As much as I really enjoy living in my little town on the Eastern Shore, I do miss the beer culture of a city. It's not that there aren't great cities with great beer cultures nearby, but most of the things I'm interested in--mostly homebrewing club meetings, seem to take place on a weekday night when a three hour round trip won't really work for me. So I was THRILLED when I saw a guy post a sensory evaluation session on a WEEKEND when I didn't have any real plans. I dropped the guy a line a few weeks ahead of time, got a seat, and was ready for a road trip today.
If you're not familiar with a sensory evaluation, it's a bit of a tune up for your palate. When you taste a beer, it's almost always an amalgam of flavors, yeast, hops, malt, process all mixed up and hard to untangle. So a sensory evaluation is a series of concentrated flavors added to nearly-flavorless beer (miller high life light, in this case) that highlights the flavor in question. You get the flavor by itself, in isolation, and writ very large. That way, you're better able to recognize the flavor in a more complex beer. It's a bit like hearing a symphony and being told there's a oboe involved, but you don't know what an oboe is so you can't pick it out. But then you hear the oboe solo, and you can't help but hear the oboe for the rest of the piece. It's been more than six years since I've done a sensory evaluation, so it was about time for a tune-up.
Unfortunately, it's especially useful for off-flavors...flavors that aren't supposed to be in the beer in the first place, often because they are awful. Some of those flavors are appropriate in some beers, but some are inappropriate in any situation except black-site interrogations that shouldn't be allowed at all.
Being a huge dork, I brought a notebook, and thought I'd expand on the entries while it's still fresh. One interesting thing to me is that some flavors are highly objectionable to some people, while other people barely notice it, or even enjoy it.
Grainy - This is essentially excess tannins, usually from oversparging. There's not really an aroma, or even a flavor, component to this, but you do end up with the drying sensation you get from overbrewed tea on your tongue and the inside of your cheeks. I have definitely had this in a few beers, most notably in some beers I've made with second runnings off the mash from a high-gravity beer. I remember this over-brewed tea character made those beers seem drier than they would have been, and thinking it wasn't totally unpleasant. This was very different from my reaction to....
Papery - This is the wet-cardboard flavor from an oxidized/stale beer. For me, nothing was worse than this flavor. According to our flavor guide, this was supposed to be similar to grainy, but I had diametrically-opposed reactions. My stomach did a backflip just smelling this one, something that didn't even happen for the infamous baby-vomit (see below).
Earthy - You ever get some garden soil in your mouth? That's pretty much what this tasted like. No real aroma here, but the flavor is soil, worm castings, beets, fresh bag of compost, etc. I can see this being an attribute to some beer, but not at this concentration. Usually the result of overly mineral brewing water.
Metallic - About what it sounds like and usually resulting from too much iron in your water, not passivating your stainless brewing gear, and other situations where you've basically managed to get rust in your beer. On tasting, my thought was to decide whether this reminded me more of drinking blood or licking a nail...not my favorite flavor.
Lactic Acid - This was pretty straight forward. Lactic acid is produced by a number of bacteria, known as LAB (get it?) and, interestingly, by certain yeast strains (previously a controversial statement, but now pretty much confirmed?). In any event, at first it's not bad--like lemon juice, but there's a sour milk flavor that I find really unpleasant in this situation. That's interesting to me because 1) I actually like a number of beers produced with LAB and 2) I drink buttermilk straight. Clearly, I don't usually mind lactic acid, but there was an afternote here that turned my stomach.
Acetaldehyde - The classic "green" beer, apple jolly rancher flavor of a fermentation that hasn't been allowed to complete and/or stressed yeast. I feel like I taste this in Budweiser. Not the most objectionable flavor here, but unpleasant and, apparently, a potent carcinogen. Wish I'd heard that last bit before drinking most of my sample.
