This was my first time actually being able to attend the Big Brew. Big Brew, for those who don’t know, is a celebration of National Homebrew day (which was May 5th this year). Homebrew clubs gather together to do brew as a group either making pre-planned beers, or coming up with their own creations. Our club opted towards the later and we gathered together down at Stewart Park to have some food, fun, and of course to brew some beer!

The first lesson that I learned is that transporting all my brew gear is a pain in the butt! It took a lot longer to load up my truck than I thought it would.

Big Brew 2012 Stewart Park, Ithaca, NY

I got up early, gave myself extra time, and still I managed to be running late. Fortunately I wasn’t too late as I was the one who was supposed to bring all the hoses for the event. Only one other person was there and he was just beginning to setup so I got lucky that no one was sitting around being held up because I hadn’t shown up yet. Once all the stuff was unloading and set up it was time to get the actual brew day going!

There were only 5 people brewing at the event this year. We had expected a couple of others, but either we over-estimated it or a couple of people weren’t able to make it. It’s a shame because it was such a beautiful day. It would have been better with a little less wind, but brewing next to a lake that’s just something you have to deal with. There was only on person who had an issue with his flame blowing out while he was waiting to bring his wort up to a boil. Everything else was smooth sailing for the rest of us. My brew day was as smooth as any I’ve ever had at home.

So for this brew I decided I was going to make something a little different. I’ve always been a fan of Dogfish Head’s India Brown Ale. I think that it is probably their most under-appreciated beer. It gets lost in the shuffle of all the crazy over the top beers that tend to grab all the attention. Using that beer as inspiration I came up with my own recipe. Mine is a touch more chocolate malt forward, but I had been wanting to play with the chocolate wheat malt that I’ve had for awhile and this seemed like an ideal beer to do it with(I’ll post the recipe in a later post). It smelled great when I was running the mash off in to the boiling kettle. Possibly the most lovely malt aromas I’ve ever had from a beer I was making. It got me thinking that at some point I’ll make this beer again as a straight out brown ale without the obscene hop additions that I used for Big Brew!

Cleaning up and bringing everything home was about as annoying as gathering everything up to bring down there. I had plans to go see some friends that night, but by the time I sat down after unloading everything my eyes were already closing. So instead of heading back out I called it a night. The Big Brew had been a great success! I enjoyed watching other people work on their systems. I got to see a couple gadgets in action that I had always been curious about, and as always I got to spend a day talking about beer which is a happy thing to me! I can’t wait for Big Brew 2013!

The grain bill for both is as follows:

• 6.55 lbs. Great Western 2 row malt
• 2.95 lbs. Briess white wheat malt
• 1.1 lbs. flaked wheat mailt

A fairly simple grist that gave me 1.050 OG at 70% effeciency. The grains were mashed at 150F for 60 minutes and then batch sparged to obtain 6.5 gallons of water. When it boiled it left me with 5.75 gallons of wort. This ended up with about 5.25 gallons in the carboy. The wort was oxyginated with pure O2 through an oxygen stone prior to pitching the yeast. I wanted to ferment at 68F, however it has been cold lately and my fermentation chamber only cools at the moment, not heats. So the fermentation has been going at 63F for the last couple of days. The fermentation has been vigourous, so the only likely problems I may face are low phenol and ester production from the Belgian yeasts that I used.

Batch 1 used .5 ounces of German Tradition hops for the full 60 minutes of the boil. At 15 minutes I added my yeast nutrient and Supermoss. At 10 minutes remaining I added .5 ounces of Czech saaz hops. Also at that time I added .4 ounces of coriander, 1 ounce of bitter orange peel, and 2 grams of Paradise seed. The spices were ground in a coffee grinder prior to adding them to the boil. I pitched Wyeast Belgian Wit yeast that had been prepared in a 1L starter.

Batch 2 is where I got a little more experimental. At the start of the boil I added 1 ounce of Heather tips to serve as bittering. At 15 minutes remaning I added my normal yeast nutrient and Supermoss. At 10 minutes left in the boil I added .5 ounces of Czech Saaz hops .4 ounces of corriander, 1 ounce of bitter orange peel (both ground prior to adding to the boil), and 1 ounce of Heather tips. The wort had a distinct floral tea aroma to it. I pitched Wyeast Belgian Wheat yeast in this one that had been prepared in a 1L starter.

Both had fermentation that started showing strong fermentation signs after about 6 hours. After a couple of weeks these beers will be kegged and I’ll get some people together for a sensory evaluation so we can pick out a winner!

Fast forward to a couple of months ago. I decided I was going to make a second run at growing hops. I had been inspired by hearing a few success stories from people who with similiarly bad soil had grown their hops in pots. This would allow me to put them in good soil with plenty of nutrients and would give the hops their best shot at growing. So I preordered some hop rhizomes from More Beer and waited for them to arrive. The hops showed up a few days before Easter. I already had purchased some big pots and plenty of potting soil and when they came I went to work. It as pretty simple, filling the pots with the soil and then burying one rhizome per pot. I put them in the middle of the pot under about an inch of soil. I made sure they had plenty of water and then I waited. I checked them daily even though I knew it would take some time for them to develop roots before shooting up through the soil. Still, after the failure of my previous attempt I was a bit nervous about them.

