PsychoPhil

Archive for the ‘Beer’ Category

One afternoon at Cheers, Cliff Clavin was explaining the Buffalo Theory to his buddy Norm. Here’s how it went:

“Well ya see, Norm, it’s like this…. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.”

“In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That’s why you always feel smarter after a few beers.”

So yesterday we found out the names for the boy’s Baseball and the youngest daughters Softball teams.

The Daughter has a infatuation with Lions and Tigers. It borders on a complete obsession really. From screaming ‘LLLLLIIIIIIIIOOONNNNNNNNN!’ so loud it nearly burst my eardrum during the safari at Disney’s Animal Kingdom to sleeping under a mountain of stuffed felines. If I remember correctly her first words were the complete script of ‘The Lion King’. So when she heard that her team was the Detroit Tigers she screamed like…. well, she screamed like a little girl. Once again nearly bursting one of my eardrums.

Later the same day we’re picking up the boy’s uniform and we found out his team name is the Milwaukee Brewers. So after I belt out a nice ‘YES!’ I look over and notice my wife has her face buried in her hands once again (she seems to do that alot when we’re out in public. I haven’t quite yet figured out why). It took a bit of explaining to the boy until he understood why I liked the team name and if you haven’t yet figured out why yourself, just take another look at the title and header graphic for the blog again.

side note: The sponsor of the boy’s team happens to be the local mortician. Oh well… you can’t win ‘em all. At least its not Chico’s Bail Bonds.

Six days after brewing and the ferment of the latest batch of Phat Tyre Amber Ale is still going strong. Active ferment started just 9 hours after being sealed.

‘Saw IV’ Slays in $32.M Debut Weekend

A high-profile documentary, Sony Pictures Classics’ “Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains,” had a poor debut, taking in just $10,573 at seven theaters. The film from director Jonathan Demme (“The Silence of the Lambs”) follows the former president during a tour to promote his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”

Well duh.

If they really wanted to make some money on this thing, they should have focused on the single greatest moment of Carter’s Presidency. And what would that be you ask? Why… making it Federally legal to homebrew beer of course.

Oh yeah…. they also should have mentioned Carter’s superhuman abilities that he used to fight off an attacking killer swamp rabbit.

“It was hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flared and making straight for the president.” – press account of the incident.

Can’t you just hear the theme music?

They say this cat Carter is a bad mother
SHUT YOUR MOUTH!
I’m talkin’ ’bout Carter.
THEN WE CAN DIG IT!

Crossposted to The Political Stuff.

I take back my last post on Stone IPA. This brew is just entirely too sensitive to temperature. As I mentioned before, its good once it warms up a bit, but if you’re looking to actually enjoy your beer instead of just chugging it down, this isn’t the beer for you. It has a certain temperature point where it tastes great, but if its too cold or you don’t drink it fast enough and it gets warmer, the taste is off. So off it got to the point where I just poured out the remainder of the bottle I was drinking. I’ll keep the last three in the back of the fridge to use as cooking beers. So… my revised review: skip it.

Tonights beer is Stone IPA from Stone Brewery (der) in CA. I picked it up at Shawan Liquors in Hunt Valley while stocking up on a few bottles of various Pumpkin Ales (mainly Dogfish Head and Wyerbachers).

It gets a high rating (91) on Beer Advocate so I had some high expectations (side note: you think wine snobs are bad? just go read some of the tasting reports for this beer at Beer Advocate. Many of those people need help). At first I wasn’t very impressed. The color was light for an IPA, the first taste seemed very bitter and very over-hopped. While it had a good head, the lacing was near non-existant. I ignored it for a bit and didn’t take my next drink for a while.

When I did, it was a completely different beer…. and it was damn good. Probably one of the best IPA’s I’ve had. I’ve never run across an IPA that was this sensitive to serving temp but with the Stone IPA, don’t serve it ice cold… actually, you should never serve ANY real beer ice cold… lets say don’t serve it at refrigerator temps. Let it sit for 5-10 minutes. Its worth it.

side note #2: I’m not a fan of the label painted on the bottle… simple because I prefer to reuse capable bottles for my own brews. Given that I have about 10+ cases of those already saved up, I don’t think I’ll need to be holding on to these.

I was putting my last six pack of Phat Tyre in the beer fridge last week and I noticed the date I had printed on the labels. I was amazed that it had been six months since my last brewing. I’ve obviously been relying way too much on Yuengling this past year and have been neglecting my brewing equipment.

