| Aventinus |
[Jul. 3rd, 2009|09:27 pm] |
2003
clearer, actually very clear. wouldn't even peg it as a wheat beer
less carbonated
more malt aroma (munich, spiced rum)
much more prune flavor, this is the main flavor in the beer
banana and clove are almost gone
no alcohol flavor at all
2009
cloudier
more carbonated
fruitier aroma (banana)
Clove and banana flavors well balanced with prune flavor in the background
alcohol is just slightly more prevalent in that you can just barely there in the background
spilled on my netbook keyboard. After 20 minutes of touch and go forced rebooting the system seems to be working fine right now other than the built in mouse which no longer works. We will see if any other problems come up as we move along. Well its a few min later and we have occasional freezing if I try to use the mouse.
Both
Despite differences in apparent carbonation levels they both have the same mouth feel.
Winner: Even with the beer spilling the 2009 wins. It is a much better balanced beer. Though it may become the most expensive beer I have ever had.
Mari disagrees and says that 2003 is more balanced because the flavors don't compete. Also says that banana is there in 2003 but it takes a little while for it to build up.
The netbook will be replaced in a few weeks with a new netbook. It will replace my 5 year old amd 64 system which will have slackware installed on it and become a server for my gnu screen session that will be my main system and the new netbook will become a windows based dumb terminal with flash, aka exactly what this netbook (palsu) is now.
I am taking names for the new system. Naming scheme is based on "fake". Words that mean fake or copy in various languages. Names that can't be used because they have been used for systems in the past are faux, pseudo, proxy, fugazi, betrug, facsimile, mentiroso and unreal[123] (routers). |
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| knitting |
[Jun. 1st, 2009|12:08 am] |
 | In the picture on the left is a partial bottle of mead that a friend made. When he made it there was some honey sweetness in it 6 months later when he handed it to me. Four months since then it has finished fermenting in the bottle (woops on his part) and has some lighter fluid traits now. Good stuff if your are drinking one shot at a time.
Second up we have a wine bottle cozy and some ginger wine. Not as lacy as I wanted it but happy with the results. I have a mead I am making and I am going to make some much brighter cozies for those bottles. This cozy will also work on 750 ml bottles of beer so I can see some use for this as a holder of Unibroue, Allagash and Avery bottles in the very near future.
The ginger wine is everything you always wanted in a ginger ale but is not carbonated, is 13% ABV and reminds me a lot of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster but with ginger instead of lemon. Good stuff in moderation.
The last bottle is the only crappy Carmenere wine I have ever had. So its slowly turning into vinegar where it will serve some useful function in its all too long life. |
I made some Guinness today. Made some whipped cream for berries and corn bread desert. Tasty day.
Did a force killing of the yeast in the mead I am making. Now to remove all the yeast, spike it with some saffron and bottle it. Shouldn't take more than a month or two :)
wine cozy, basic pattern idea from book "one skein wonders". a few alterations, using two yarns knit together. cascade yarns baby alpaca chunky for body and rowan kidsilk aura (75% kid mohair, 25% silk) for some fuzzy quality to it. less than one skein of each. |
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| Beerfest |
[Apr. 26th, 2009|09:28 pm] |
I have spent the last two days at beerfest. It is only 4 hours a day between that and poker last night I am drained and dirty. I took a shower today but find myself needing another one. Why does it always have to be 90 degrees during beer fest when it is always 60 degrees the week before beerfest? |
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| beer |
[Dec. 13th, 2008|08:09 am] |
Today we went out for some birthday celibration. Among our guests was a drunk Irish-American. You know the type. Green shirt and shaved head. After trying to start a few fights we managed to get him in the car. So that the others could enjoy the after hours over at IHOP I offered to take him in for the night. I poored him some beer from the tap and put in Army of Darkness. In an effort to get some food in him I cooked up some rolled tacos. The way he ate them was.. well for lack of a better term... cute. He ate them with a fork. He would cut off bite sized pieces with a fork and dunk them into the sour cream and salsa and eat them. I have never seen that befor in my life. He has passed out on the couch and is no longer feeling the need to punch people in the face. All is well with the world. |
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| Big Brew Day |
[Apr. 28th, 2008|06:24 pm] |
HomeBrew USA in JANAF is holding an even this Saturday.
