Change of Seasons

Fall has turned pretty hard here. When I woke up and it was below freezing this morning. I'm glad we took Yomoma (the pickup truck) in to the shop yesterday. I don't feel like riding the bike in this cold. Over the last couple weeks we have done some other things to get ready for the winter.

We had the fall trash amnesty day at the beginning of the month. A lot of crap got thrown out. There was such a huge pile of stuff that our neighbors kept asking if we were moving. I explained that it was a biannual chance to throw away anything big and not pay extra for it, so a few of them went to hurriedly do the same. The week after that I cleaned out the garage, which took a whole day. Of course I came across a number of items I wish I had thrown out the week before. I will try to reverse that order in the spring.

With the broken (post-flood, free) couch thrown out, we rearranged the living room with chairs instead of a couch. We already had one recliner, so I brought up the recliner that was down in Ian's room and brought down the bent-wood chair from our room. We even found a tv tray, so the old folks living room effect is complete.

I took down the hops and cleaned up the back yard some. The English hops got a lot of root system developed this year, but no yield to speak of, though I could have gotten maybe a half ounce of Goldings if they hadn't have grown in with the Cascades. The bigger root system will be good I hope for when I transplant them to the south side of the garage in the spring. Ian is planning to have a little get together out by the hops beds with the fire pit and some friends now that it is clear.

With the hops down, the birdfeeders went back up. It took about a week but there is much activity out there now. At the birdfeeders this morning: house and gold finches, cardinals, dark-eyed juncos, chickadees, hairy and red-bellied woodpeckers, and of course the rats with wings - house sparrows. Commonly we have mourning doves and once in while a hairy woodpecker. Some new ones have stopped by recently though, the carolina wren (that peachy colored bird as Heidi calls it) and the tufted titmouse. It's pretty relaxing to sit here and watch the birds out on the deck.

I made up a couple of beers, one for the season and one just to experiment a bit. I made a spiced pumpkin ale for the holidays. It's a bigger beer with a hefty dose of pumpkin and spice to it as well as some dark brown sugar to round it out some. I just moved that into the fridge to cold crash it before I bottle it next week. The other is a cream ale that I made using the same recipe as the one that I won at the state fair with, except I substituted 2 pounds of air popped popcorn in place of some of the malted barley. I am pretty excited to see how this comes out. Once I get some room in the fridge after these two are done, I think it is time to try a lager and a belgian beer. I have 20 pounds of pilsner malt standing by for those.

Heidi seems to be doing well with dialysis. She's gotten more accustomed to the early mornings, meaning I'm not the one waking her up anymore. She still get terrible muscle cramps on the days she does dialysis. Hopefully some medicine changes will help with that. She does have more energy and seems to be more of herself lately. It is really good to see her eyes brighter and her smiling more than she has in a long time. Next week is her transplant reevaluation, so here's hoping it all goes well.

Syd is busy with Girls on the Run and next week hockey will start back up. She also has started going to a church group called Awana Club. She really seems to enjoy it. Ian is still job searching and gearing up for driver's ed. He went to school as Silent Bob today. Heidi straightened his hair last night and he looked so different. We will be leaving soon to bring Syd her gangster girl costume and cupcakes for the class. It's kinda sad that this is the last elementary Halloween party (or the politically correct termed Autumn Parade) that we will have with our kids. They are getting so much older.

Anyways, that's all for now I think, except I found a Quotable Rogue:

"A friend to the locals who dabbled in crime.
He'd give you a job and he'd give you his time.
He wasn't a crook, but he couldn't be conned.
John knew the difference between right and wrong."
- Ken Casey, Dropkick Murphys - Boys on the Docks

P.S. Two things:

All Hallow's Read, a cool idea, especially for kids,

Also there is a Live Benefit Concert for Kai Patterson-Stark a freshman cheerleader at West High that suffered a spinal stroke on September 9th leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. After four weeks in the hospital and rehabilitation, she has returned home, but has a long road ahead of her.

Where does the time go?

Seventeen years ago today I was eagerly awaiting the birth of my son. I was just getting off of weekend duty (the midwatch no less) on Old Ironsides. I was on the quarterdeck and got the call that the doctors could not wait any longer, they had to do an emergency C-section before my wife's kidneys completely shut down. Within 20 minutes I was signed out on leave and flying down Storrow Drive at literally 90 miles an hour.