Dimethyl Sulfide (DMS) - The product of beers made from low-kilned malt that have either 1) not been boiled properly or 2) not been cooled quickly enough. Lots has been written about how it's produced and how to avoid it, but the interesting thing to me is that I don't experience the creamed/canned corn flavor that a lot of folks got. To me, it tasted like the air in a house where cabbage was cooked the day before, or a beer made with a portion of water from cooked cabbage.
Diacetyl - Accent on the "ass." This is the buttery compound that's important, in small amounts, to some style, but was extremely unpleasant at this concentration. Several yeasts/processes result in the yeast dropping out before they can process this, and so the way to cure is to raise the temperature at the end of such fermentations for a few days to keep the yeast active until the beer is clear. At one point, early in my brewing career, I was in the habit of brewing stouts and porters without this step, and I actually enjoy a bit of buttery in the nose. But, again, it wasn't fun at this concentration.
Combined lactic acid with Diacetyl - I think of this flavor as "there's nothing wrong with our tap lines, dude." Gross.
Spicy - This was a subtle, palate cleanser of a flavor. Described as clovey, I thought of it as one of the main components of some saison yeasts. This is definitely one of those off-flavor-in-some-but-not-in-others flavors. Things got worse from here.
Cheesy - This is the flavor of old, degraded hops. Smelled like a ripe cheese. Not the end of the world on a cracker, but unpleasant in Miller High Life.
Light Struck - Skunk. And strong, too. This is the reason beer bottles are brown (or should be). But, it's also the flavor a hoppy lager gets pretty much the moment you take it out to sit in a sunny biergarden (or your back yard). This one is bad in a beer out of the tap, but I can't help but have positive feelings about it, as it reminds me so much of days when I had the time and money to hang out in the sun with a beer.
Butyric Acid - Awful. Baby vomit. Breast milk, digested for 20 minutes, and then projectile-vomited across the room by an infant with a fever. Enteric bacteria, inappropriate in most styles, but an important precursor compound to some fruity esters in lambics, apparently. You learn something every day. Only Papery was worse than this, though.
Mercaptan - Another infection flavor. This one smells like the end of a shift working at a dive bar as a prep cook. The smell of trash liners and the juice at the bottom of the cans. Still not as bad as baby vomit or Papery, but pretty bad.
Sunday, September 30, 2018
Friday, September 28, 2018
I'll be derned
Looks like my old beer blog is still out there.
I've imported those old posts, although I'll need to update the links at some point.
I've imported those old posts, although I'll need to update the links at some point.
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Playing with Beersmith: House APA
I'm playing around with the ability to share recipes from Beersmith (2.0...haven't upgraded to the new version).
Here's what's on deck for the next brew day. Mostly. I'll probably fool around with it a bit and move all but the bittering charge to a post-boil hop stand. In any event, not thrilled with that ingredient-table formatting, but life is short.
BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: House Pale Ale (1.1)
Brewer: Ekspert Amator
Asst Brewer:
Style: American Pale Ale
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0)
Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 7.77 gal
Post Boil Volume: 6.77 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.50 gal
Bottling Volume: 5.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.051 SG
Estimated Color: 6.5 SRM
Estimated IBU: 44.4 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 70.9 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes
Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
5.00 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 mins Water Agent 1 -
2.00 g Calcium Chloride (Mash 60.0 mins) Water Agent 2 -
0.55 Items Camden Tablet (Mash 60.0 mins) Water Agent 3 -
11 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 4 84.6 %
1 lbs Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 5 7.7 %
1 lbs Victory Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 6 7.7 %
14 g Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 7 10.4 IBUs
14 g Chinook [13.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 8 24.6 IBUs
0.50 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 9 -
14 g Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 10 2.8 IBUs
14 g Chinook [13.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 11 6.6 IBUs
28 g Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 0.0 min Hop 12 0.0 IBUs
28 g Chinook [13.00 %] - Boil 0.0 min Hop 13 0.0 IBUs
1.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05) Yeast 14 -
Mash Schedule: BIAB, Light Body
Total Grain Weight: 13 lbs
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Saccharification Add 8.7 gal of water at 154.6 F 147.9 F 90 min
Mash Out Heat to 168.0 F over 7 min 168.0 F 10 min
Sparge: If steeping, remove grains, and prepare to boil wort
Notes:
------
Created with BeerSmith 2 - http://www.beersmith.com
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Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Update on the Sessionfest
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| Clean beer, dirty glass. |
It's actually not that bad. In fact, it's excellent and I'd be thrilled to have brewed it if this was the style I was aiming for. It's also an amazing proof of concept beer, as it's the first lager I've ever made, and I did it using somewhat quick-production techniques, and using a dry yeast (34/70, the Weihenstephan lager strain).