If you ever wanted to learn about brewing your own beer this is an ideal time to come by as there will be a number of people brewing beer in the parking lot. You can see the different brew setups people have there will be plenty on display.
It starts early and goes till it is done.
Piller Gregerson -- President of Bear and Ale Research Foundation (BARF) |
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| brewing |
[Apr. 3rd, 2008|09:12 pm] |
Today I bottled three different brews. After all the spilled beer that happens when you are doing that is you smell like a bar even if you haven't drank anything.
The cider may not be drinkable. The poor mans bear de gard is drinkable even though its still new, which may be a sign I didn't do it right. We will find out in 6 months. The 'stout' which was done with left over half dead yeast from the pumpkin beer is very drinkable but of course doesn't taste anything like a stout. That yeast was 6 months old and was a mix of California V and hefe yeast. May have to do that again. |
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| beer |
[Mar. 17th, 2008|07:57 pm] |
TheBrewSite has a list of 50 beers you must drink before you die. Of the ones listed I have had 34% of them.
Sapporo
Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Mrzen
Aventinus
Samuel Adams Boston Lager
Trappistes Rochefort 8
Fuller's London Porter[0]
Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale
Cave Creek Chili Beer (Worst beer ever, please try it)
90 Minute IPA
Midas Touch Golden Elixir
Celebrator Doppelbock
Lindemans Framboise Lambic (Most unique beer ever, please try it)
Guinness Extra Stout
Widmer Hefeweizen
Rogue Shakespeare Stout
Arrogant Bastard Ale
Homebrew (not a brand, just beer made at home)
Some of them I have wanted to try but haven't been able to afford:
Samichlaus
Samuel Adams Utopias
[0] Drank it and have made it. It was actually the first beer I ever made. Didn't try the real thing for some time after that. I think mine was better. |
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| Beer making as promised |
[Sep. 18th, 2007|10:06 pm] |
This took a few days to write up but here it is.
Beer Making
This is not meant to be an authoritative HOWTO on beer brewing. It is just to show that it isn't magic and that it can be done by mere mortals.
So a few months ago we started making our own beer. Bad beer like Budweiser, Miller and Coors is made mostly from rice and corn and has more in common with 7UP than it does with real beer. Even the worst homemade beer has more flavor and body than that. There are four things in beer. Wheat, hops, water, yeast. Well actually there are a lot of things in beer but you have to have at least those four. Until Louis Pasteur came to town you only needed the first three. But that was then and this is now.
The beers we are making are basic beers in that we aren't starting with raw grains but malt extract. First you need to sterilize, sanitize or clean everything. Anything that goes near or in the pot you will be boiling the goods in will need to be cleaned. Any equipment is going to be touching the boiled goods, also known as wort, will need to be sanitized. The bottles will need to be sterilized or as close to it as you can get.
Cleaning: Standard dish washing will do.
Sanitizing: Depending on the material chlorine bleach or OneStep should work. Bacteria level after sanitizing will be reduced to 99.9% of their original level.
Sterilizing: Heat plus water or commercial sterilizer. Sterilizing means reducing bacteria to 99.999% of the original.
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 The equipment sitting in a OneStep solution |
Grab pot, put water in pot. Do not use pure H2O, you need water with some extras in it. Minerals and what not will lend your beer flavor. The general rule is that if the water tastes good then it will work. So San Diego's lime water won't due and while filtered water may taste good it doesn't have the minerals that will help the yeast do its job.
