul cry out in hellish agony: “fondleslab”. Seriously.

Apparently the term was originally born as a jab about those people who drool all over their newest bit of technology in public. Of course this term was given to us by the same people who insist on using the term “fanboi”, yes, with that awful spelling. A lot of the words born on the Internet, usually spread like wildfire by forum trolls, make me cringe. It’s as bad as people who use all the abbreviations popularized by texting even in long form media. This new abuse of the English language might, in my opinion, be the worst. It certainly has jumped straight to the top 5 at any rate.

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Random banner musings.

I’ve played musical chairs with the layout and themes of this blog almost more than I’ve actually made posts to it. For awhile I’ve settled on this one, and still have no real plans to make major changes to it. I’ve really enjoyed it’s minalmist look. However when I first switched to it I meant to put some type of banner graphic or picture up top, but kept neglecting it as I hadn’t been sure of what I wanted there.

I was asking myself this again the other day when I realized that not only had I grown used to there being no image, I’ve actually come to like the large empty space. To me it is somehow oddly compelling. While this might change at some point, for now I think I’m enjoying things just the way they are.

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The 2011 Playoffs thus far.

This is the first year in a long while that I didn’t do my hockey predictions for the playoffs. The irony is that this year I probably watched more hockey than the last couple of years put together. The Sabres even worked their way in to the playoffs (only to play some of the most inconsistent hockey I’ve ever witnessed and getting knocked out by Philly). So why is it that I didn’t do one of my in-depth looks and predictions of what is to come? The short answer is that I let time get away from me. By the time it even occurred to me the first round was half way done. It has been amazing to me how easy it is to let time get away from you when you have a teething baby who makes sure your sleeping is done in one or two hour blocks.

Trust me, I’ve been watching hockey, especially this years playoffs, even after the Sabres were eliminated. Tampa Bay sending team Ovechkin packing has been a hilight for me of the second round. Seeing that the Vancouver v. Nashville series is the only competitive one of the second round is something that I would have never dreamed of! Secretly I’m pulling for a Tampa Bay v. Nashville Stanley Cup series. Why? Why not! We’ve seen a lot of the team that every one expects to win big year after year. It’s fun to watch a couple of discounted teams overcome the odds and show why best of 7 series are far more entertaining than a one and done can ever be.

So here’s to a few more weeks of big saves, heroic goals, questionable calls, and unlikely stars. And if there just happens to be a big all out brawl between Boston and Philly, well I can’t say that I’d complain about that.

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The Homebrew Setup Grows

My first homebrew set was a Christmas gift from my parents more than ten years ago. It sat unused in a closet for about a year until I moved in with a friend whose excitement about the idea of brewing beer caused my to finally open up the box and start working on a first batch of beer. The brew equipment was your typical two bucket setup. We used a stockpot that I had to boil the beer. It only held a couple of gallons so we had to add water to the fermentation bucket to bring it up to five gallons. The beer itself was your average extract kit. It was some generic flavor and when it was ready to drink I loved it! No, it wasn’t even close to being the best beer I’d ever had, but it was the first beer I made and it was tasty and that right there got me hooked. Since then my diversity of equipment has grown. I added more buckets, then carboys, a bigger pot, beverage coolers turned in to a mash tun, an even bigger ported pot from Blichmann, and most recently a March 809 pump.

My main brew day setup currently consists of the Blichmann Boilmaker 10 gallon brew pot(which is also used to heat water for the hot liquor tank and for the mash), a 10 gallon Rubber Maid cooler that has been converted in to a mash tun. In theory I should be able to do a bit over 20lbs of grain in it. So far the most I’ve used with it was 17lbs for an IPA I have going. Right now I have a second 5 gallon cooler that serves as a hot liquor tank, but I’m probably going to replace that this summer with a 10 gallon one. I use glass carboys for my fermentations (6.5 gallon ones for primary fermentation which then gets racked over to 5 gallon carboys). When the beer is ready it gets put in to 5 gallon Cornelius kegs(old soda style kegs) where it then gets put in the kegerator to carbonate(forced carbonation) and to be served. Most of my beers take 3 to 4 weeks from the point I start the brew to the day I’m ready to drink them. Once I have all the plumbing I need I’ll be using the pump to transfer hot wort so that I don’t have to lift the heavy kettle to the stove. Everything is currently transferred via gravity so it involves a lot more lifting than I’d like to do.

It’s amazing how this hobby has grown in to quite a passion for me. I like the brewing process every bit as much as I do enjoying a good beer. I’ve had some times where many months pass between brew sessions, but I always come back to it. There’s still a lot more growth to do and things I can get to enhance my homebrew setup. It’s a great adventure and I look forward to the next chapter of it!

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