When I got to the hospital I was given some scrubs by a nurse and shown to a room to change in. She said they would be back to get me as soon as they were ready for me. I changed very quickly and sat down to wait. I was asleep within 10 minutes. (Did I mention that I had the midwatch the night before?) In their haste to get my son out, the doctors and nurses forgot about me until they were well underway. They only remembered after my wife asked where I was. They quickly came and woke me up, and brought me into the operating room.

I don't think I can adequately describe the feeling of walking in and seeing my wife's insides tied up and held on top of her chest. I had a very primal urge to slug the doctors for doing such a profane thing to my wife. However I went to her side and held her hand as the doctors wrestled with my son trying to get him out. My wife was not taking the whole thing very well and really started yelling in pain. The anesthesiologist attempted to be helpful. He first tried to calm her by comparing what the doctors were doing to playing greased watermelon. (For you midwest folks, this is a rugby-like game played in the water with a watermelon that is greased up with Crisco. I hear it is similar to a greased pig contest, though not as dirty.) This analogy had the opposite effect on my wife however. Her eyes went wide, and she started screaming in earnest. At this point the anesthesiologist pulled out his last trick in his arsenal and gassed my wife with nitrous. This muffled her screeching fairly effectively.

I try to tell this with some humor now because at the time it was terrifying. I am sleep deprived and in a room with my wife opened up. Her blood is pooled on the floor. She is screaming in pain, and I am powerless to help her. All I can do is pray that she is going to be okay, and I have never been much of a praying man. At this point my son is still an abstract thought.

Finally they pull him out and I see him taken over to a separate table. I tell my wife but she is still getting gassed at this point. He is here, but it doesn't seem real yet. After a few minutes they bring him over and put him in my arms. The ever helpful anesthesiologist stops gassing my wife and takes a snapshot of me all bleary eyed as I try not cry looking down at this small bundle in my arms. This is when reality crashes down and I realize I am a father. All my hopes and fears for my wife are multiplied now by my hopes and worries about my son. He has these big bright blotches on his head and body. My wife later calls them angel kisses, but being young and a man I have no clue what that means. I am just hoping they are benign. He is huge, swollen with water weight from my wife's gestational diabetes, but absolutely beautiful.

It seems like just yesterday to me right now. We have gone through a lot with him, but 17 years has flown by. This is his last birthday with us as a child. This is really stinging me now. I hope I have been at least half the father I hoped and tried to be. You are a great kid Ian Jacob. You have shown a lot of character that I never had at your age. Though I will miss my little fishing buddy, I look forward to you becoming a great man. Happy 17th Ian Jacob

Parti-gyle

I finally got around to doing the parti-gyle I had planned to do last November. Originally I had planned to make a porter and a mild. I have had some rye malt and flaked rye sitting around for a while now as well though. After having a rye porter by Peace Tree Brewing here in Iowa it really motivated me to get on this project again but with a rye twist. With this in mind I set out to make a rye porter and a rye pale ale.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, we'll see when it is finished) I lost count while I was weighing out the Maris Otter, so I ended up with 2 extra pounds of grain. I also got amazing efficiency from a very fine grind so the porter ended up becoming an imperial porter. This means instead of being 5-6% ABV as I planned, it will end up 8-9%. My only real worry with this is that I may not have enough hops bitterness to offset the maltiness of the beer. We'll see how it works out. This was just the first of many errors though.

This was my first brew in my mash tun in over a year. I have been doing a lot of brew-in-a-bag sessions where there is no worry about doing a sparge. I also had a very fine grind and rye malt itself tends to pack pretty tight, so the cards were stacked against me getting it to lauter or rinse effectively. The grains packed down tight forming what brewers dreadfully know as a stuck sparge. I had to dig down into the grain bed to allow for the sugary goodness to reach the drain. This is not ideal since it can cause lots of particles to pass through into the boil. Over all though I was happy with how the wort (sugary tea-like mixture that beer is made from) tasted so I pressed on.