If you are doing a one gallon batch of beer you can do this on the stove, even an electric one. If you are doing a 5 gallon batch then you will need more heat than a stove will be able to produce. You will want a turkey frier. Massive BTUs for massive beer. Since the cost difference between 1 and 5 gallons is less than $25 and the labor is exactly the same the only reason to do a 1 gallon batch is for experimenting so you don't have to waste 5 gallons of beer if something turns out bad. |  When a stove won't work |
Once the water is in the pot crank up the heat till it boils. Let it boil for 10 minutes to boil off any of the chlorine that is in the water. Reduce the heat till is at a mild boil. Depending on the beer you are making you might be letting the water cool down to 150 degrees so that you can make a 'tea' out of your grains. Or you may be doing a wheat beer which doesn't require that so just remove it from the heat and add your malt extract. You need to remove it from heat so that the malt extract doesn't caramelize on the bottom of the pan and ruin the flavor of your beer. Then re-apply the heat. Keep an eye on things because the protein structures in the malt extract will make a boil over happen faster than you can reduce the heat. Bring it back to a boil. Just barely a boil. The absolute lowest setting that will get you a boil. Anything more will destroy your kitchen.
Depending on your beer this boil is going be between 15 and 120 minutes. Most beers will take one hour. Add your first batch of hopes. Set timer for 60 minutes but don't let your eyes drift from the pot because adding the hops is another excuse for the wort to boil over. Take this time to prep your cool down area. If you are using a copper chiller, explained below, it is time to use something like Bar Keepers Friend to remove all oxidation from the copper. If you put oxidized copper in your wort it will come out clean. Which is bad since all that oxidation is now in your beer. |  When a stove will work |
I am making a lot of one gallon batches of beer lately so I
can play with with spices mixes in hefeweisen beers. This is the time
to add them if you want a mild spice. If you want a stronger flavor
from the spices add them during the last 15 minutes.
Some notes on spices. I have been using dried sweet orange peals and juniper berries. Both of these I have added at the same time as the malt. But in one batch I added star anise. This is a strong flavor and I didn't want it be boiled off so I added it that at the last 15 minutes. I made a batch with a quarter cup of crushed coriander. I wanted this one to steep for a while so it went in at the start. There are a lot of options so lots of experiments will be needed to find the right blend. Other things you can add are a lot of fresh ginger, a small amount of ground ginger, cardamom, hot peppers, garlic, pepper corns, cinnamon and clove. In short: if 400 years ago people were risking their lives to bring some spice or herb from one distant land to another then it will, in all likelihood, taste good in a hefeweisen beer if you do it right. Non-spice beers like porters or stouts will have their own rules. |  Spice is nice. |
Depending on the beer you are doing you will have other things to add at appointed times. More hopes, peat moss and all kinds of other things might get thrown into the pot to add flavor, body, texture or fermentable sugars to the final product.
Up next is the cool down. This is were cleaning makes all the difference between making beer or making an exploding bottle. You have just created a concoction that is meant to be a breeding ground for yeast. If it is a breading ground for yeast then it is also a breading ground for bacteria and you don't want that. So clean everything, clean it again and then put it near a geiger counter it to make sure its clean.
We don't have beer yet. We have boiling wort. Since it is boiling we know it is at least 216 degrees. If you add the yeast to that you will kill it. So we have to cool the wort. Cooling it faster is better since the less time it is cooling the less time it has to become contaminated with bacteria. There are lots of ways to cool this. Clean the tub, fill it with ice and water then place the pot in there and be careful not to splash since the ice or tub may not be sterile. We did this for our first two batches. After 40 minutes of keeping the ice water moving around the pot your arm can get rather sore. Chilling this way can can cause a geek to find a better way. |  One coil chilling. |
When I started doing the one gallon batches I took a page from the professionals. I coiled 20 feet of 3/8ths inch copper tubing and built an attachment to the kitchen sink. Filled the sink with ice and some water and chilled in 30 minutes with no arm problems. There were other problems I found in my first batch though. The hot water coming out of the coil is not going down the drain. Problem solved with a drilled sink plug and some duck tap. The tap water is 80 plus degrees and I want my wort chilled to 70 degrees since that is the prime temp for the yeast. So the tap water did its part and then the pot in an ice bath had to do the rest. |  Modified drain plug for run off. |
So I kicked it up a notch. I made a second copper coil. This one goes in a pot filled with ice water. So at this point we have a water flow of sink to ice pot to beer pot to drain. This chilled it in less than 20 minutes. In fact I over chilled one time. I had to melt all the ice and fill the sink with hot water to bring the beer back up to 70.