I changed that this weekend with a new brew. Since the holidays are coming up, I actually planned ahead a bit and boiled up a Spiced Winter Ale mix from Northern Brewer (Since Northern was having a shipping special at the time, 5.99 per order, I also ordered another Phat Tyre kit. No more beer slacking). If all goes well, it should be ready in 4-6 weeks. Maybe a bit late for Thanksgiving, but perfect for Christmas. Its been four days since the boil and the garage still has a kickass pumpkin pie smell from the mulling spices (Ceylon cloves, cracked cinnamon, allspice, cardamom and mace).

Earlier today I decided it was time to update the brewing setup a bit. I ordered the equipment to start doing a proper two-stage ferment on my beers. I could get away with a single stage for the ale, but since the recipe recommends adding additional spices to the secondary ferment, I figured now was a good a time as any to get the needed supplies and do things right. The 5 gallon carboy and all related accessories are due in Friday which should be just in time to rack the winter ale into it… which also means my primary fermenter will be empty and waiting for the Phat Tyre kit this weekend.

Hooray Beer.

I purchase a majority of my brewing equipment and ingredients from Northern Brewer. They’ve always processed and shipped my orders quickly and on time. Whenever someone asks me about homebrewing, I always point them to Northern Brewer as a great starting point to get into the hobby.

However… no matter how much I like Northern Brewer, they have no control over UPS and how UPS treats my orders. My most recent order is a great example of this. It is also a perfect example of why I highly recommend Northern Brewer.

The order contained the bench capper and bottle tree mentioned in this post a few days ago. It appears that UPS was exceptionally angry during the shipping of these items since both boxes where left on my front porch with some pretty serious damage. Opening up the boxes I discovered the base of the bottle tree was broken. I fired off an email to NB with the subject ‘UPS HateS Me’ letting them know about the shipping damage and pointing them to a few pictures I posted online called ‘UPS Hate‘. I received a response just a couple hours later which started off with:

Sometimes UPS is too embarrassed to admit its feelings for you, so it
does things like tease you, pull your hair or destroy your packages.
These are all signs of repressed affection.

About 4-5 days later, I received my replacement base unit. They didn’t ask me to send the damaged unit back… in fact, they suggested I just keep and use it as ‘a really crummy frisbee’. Maybe its just me but I find it refreshing to deal with a company who has a sense of humor about things as well as takes good care of their customers. But then again, when your business is beer and homebrew, how can you not have a good attitude?

My brewing has been pretty slack over the past few months. Part of the reason is that my beer consumption dropped a bit over the winter but the main reason is that I lost my brewing space to the wife’s (relatively) new minivan that wasn’t allowed to get a speck of snow on it. Now that the global cooling crisis appears to be over, the van has been moved back outside and I’ve reclamed my brewery.

I took the opportunity to upgrade my brewing space a bit. Pictured below are my new Super Agata Bench Capper and Bottle Tree:

I’ll admit the bottle tree struck me as a bit of a gimick, but after using during this past bottling, I’m sold. It makes it very easy to drain and store the bottles after sanitizing and keeps them close at hand during the bottling process. The bench capper was my favorite upgrade. It took about 5-6 destroyed caps before I got the hang of it, but once I figured it out (translation: read the directions) I was able to fly through capping the bottles. It cut my capping time in half. I’ll keep the old hand ‘butterfly’ capper on hand in case of an emergency…. but I won’t willingly go back to using one.

In addition to those toys, I picked up an 5/16″ Fermtech Auto Siphon racking cane and, since my basement is not quite back to a proper Ale fermenting temperature, a Brew Belt (basically a heater cord you wrap around the fermenter to keep it at the proper temp). The auto siphon worked bueatifully. Again, no going back to the old cane. The Brew Belt, while it worked, is probably the only purchase I’d reconsider. I was concerned it was creating a hot spot around the area the of fermenter where it was attached. If I had to do it over, I’d probably spend the extra money on the Fermwrap Heater heater.

In any case, my Phat Tyre Amber was bottled almost two weeks ago which means it’ll be ready to sample this weekend.

side note: the picture above also demonstrates the slow death of my Canon Powershot S30 digital camera. Its served me very well over the years, but as you can see, it is losing its ability to process ‘strong’ colors such as the red plastic shown above.