In order to make a big dark beer and a smaller lighter colored beer from the same batch of grain, all the dark grains had to be steeped separately after I had gotten the first run off collected. I added a muslin bag with all my dark malts to the kettle with my first runnings to steep while I started the second mash for the smaller beer. I got busy with milling a few extra pounds of grain for this second run and went and just kicked the burner on full blast under my boil kettle. I forgot however that the bag of dark malts was still in the kettle. Luckily I went to stir it just before it got up to a boil. I just started thinking 'what the heck is this big thing at the bottom of my kettle?' and almost simultaneously answered, 'damn, the steeping grains are still in there!' I managed to pick the bag out and continue on without too much damage I hope, again.

Speaking of damage, I tried something I have not done since my first 2 batches. I used Coralville tap water for this batch. I will disclaim this however to say that I did boil it all first to drive off the chlorine in the water. I was worried about this enough already before I noticed a lot of precipitate falling out of the water and a bit of a hard water film that was formed by this. I decided to take Charlie Papazian's advice: Relax, don't worry, have a home brew. These are works to live by.

The boil for the big dark beer went very smoothly, and I got it started cooling with my immersion chiller as I tinkered around with my now re-stuck sparge on my second mash, so the porter was cooled to 80 degrees long before I was ready to mess with it. I put the second beer on to boil as I brought the first inside to transfer to it's fermenter. I set the kettle on the table with the carboy and funnel under the kettle's spigot, opened it up and just let it run while I went to check on the second batch on the deck. By the time I came back in the kettle was empty. I had forgotten the filter that goes into the funnel to keep all the hops and other debris from getting into the fermenter. I then had to sanitize a third fermenter and decant the five gallons off all this debris, losing about a half gallon of beer or so in the process.

The second beer's boil went better than the first even, and it was transferred to the fermenter with no issues. I did however manage to drop a hydrometer into the fermenter with the second beer, so there it will stay until the beer is done. Not a big issue, as I have a backup hydrometer, but it meant I could not shake it up to get a real good aeration on that one prior to pitching yeast. To make up for this I decided to do a quazi-open fermentation on both beers by just covering the mouth of the bottles with aluminum foil so air can move in and out, but particles won't fall in. This may end up being a mistake in itself, but so far so good. As a matter of fact, I checked them both tonight and I have a nice krausen (yeasty cake on top of the beer) on both beers.

Lots of lessons learned here, like using rice hulls if you even suspect that there may be a stuck sparge. I will say a 6 hour brew day for double the output was a very good benefit to the parti-gyle. A second beer from only 3 pound of additional grain was another huge benefit as well. I am very curious to see how these beers turn out. I am going to order an extra tag for my state fair entries just in case they do turn out good. Overall if I am doing a bigger beer, I think a parti-gyle would be a frugal opportunity for a second beer. It just takes more planning. Brew-in-a-bag still seems to be the way to go if I am just making a smaller non-lagers, for me at least.

Rye Porter:
OG:1.078
Grain/Extract/Sugar
12.00 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row)
1.00 lbs. Rye Malt
0.75 lbs. Crystal 20L
1.00 lbs. Flaked Rye
0.75 lbs. Special B Malt
2.00 lbs. Munich Malt(6-row)
0.50 lbs. Black Malt
0.50 lbs. Black Patent Malt

Hops

1.00 oz. Goldings - E.K. 5 min.
1.00 oz. Goldings - E.K. 40 min.
1.00 oz. Northern Brewer 60 min.

Rye Pale Ale
OG: 1.037

added 3 lbs Maris Otter

Hops

1.00 oz. Fuggle Pellet 4.00 3.3 5 min.
1.00 oz. Willamette Pellet 4.90 24.1 60 min.

For the Birds

It's been a crappy week or so. Instead of rehashing the crap I am going to do something completely different for this blog post.

We have a couple bird feeders out on the deck. Syd and I enjoy watching the birds that come into the yard. Lately Heidi has taken to trying to get good pictures of the birds at the bird feeder.

Below is a list of what we've seen in the yard so far this year:

Mourning Dove, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Hairy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Pileated Woodpecker, Blue Jay, American Crow, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, American Robin, Cedar Waxwing, House Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, Northern Cardinal, Indigo Bunting, Common Grackle, House Finch, American Goldfinch

Those are the ones that are around often enough to identify. The cardinals and the goldfinches are the most numerous at the feeders, but the house finches are starting to come around more and more. The indigo bunting and northern flicker are the most striking and most rare. We switched out our birdseed so the damn flying rats (otherwise known as house sparrows) would not come around anymore.