One thing I'd like this blog to be is a tasting/brewing log. I've got a fair number of notes in Beersmith and one or two composition books (including one with notes back to 2004!), but I'd like to do a better job of tracking my beer or my brewing over time.
It turned out pretty amazing for something I wasn't trying to brew.
Appearance - Delightfully clear. If it weren't such a deep amber color, it would be pretty easy to read a paper through this (I may need to work on my photography, as that's not showing in the picture here). Pours with a thick, off-white head that sticks around (at least in a clean glass), and leaves nice lacing down the glass as you drink it.
Aroma - Very clean, lager-like aroma, with a touch of yeasty, maybe apple aroma that may be the slightest touch of acetaldehyde, but it's hard to tell. .
Taste - Again, quite clean, very malty, just bitter enough to balance the malt and with no appreciable hop character (unless you take it into the sun, in which case you get the classic green-bottle, sun-struck taste pretty quickly--not going to lie, I kind of like that flavor when it's fresh and limited). The slight yeasty flavor is at the back, and with the malt gives this just a hint of fresh dough. The munich malt comes through on the aftertaste with flavors like dark toast.
Mouthfeel - Nice and full when properly carbonated. I let it get a bit too spritzy at one point, and it thinned out and became surprisingly tannic and drying, with the hop bitterness coming through more. It's nicer at a lower carbonation level, when it smooths out and has a surprisingly satisfying mouthfeel.
Notes - Overall, I'm as pleased as I could be for what amounts to a mistake. If I were aiming for a sessionable amber lager, I think there is room for improvement. I purposely left out any flavor or aroma additions when I was aiming for an oktoberfest, but as a sessionfest I think this would be better a bit more bitter and with some subtle noble hop character. I might also focus on getting a bit more dry, perhaps by adding more gypsum (there's a fair amount of calcium chloride in the brewing liquor this time). While I'm thrilled with it as a first attempt, the full mouthfeel (and finishing gravity) for such a small beer, coupled with the yeasty, just-ever-so-slightly apple flavor, makes me think the yeast may have dropped out too early.
More efficiency navel-gazing
Two weekends ago, I brewed again on the old BIAB setup with a few changes to see if I could brew predictably.
I started with a recipe from Michael Dawson's excellent book Mashmaker (signed copy not required, but highly recommended...it doesn't cost any more!) for a Ryed Irish Stout. It's a classic dry Irish Stout with the flaked barley replaced with flaked rye. The resulting brew day is pretty amazing on the aromatic front.
The changes I made included actually measuring my volumes (nice), and aiming for 60% efficiency on a smaller (5.5 gallons vs. 6 gallons into the fermentor) batch, as well as a number of other extract-centered tricks I had up my sleeve.
The good news is that I totally hit my numbers. The bad news is that it required using a famously-high-extract malt, a 90-minute mash with a mash out step, and a partial sparge step wherein I moved the back to another kettle with a colander inside. I also had to bring the mash back up to temp at about 40 minutes.