A classic beer commercial. One of my favorites.

The only reason I picked up this beer last night is because the store was out of the Dogfish Head Pumpkin Ale. Thats a mistake I will not be repeating. I was completely underwhelmed by this beer. Not only did I detect absolutely no hint of pumpkin or spice, it was a bland beer as well. Low flavor, low carbonation… even if it was marketed as a standard ale I would have given it mediocre marks.

If you’re in the mood for a pumpkin ale this season, stick with Dogfish Head or Smuttynose as a brewer.

Its been several weeks since my last brew. Mainly because we’ve been busy with the end of summer and getting the kids back in school; but also because the 6 cases of homebrew I had in the basement have been holding up to my use pretty well.

Well those 6 cases are now a little less than three and if I want to keep stocks up, I need something in the bottle soon so it will be ready in about a month. I chose a fairly easy brew of Honey Weizen (Honey Wheat) from Northern Brewer. A pretty big turnaround from my last brew which was an IPA. IPA’s have extra hops (about 5 additions throughout the hourlong brew process) and Malt and as a result, more alcohol (and a LOT of taste. Not the beer for the Bud Light lovers). Honey Wheat on the other hand has just Malt, a single hop addition at the start of the boil and 1lb of Honey added at the end. I’m also finding I’m starting to get bored with the simple(r) ‘extract kits’. It might be time to update the brewing area in the garage so I can begin doing my own Mashing/Sparging. That will give me much more control over the brew and its ingredients and I can always fall back to an extract kit if I’m running short on brew time.

I did implement a small change to my process on this brew. I complained earlier about my Pale Ale brew which wound up having a bad aftertaste. After a bit of reading I think I’ve traced the problem to a case of ‘hot side oxidation’. Previously, in order to quicken the cooling time as much as possible, I was draining the still hot wort directly from the kettle into the ferment bucket. I would then place the bucket on ice to cool it down enough that I could pitch the yeast. My logic was the pour would help cool the wort while oxygenating it (required for good yeast growth). Turns out oxygentating a hot wort can cause a bad aftertaste. Now I know.

This brew I took the kettle off the heat and put it into a tub with a layer of ice on the bottom. I then filled the rest of the tub with ice around the side of the kettle. Once it cooled down to the 75-80d range, I pulled the kettle from the ice, drained it into the ferment bucket (oxygenating it), sealed and airlocked it.

Speaking of the problem Pale Ale…. remember how I said I was going to dump the batch? I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’ve used a few as cooking beers now and then but the rest of the beers have still been sitting in the basement. Just for the hell of it, I tried another this past weekend. Looks like the extra bottle aging has really paid off. Don’t get me wrong, its not a brew I’m particularly proud of but the nasty aftertaste is now all but gone. Its a beer I can drink now… especially since I know I won’t be making the same mistake again.

[tags]homebrew, brewing, beer[/tags]

Youth sought over 25,000 volt cable stunt

British Transport Police appealed for help today to trace a youth who was seen swinging from overhead power cables by train passengers.

…

“The overhead cables carry 25,000 volts and, although the overheads had been switched off to deal with another incident closer to the station, a residual current of at least 5,000 volts would have still been running through the cables.

As much as I hate to admit it, it looks like the Pale Ale I brewed June 11th is a bust.

Its fully carbonated, its very clear in the glass, has a near perfect citrus aroma and a great starting flavor. Problem is it has an absolutely horrid aftertaste. I can’t place it; its just wrong. So wrong I’m ready to save about 12 for cooking beers and dump the rest to free up the bottles. I’ll give it another week just to be sure but I’m not very hopeful. Its been in the bottle three weeks and its just not getting better. In case you’re wondering, this isn’t the brew were I screwed up the finishing hop addition. That was during the Honey Brown Ale brew.

Speaking of the Honey Brown; I got a bit… concerned. Even though its only been in the bottle five days, I had to try it. I put a bottle in the fridge and waited. A few hours later, I had a beer. It was a little light on the carbonation, but damn it was good. Its going to be hard waiting a week (at least) for another one.

The Honey Brown Ale I brewed June 27th was put into bottles last night. Its been almost a week since fermenting stopped. I normally bottle a week after the brew but one; I was busy working on the deck and two; I’ve read several places that some people skip secondary ferment by just leaving the brew in the primary longer to help clear the beer. We’ll see if it has any effect.