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Now we have a fast chill!
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Up next one must filter the wort. You have lots of trub in the pot. Trub is hops, spices and unfermentable proteins that have settled to the bottom of the pot. Strain this through a filter, we aren't talking a strainer we are talking a filter. Cheap but very fine filters can be had for cheapo on the Internet or local brew store. Filter it over and over again until there is no trub being caught in the filter. Failure to do so will cause cloudiness, off flavors or worse in your beer. In a wheat beer like a hefe this won't take much work at all. We did a pumpkin ale and this took hours and we will have to re-filter again two weeks and then again in the next two weeks and maybe even one more time. That stuff is thick.
Put the beer in your fermenter. This is either a glass bottle (carboy) or food grade plastic bucket you will be keeping the beer in for the next one to eight weeks. If you boiled off too much water then you will want to add some more water to get up to the volume of beer you want. This water should be clean. Boil it and chill it if you need to.
Now we need to aerate the wort. There are a lot of tricks to this. If it is a one gallon batch just put the cap on the beer and shake until your arms are tired. This will get you about 8-12 parts of oxygen per million parts of water which is where we want to be. If you are doing a larger batch then shaking will work but exhaust you. There are lots of fancy tricks to help with this but I haven't built one yet. The trick is not to get up to 40 parts per million. Doing so will kill your yeast. You can't reach that point by the shaking method so don't worry.
Now you are aerated. It is time add your yeast. This isn't bread yeast. This is beer yeast. The yeast you use can play more of a part than anything else you have done so far. A hefe yeast will add banana flavors, body and spice. A stout yeast will clarify the beer and add body. Your yeast can make all the difference in the world. Choose smartly. Make sure it is 70 degrees. Add it.
Put an air lock on the fermenter. This will stop oxygen from getting in and when the yeast runs out of oxygen it will start creating booze as it tries to matabolize without oxygen. In animals cells this causes lactic acid, aka the burn you feel when exercising, but when it happens to plant materials it creates booze. The other thing that yeast puts off is CO2. Lots of CO2. So much CO2 that if it doesn't escape the fermenter that the pressure in there will build up so much that the fermenter would explode if it couldn't escape via the air lock. Sometimes the fermenter gets clogged up as the beer ferments and some solids and foam come up. Keep your air lock clean. Check it every day. Take a straw and push it down the inside edge and put your thumb on the top. Pull it out release the load into the sink or a cup. Repeat. Clean the holes on the cap of the air lock because they will clog. Failure to do so has caused glass carboys to explode. Glass gets embedded into walls. Walls become brown. The house will smell like yeast for months. |  Aerated and air-locked |
Put this in a place that will maintain a constant temp that will make the yeast happy and a place that is free of light. Light will 'skunk' your beer which is bad. Let it sit for 1 to 8 weeks. A hefe will be ready to bottle after just one week. A stout can take the full 8 weeks. Check your air lock daily. The first day you are looking to make sure that the yeast is alive and kicking which can be determined by the blow off CO2 coming out of the air lock.
When you go to bottle you will want a siphon. An auto siphon is best but in a pinch you can just poor the beer into bottles. In some beers, like a hefe, you will want some visible amounts of yeast in your bottles but in a lot of ales you won't want any visible amount of yeast at all. But before doing that decide how you will carbonate the beer. You will want to carbonate because no one likes flat beer. Bubbles make beer magical. There are three ways to carbonate. You can take some corn syrup in some boiled water and add that to your fermented wort. You can put beer into bottles and add a carbonation tablet (sugar pill without all the nasty side effects of a placebo). Or you can go all out and force carbonate with a CO2 canister in a pressurized environment. The last one is expensive so we will skip that. I have been using the carbonation tablets, or carb turds as they are also known. I siphon into bottles and add the carb turd. Seal the bottles and put them in their safe place for another week.
|  Note that the water in the air lock has changed color. |
You now have beer. Beer that you can drink, cook with or give away. One thing you shouldn't do with this beer is sell it. That is against the law.
:F_P:######################## |
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