While I would be happy with the 62.4% efficiency I measured on this brew day, the whole point of BIAB simplicity is defeated when you have to have a second vessel for sparging and spend significant portions of the brew day raising the temp and stirring constantly to avoid melting the bag. I'm definitely switching back to a cooler MLT. In my last cooler MLT setup, I routinely hit 70% batch sparging and never lost more than 5 degrees over an hour (and that outside in winter). Raising the temp is as easy as adding boiling water or pulling a decoction (which, really, is easy on a homebrew scale). As a bonus, I never had to pull the entire dripping, 170 degree grain bill out of a kettle and cover my arms in near-boiling wort.
I am looking forward to this beer, though.
Friday, September 14, 2018
A Follow Up on Efficiency
Following up on my last post, some new kegs arrived yesterday, so I spent my evening doing some housecleaning, including kegging up my Oktoberfest. Welp, in addition to the nearly 2 gallons of wort I had left in the kettle, I ended up with nearly a gallon after topping up the keg! In summary, watered a recipe aiming to make 5 gallons of beer down to nearly 8. Based on the gravity measurements, the beer I made is approximately 3.5% abv, so I'm calling it a Sessionfest. Although it tastes amazing, I would have preferred to make the beer I was aiming for.
I'm a little concerned about the finishing gravity of 1.012. I would have been happy at that FG if I'd hit my original gravity, but that seems high in such a small beer. I'm pleased to have it on one level, because the beer is not watery. But I'd like to make sure I'm doing my part to give the yeast a fermentable wort, as I generally prefer a dry finish.
This leads me to another thread in my investigation into efficiency, with is temperature control during the mash. I've been using the thermometer on my kettle, which I long ago melted during a vigorous boil. It's also cracked and dented and has a very short probe, so I'm thinking I'll retire it, and stick with a handheld instant read (which I'll need if/when I switch back to a cooler MLT anyway. I'd love to have one of those fancy, $100 thermapens, but that's awfully hard to justify in a world where I can pick up a pretty decent instant-read thermometer for $10. After reading this review, I picked up a Lavatools Javelin for around $25. I like the idea of something that has 90% of the functionality at 25% of the cost. In any event, it's a lot nicer than the $5 meat thermometer that I used to use, which worked perfectly well excepting that it would literally fall apart if you held it too tightly.
UPDATE 9/25/2018: There's nothing wrong with either thermometer. Despite being melted and cracked, the kettle thermometer gave me the same temps as my new Javelin (to the extent you can read it through the scorched, crazed, and bubble-filled melted plastic lens). Given how hard it is to read the kettle thermometer, I ended up using the handheld more often.
 |
| May be time to put the old girl out to pasture. |
This leads me to another thread in my investigation into efficiency, with is temperature control during the mash. I've been using the thermometer on my kettle, which I long ago melted during a vigorous boil. It's also cracked and dented and has a very short probe, so I'm thinking I'll retire it, and stick with a handheld instant read (which I'll need if/when I switch back to a cooler MLT anyway. I'd love to have one of those fancy, $100 thermapens, but that's awfully hard to justify in a world where I can pick up a pretty decent instant-read thermometer for $10. After reading this review, I picked up a Lavatools Javelin for around $25. I like the idea of something that has 90% of the functionality at 25% of the cost. In any event, it's a lot nicer than the $5 meat thermometer that I used to use, which worked perfectly well excepting that it would literally fall apart if you held it too tightly.
UPDATE 9/25/2018: There's nothing wrong with either thermometer. Despite being melted and cracked, the kettle thermometer gave me the same temps as my new Javelin (to the extent you can read it through the scorched, crazed, and bubble-filled melted plastic lens). Given how hard it is to read the kettle thermometer, I ended up using the handheld more often.
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
How do it know?
"How do it know?"
A great question, asked often by, between, and amongst my in-laws, usually in response to some amazing mechanism or process with good results. I can't tell if these normally grammatical folks are making fun of their shore-born ancestors or reveling in a shared wonder with their roots.
But for me, I'm asking the question to make a point, mostly to myself, about some of my assumptions. In my last post, I bemoaned my poor efficiency in brewing lately. But even while doing so, I understood that I was making an error.