I can say this is the best smelling brew so far. The wave that hit me when I cracked open the fermenter was amazing. Of course I had to have a quick sample. Yup… so much for worrying about putting the finishing hops in too late. This stuff is good.

I did have my first equipment breakage. Somehow I broke the bottom off the hydrometer while sanitizing it. Not a real problem since its only used to take gravity readings and I usually forget to use the thing anyway.

I have run into a more serious problem however; I’m running out of bottles! I only have about 18 empties right now and given that my brew for this weekend (an IPA from Northern Brewer) arrived to day I need to make more empty bottles. About 30 to be exact and I have 1.5 weeks to do it. The brother-in-law and his family are coming up for the weekend so he should be able to help me reach my goal.

As I was checking my supplies to make sure I had enough bottles, caps, sanitizer, etc. I glanced at the reciped list for the Honey Brown kit I did last weekend and suddenly realized I screwed up. The previous two batchs I boiled both had their finishing hops added with one minute left in the boil. I did the same to the Honey Brown. Only problem is that the recipe states the finishing hops are to be added fifteen minutes before the end of the boil. Whoops. Oh well, too late to worry about it now. Who knows… maybe I just created some gold medal brew. Probably not.

This got me excited for about a total of 10 minutes.

I just saw a commerical on TV for the Sam Adams Homebrew contest. I’d link to the contest on their web site but, as mentioned before, its one of those stupid all Flash sites. Anyways, win and Sam Adams brews and distributes your beer next year. Sam Adams gets a new beer, an advertising gimick and untold millions in record beer sales (if my brew won that is). You get… $5,000. Huh? Seems a bit lite there Sammy. Oh yeah, you also give up all rights to the recipe of course.

Its gets better. Well no, not really.

On the last page of the entry form, which actually can be linked to, is this little clause:

I also agree that The Boston Beer Company or its agencies may, whether or not I am a winner, use my name, likeness, picture, signature, voice, audio and video recordings and biographical information in any manner or media whatsoever (whether now known or hereafter devised) anywhere in the world in perpetuity for the purpose of advertising and trade, without further compensation, unless prohibited by law. I hereby release The Boston Beer Company from any obligation or liability to me whatsoever for any such use of my name and likeness.

So, even if I don’t win, I still give up all rights to ‘me’ to Sam Adams to be used anywhere, for anything in any way… forever. For free.

Um, yeah… how about a big Screw That.

[tags]Beer, Brewing, Homebrew, Sam Adams[/tags]

Mirror.co.uk – News – BEER WE GO

ENGLAND’s massive army of World Cup fans is drinking Germany dry, it emerged yesterday.

Breweries warned beer could run out before the final because of huge demand from our supporters.

In Nuremberg, organisers revealed 70,000 England fans who flooded the city drank 1.2MILLION pints of beer – an average of 17 pints each.

Astonished bar keeper Herrmann Murr said: “Never have I seen so many drink so much in such little time.”

Hmmmmm… maybe there’s something to this whole soccer thing….

Sunday evening was spent in the garage brewing my latest batch. The Honey Brown Ale kit from Northern Brewer. I did have to delay brewing a bit. We got into a bit of a rush to get out to the movie earlier in the afternoon and I forgot to pull the yeast pack out of the fridge and activate it. The yeast needs a minimum of 2-3 hours to activate and my standard prep/boil/cooldown usually lasts about two hours. I gave the yeast about 30 minutes to warm up to room temp, activated it and started the brew. Turns out it worked fine since 10 hours after airlocking the wort the ferment bucket was going nuts.

There was quite a bit of interesting weather going on Sunday night. It was pretty damn relaxing to just be sitting back with a couple of beers, watching the boil and listening to the race on the radio while watching the rain, thunder and lighting roll on through just outside the open garage door.

Pictures of the brew have been uploaded to the gallery. I’ve had a couple people ask why I keep taking pictures of the brew and uploading them when they all look the same. I’m really only doing it for record keeping purposes. If I change something in my process (or notice something interesting), I’ll snap a picture as reminder. That will help determine what cause any varience (good or bad) in the future. The earliest you usually drink a bottled homebrew is a month after the actual boil and its quite easy to forget a lot of details during that time. If you notice, there were only six pictures this time so not much changed.

side note: Iodofor (the sanitizer I’m using now) stains hands, clothes and plywood countertops.

[tags]homebrew, brewing, beer[/tags]