So yesterday before we headed out to do errands I took the daily pilgrimage to check the pots and I was in for a treat! The Cascade, and the Centennial both had tiny sprouts coming up through the surface (there still was nothing to report from the pot with Nugget in it). Of course the weather report was calling for cold weather and the possibility of heavy snow. This made me glad the hops were in pots as I moved them inside until the weather returns to something a little less winter like. Looking outside this morning and seeing a couple of inches of snow made me glad that I decided to bring them inside. Once there is a little more to see I’ll share some picutres and talk about how I am going to set them up to grow in to big beautiful bines!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

What premise is that has raised my ire while nursing the first coffee of the morning? “Airline fees aren’t all that bad.” Yes, someone is actually choosing to defend the price gouging of the airline industry. The title was enough to make me go What The… But after a cleansing breath I figured, well maybe this person actually has some point I never thought of – some brilliant insight that will make me see everything in a brand new light. Yeah, right.

The ever increasing add-on fees that airlines have been imposing the last several years have gotten a lot of press. They rank above, in many travelers minds, the TSA for the most annoying thing about air travel these days. In fact it hardly seems a month can go by without some airline inventing some new fee to further burden the pocket book. To say that this never ending cavalcade of fees has a good side (to people other than investors in the airline industry) is ludicrous.

The authors premise that fees make it so that one pays for what they get rather than paying for many services that they don’t care about is absurd. Perhaps if the airline industry lowered the average fare rate and then added fees for additional services the author’s argument might be given some merit, but the fact that the fees are imposed on top of the current fares takes a lot away from that premise. It’s especially worse because the airline advertises all these services they have as perks of traveling with them, but then wants to charge you extra once you’ve purchased your ticket. Those aren’t perks, those are optional extras and shouldn’t be advertised as why flying on airline x is superior to catching a ride with airline y. It’s especially absurd to claim that baggage fees make sense as carrying your luggage is a basic service of transportation. What’s next, I buy a car, but if I want the trunk to be accessible I have to pay additional service fees to the manufacturer? Plus the more burdened travelers are with checked baggage fees the more they resort to cramming as much as possible on to carry-on making boarding an unboarding a nightmare of rude people all clamoring for as much space ass they can grab at.

Fees exist simply so that they don’t have to dramatically increase ticket rates to cover their losses in these rough economic times. When people scour the Internet for the lowest fare the airlines have come up with fees as a way to make up for the loss while allowing them to look competitive from a ticket pricing standpoint. People might balk at fees, but they would scream murder if the overall average ticket price dramatically shot up. It’s part of the psychology of traveling and the airlines know it. If they can find creative ways to get a dollar here and another dollar there they will. The airlines are a business and they aren’t there for your comfort, they are there to make money. But that doesn’t mean we should go about saying that these extra fees are a good thing in terms of air travel.

The only part of the author’s article that I agree with is that fees are here to stay. They are going to become an accepted part of air travel that people are just going to learn to accept rather than having to come up with slower or less convenient means of reaching their destination. For me, however, between fees and complimentary gropings, well the next trip to see my parents we’re planning on taking a couple extra days so we can drive there and back.

Anyway…

One feature I’ve always wished would be added to the iPad is the ability to select a default browser rather than always being forced to Safari every time that I click on a link. Apple doesn’t seem interested in adding that functionality. Normally the “walled garden” approach that Apple has adopted doesn’t bother me. I like that for most things the device just works. Still some of the things Apple seems anxious to lock down make little sense to me, especially from a usability standpoint. Maintaining control isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however singsong a strangle hold is, and that’s what it feels like Apple is intent on doing sometimes. With all that in mind I finally decided it was time to jailbreak my iPad.

Greenpois0n was recently updated allowing an untethered jailbreak of iOS 4.2.1. I read up on it and skimmed a couple forums to see if people had been experiencing very bad things when using it to jailbreak their iPads. Other than a couple incidents which read like idiot user syndrome rather than an issue with the software, I didn’t find many negative reports. So after backing up my iPad I decided to take the plunge.

I followed the instructions I found on padgadget.com which seemed simple enough, but the update kept failing. Each time my ipad booted back in to its normal non-jailbroken self so I wasn’t worried about bricking it(I did a complete back up of it before I started). After looking around a bit I found some advice on a couple of forums that worked like a charm. Basically I had to use the terminal to open up greenpois0n directly from the .app package rather than double clicking the pretty icon. For whatever reason opening it via the terminal worked and the loader for Cydia showed up on my iPad. It was only about ten minutes from start to the point where Atomic was set as my default iPad browser.

Not bad for a days work – which could have been only a few minutes of work if I hadn’t ran in to problems initially. So far everything seems to be working well and I haven’t had any stability issues.