You see, I have assumed that my efficiency has been in the low 50% range, but I don't really know. That's because I haven't really had a way of measuring out strike water. I got really good at eyeballing strike water in my old system, such that I managed to hit my original gravities and in-the-fermentor volumes, but that skill has left me as I've adopted my new BIAB regime. I've tried using a bucket with gallon marks, but it's become very clear indeed that the marks on that bucket are more guidelines than accurate representations of the amount of water in the bucket. As a result, in the last two batches alone, I've ended up both with an extra two gallons (I think. probably. It looked about like two gallons) of wort after overfilling my fermenter (no wonder my gravity was a bit low) AND having a batch that put only about 4 gallons (again, probably) of beer into the fermenter.
Clearly, I'm not doing a great job of measuring my strike water. It's entirely possible, at least in that batch of watered down...well...I guess it's a session-strength Oktoberfest now...that I got amazing efficiency, but just made too much beer with too little grain.
To combat this, I've acid etched the inside of my brew kettle. This was a cool process that involved weighing out gallons of water, marking off the top of each gallon (15 times), and then using the magic of chemistry to dissolve just enough surface steel to make a pretty mark. It's not as nice as some I've seen, but I am more than pleased with the result.
Generally, volumetric marks etched on the inside of a kettle is a pretty high-end feature, so I'm especially pleased given that I did this with some electrical tape, q-tips, a 9-volt battery, and a bowl of salted vinegar. I found the technique in an online forum, where I was searching for some alternative to the stick-with-gallon-marks-cut-in-the-side method, which works for plenty of folks, but lacks the Mr. Wizard joy of inhaling vaporized chromium (probably not enough to be a problem, right?).
 |
| Beats eyeballing it. |
But for me, I'm asking the question to make a point, mostly to myself, about some of my assumptions. In my last post, I bemoaned my poor efficiency in brewing lately. But even while doing so, I understood that I was making an error.
You see, I have assumed that my efficiency has been in the low 50% range, but I don't really know. That's because I haven't really had a way of measuring out strike water. I got really good at eyeballing strike water in my old system, such that I managed to hit my original gravities and in-the-fermentor volumes, but that skill has left me as I've adopted my new BIAB regime. I've tried using a bucket with gallon marks, but it's become very clear indeed that the marks on that bucket are more guidelines than accurate representations of the amount of water in the bucket. As a result, in the last two batches alone, I've ended up both with an extra two gallons (I think. probably. It looked about like two gallons) of wort after overfilling my fermenter (no wonder my gravity was a bit low) AND having a batch that put only about 4 gallons (again, probably) of beer into the fermenter.
 |
| High-tech acid-etching kit. |
To combat this, I've acid etched the inside of my brew kettle. This was a cool process that involved weighing out gallons of water, marking off the top of each gallon (15 times), and then using the magic of chemistry to dissolve just enough surface steel to make a pretty mark. It's not as nice as some I've seen, but I am more than pleased with the result.
Generally, volumetric marks etched on the inside of a kettle is a pretty high-end feature, so I'm especially pleased given that I did this with some electrical tape, q-tips, a 9-volt battery, and a bowl of salted vinegar. I found the technique in an online forum, where I was searching for some alternative to the stick-with-gallon-marks-cut-in-the-side method, which works for plenty of folks, but lacks the Mr. Wizard joy of inhaling vaporized chromium (probably not enough to be a problem, right?).
Monday, September 10, 2018
System choices
Right now, I'm brewing beer via BIAB (that's "brew in a bag") mashing in a 15-gallon kettle. I'm doing 5 gallon batches and there isn't much that's ideal about the system except that BIAB is much, much (much) easier to clean up than having a dedicated mash/lauter tun (that's an MLT, btw). The kettle is a holdover from a larger system I used to brew 10-12 gallon batches, but most of that system is gone (given away before a big move) and it was actually a bit broader and shorter than was ideal, even for a 10-gallon batch, so it's positively wide for a 5-gallon batch. Not the end of the world, but I end up with higher boil-off rates than are ideal, and I've had one or two beers with what seem like excessive melanoidin (burned toast) character that may not entirely be the result of the grain bill.