There is something very relaxing about coming home, putting my feet up as I sit down with a homebrew and watch and listen to the birds. In fact I think that is how I will spend as much of this rainy day off as possible.

ttfn

For Boston

Good job to the Celts, now lets just have the Bruins finish off the Flyers!




For Boston, for Boston,
we sing our proud refrain
for Boston, for Boston
'tis wisdom's earthly fane
for here are all one
and our hearts are true
and the towers on the heights
reach the heavens own blue.
for Boston, for Boston
'til the echoes ring again

For Boston, for Boston
thy glory is our own
for Boston, for Boston
'tis here that truth is known
and ever with a right
shall our heirs be found
'til time shall be no more
and thy work is crowned
for Boston, for Boston
thy glory is our own

Suggestions for the New Brewer

I recently was asked for some advice about starting brewing so I figured I would post it here for future reference.

In my opinion the best book period for starting out is The Complete Joy of Homebrewing (third edition) by Charlie Papazian. He has a really relaxed point of view and walks you through everything from step one. This is where I learned the basics.

For a more scientific approach there is How to Brew by John Palmer. The first edition of his book is online for free at howtobrew.com

Next up is Basicbrewing.com. They have a ton of audio and video podcasts for free about different aspects of brewing. They also sell an introductory video that is okay.

As far as suppliers, if you have a local homebrew shop, I strongly suggest you support them if you need to buy stuff. (Look at http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/directories/find-a-supply-shop for what shops are in your state.) You can start off cheap by using bucket fermenters and enamel pots if you don't have anything you can use already. Both of the books above will help you figure out what you need. If you do not have a local shop, northernbrewer.com has flat rate shipping for most non bulky items. Midwestsupplies.com has good prices but no flat rate shipping. Finally morebeer.com is pretty good as well.

My suggestion is to start off with an extract kit for a beer style you like (make an ale though and stay away from lagers at first) and see how that goes. Two other tips: be patient and cool your wort down to at least 70F if not 65F before adding the yeast, and have a way to keep your fermenter from getting too warm or cold, keep it around 65-70.

one last link -  http://www.homebrewfinds.com/ a great site for finding bargains.

Hopefully that gives you a good jumping off point.

Oatmeal Cookie... Beer

Heidi has been asking about an oatmeal cookie beer ever since we heard about one on a podcast. Today I got around to making this one for her, not that she will end up drinking much of it, LOL.

In order to brew this up though I had to get the blonde ale off the cal ale yeast in the fermenter. At 8:30 this morning I started bottling up that batch. I was very pleased with how my sample tasted. I ended up with 52 bottles of 5% ABV blond ale and a very nice cake of yeast.

I had done a little research, formulated a recipe and then figured out workarounds for what I had onhand. So I came up with this recipe:

7# Maris Otter
.5# Crystal 90
.5# Special B
.5# Biscuit Malt
1# Rolled Oats toasted at 300F
1# Brown Sugar

.5 oz Spalt
.25 oz Perle

I was going to do a traditional mash for this one. Once I looked at how fine my grind was, I was worried about getting a stuck sparge though, so I broke out my brewing bag and did a brew in a bag session.

I must be getting better at this because I got around 85% efficiency this time from my mash. I did go lower with the temperature and tried to mash between 150F and 153F. I don't know my exact temp though because I have broken my good thermometer.

Everything was going good until about half way through the mash. This is when I realized I had not bought any hops for this brew. I started rummaging through my brew box and found the hops I listed above. They are left over from the hefeweisen I brewed, last summer that is. I am not looking for a lot of hops character, just a little bittering, so hopefully it will work out well. It tasted pretty good before I pitched the yeast. I was originally at 1.060 so I added some water to bring the OG down to 1.054. After I pitched the yeast slurry it was 1.050. I hope the lower temperature will make this ferment out a bit more than my last two brews did.

It was a very good day. I started at 8:30 bottling and finished cleaning everything up at 15:00. That makes it only 6.5 hours for everything and about 3/4 the time it normally takes me to do both operations. Yehaw.