I'm very excited to be making beer again, and I've fallen in love with the time efficiency of a 5-gallon BIAB batch. That said, I've not been thrilled with the low efficiencies (low 50%ish) I've gotten doing BIAB batches, so I'd like to move back to having an MLT, and batch sparging. I get that a lot of people like mashing in a kettle so they can goose the temps, but in my experience with a cooler-based MLT (using one of those fancy keeps-ice-for-five-days coolers), losing temp was never an issue in the first place. Step mashing is fun in a kettle-based MLT, but why not go full-German and do a decoction if you want to step mash?
So, I'm at a crossroads where I want to expand back into multi-vessel brewing, but I'm not sure where to go. Do I double down on BIAB by getting a grain mill and a nicer bag, spending my energy on chasing down efficiency with tighter milling and control? Do I go back to a variation on my old system, but with a smaller cooler, given that I plan to stick with 5-gallon batches? Use my current kettle as the hot liquor tank on a full-on three-vessel system? Do I stick with only 5-gallon batches, or size equipment to give me the option for 10-gallon batches? Bite the bullet and get another boil kettle more appropriate to brewing?
I think it really boils down to the two paths I see folks taking most:
First and most-common (or most-commonly bragged about in online forums) is the brewer who steadily expands his brewing setup through acquisition of ever larger and shiner kettles until they've replaced their living room with a single-tier all-electric HERMS system, brewing 1bbl batches fermented in a row of stainless-steel conicals sited where the couch used to be. These guys spend more money than I'd spend on a car on their gear, but they do have systems that let them brew easily (my back was always in a bad way after a big batch...there's something to having a pump over using buckets when you're moving 100 lbs of near-boiling fluid).
Second, are the guys like Don Osborn or Denny Conn, who brew constantly over the decades using the same mash tun and turkey-fryer kettle, winning awards for beers fermented in plastic buckets in the coldest closets available. These guys still expand their systems (I see DonO is using a stainless kettle these days), but tend to spend most of their time/money on ingredients and actually brewing.
I think I like the second path, especially if there's room there for an erlenmyer flask or two, but it wouldn't hurt to take note from the first path and choose items that make a brew day easier on the body where it counts.
I hope no one was expecting an answer to this tonight.
I'm very excited to be making beer again, and I've fallen in love with the time efficiency of a 5-gallon BIAB batch. That said, I've not been thrilled with the low efficiencies (low 50%ish) I've gotten doing BIAB batches, so I'd like to move back to having an MLT, and batch sparging. I get that a lot of people like mashing in a kettle so they can goose the temps, but in my experience with a cooler-based MLT (using one of those fancy keeps-ice-for-five-days coolers), losing temp was never an issue in the first place. Step mashing is fun in a kettle-based MLT, but why not go full-German and do a decoction if you want to step mash?
So, I'm at a crossroads where I want to expand back into multi-vessel brewing, but I'm not sure where to go. Do I double down on BIAB by getting a grain mill and a nicer bag, spending my energy on chasing down efficiency with tighter milling and control? Do I go back to a variation on my old system, but with a smaller cooler, given that I plan to stick with 5-gallon batches? Use my current kettle as the hot liquor tank on a full-on three-vessel system? Do I stick with only 5-gallon batches, or size equipment to give me the option for 10-gallon batches? Bite the bullet and get another boil kettle more appropriate to brewing?
I think it really boils down to the two paths I see folks taking most:
First and most-common (or most-commonly bragged about in online forums) is the brewer who steadily expands his brewing setup through acquisition of ever larger and shiner kettles until they've replaced their living room with a single-tier all-electric HERMS system, brewing 1bbl batches fermented in a row of stainless-steel conicals sited where the couch used to be. These guys spend more money than I'd spend on a car on their gear, but they do have systems that let them brew easily (my back was always in a bad way after a big batch...there's something to having a pump over using buckets when you're moving 100 lbs of near-boiling fluid).
Second, are the guys like Don Osborn or Denny Conn, who brew constantly over the decades using the same mash tun and turkey-fryer kettle, winning awards for beers fermented in plastic buckets in the coldest closets available. These guys still expand their systems (I see DonO is using a stainless kettle these days), but tend to spend most of their time/money on ingredients and actually brewing.
I think I like the second path, especially if there's room there for an erlenmyer flask or two, but it wouldn't hurt to take note from the first path and choose items that make a brew day easier on the body where it counts.
I hope no one was expecting an answer to this tonight.
Saturday, September 8, 2018
Dropped a 350 lb man on my face last Tuesday
Actually, it was a bit more like he was doing a belly flop with me as the pool. My nose and general maxillary region are still pretty tender, but not bad for going up against a guy nearly twice my size. Funny, a couple of months ago I was the big guy on the mats. Now it's Land of the Giants. I'm loving it.
Not sure why I enjoy this hobby so much. It's obvious looking around the gym that Jiu Jitsu brings out the weirdos--good thing there aren't any mirrors around when I'm making that observation.
Not sure why I enjoy this hobby so much. It's obvious looking around the gym that Jiu Jitsu brings out the weirdos--good thing there aren't any mirrors around when I'm making that observation.
Repurposing: Brew blog and whatever else
Thought I'd take a trip back through memory lane to when I first started brewing.
The first batch of beer I ever brewed was not strictly legal. It was actually fairly illegal.
At the end of prohibition, Congress failed to re-legalize what had been standard cottage economic practice since the domestication of wild grasses into the grains we know today: the home-brewing of beer. In 1978, Jimmy Carter signed the federal law allowing the brewing of 100 gallons of beer per adult (up to 200 gallons per household) per year, which went into effect in 1979.
Of course, our federal system also gives the states a say, and Mississippi, where I brewed my first batch in 1998, would not legalize the brewing of beer until 2013, and I'm pretty sure the county (and definitely the campus dormitory) where I brewed that 5-gallon batch of English stout, is still dry. Luckily, I was the RA on that hall, so I didn't have any issues with the authorities, and the ingredients were all perfectly legal in the US Mail.
I was 19, with limited experience of beer, so those 2 cases of (I'm sure) under attenuated stout were formative to my love of beer. I still love darker beers and the malty, yeast-driven side of the craft (it was Wyeast 1084, fermented in the low 70s, so the fruit was with me). I worked my way through a bottle or two every other night or so, sharing with friends (most of whom would "enjoy" one bottle and then switch to something more conventional or just stronger). I practically wallowed in the experience, but being extremely poor and itinerate meant that I didn't brew again for a while (there may have been an apple juice, white sugar, and bread yeast experiment in there that...well, it worked).
I first got "serious" about brewing was while living in Texas, two degrees later. This time, it was legal and there was even a local home brew shop (a LHBS, in the argot of the subculture). I lived by myself, with my future wife back up in Maryland, so I spent my spare time baking bread, working on my crockpot recipes, and brewing some not-totally-horrible beer.
Since that first dorm-room stout, I'd gotten a Master's degree while living in South Yorkshire. I was less poor during that degree, and spent some time hanging out in pubs. I usually drank the cheap stuff, but that meant bitter, mostly, which was "beer." What American's think of as beer was "lager," and even the most-globalized of pubs still had a "beer" tap (Young's, I think, but I'm not sure UPDATE: I spotted a fat man in a riding outfit on Ron Pattinson's excellent blog, and I'm fairly certain the dominant beer was Tetley's) next to the stella and budweiser. I had a roomate who was a member of CAMRA and he dragged me to a number of pubs where I had my first Real Ale out of a cask. This was the gentleman who let me know I was lucky that our local catered to an older, ale-centric crowd of working folks (reversing the student-pub ratio, with multiple ale selections with only one lager tap). I also met a fellow student from Quebec, who was in love with Belgian beers, especially wit biers, maybe after being introduced by Unibroue back home?.
So, when I started brewing again in Texas, it was with a lot more experience of what I wanted to brew (rather than just the thrill of being able to produce something I wasn't supposed to have). I still have my notebook from that time, complete with tipsy reminder on the front that "Yeast and pigs are proof that God loves us." The notes are for mostly malt-and-yeast-driven English beers that I brewed, along with plans for some Belgian styles that I never got around to. This phase continued when I moved back to Maryland and got married and then followed me to my first year of law school, when I lived in an older house with a basement. I did a lot of experimentation, especially adding fruit to beers, and even having the time to painstakingly design labels (!) for my beers. That seems pretty crazy right now, but I have the image files, and some of them are pretty good.
But all good things come to an end, and the increasing demands of the law and the arrival of my first child pushed brewing good beer off the top of the priority list. I still enjoyed drinking good beer, but it wasn't until my youngest hit the magical age of 4 and a half, when some switch flipped from having a toddler (aka, suicide machine) to a charming small child that I thought about brewing again. And this time, I had resources. I might write about that at some point, too.
The first batch of beer I ever brewed was not strictly legal. It was actually fairly illegal.
At the end of prohibition, Congress failed to re-legalize what had been standard cottage economic practice since the domestication of wild grasses into the grains we know today: the home-brewing of beer. In 1978, Jimmy Carter signed the federal law allowing the brewing of 100 gallons of beer per adult (up to 200 gallons per household) per year, which went into effect in 1979.
Of course, our federal system also gives the states a say, and Mississippi, where I brewed my first batch in 1998, would not legalize the brewing of beer until 2013, and I'm pretty sure the county (and definitely the campus dormitory) where I brewed that 5-gallon batch of English stout, is still dry. Luckily, I was the RA on that hall, so I didn't have any issues with the authorities, and the ingredients were all perfectly legal in the US Mail.
I was 19, with limited experience of beer, so those 2 cases of (I'm sure) under attenuated stout were formative to my love of beer. I still love darker beers and the malty, yeast-driven side of the craft (it was Wyeast 1084, fermented in the low 70s, so the fruit was with me). I worked my way through a bottle or two every other night or so, sharing with friends (most of whom would "enjoy" one bottle and then switch to something more conventional or just stronger). I practically wallowed in the experience, but being extremely poor and itinerate meant that I didn't brew again for a while (there may have been an apple juice, white sugar, and bread yeast experiment in there that...well, it worked).
I first got "serious" about brewing was while living in Texas, two degrees later. This time, it was legal and there was even a local home brew shop (a LHBS, in the argot of the subculture). I lived by myself, with my future wife back up in Maryland, so I spent my spare time baking bread, working on my crockpot recipes, and brewing some not-totally-horrible beer.
Since that first dorm-room stout, I'd gotten a Master's degree while living in South Yorkshire. I was less poor during that degree, and spent some time hanging out in pubs. I usually drank the cheap stuff, but that meant bitter, mostly, which was "beer." What American's think of as beer was "lager," and even the most-globalized of pubs still had a "beer" tap (Young's, I think, but I'm not sure UPDATE: I spotted a fat man in a riding outfit on Ron Pattinson's excellent blog, and I'm fairly certain the dominant beer was Tetley's) next to the stella and budweiser. I had a roomate who was a member of CAMRA and he dragged me to a number of pubs where I had my first Real Ale out of a cask. This was the gentleman who let me know I was lucky that our local catered to an older, ale-centric crowd of working folks (reversing the student-pub ratio, with multiple ale selections with only one lager tap). I also met a fellow student from Quebec, who was in love with Belgian beers, especially wit biers, maybe after being introduced by Unibroue back home?.
So, when I started brewing again in Texas, it was with a lot more experience of what I wanted to brew (rather than just the thrill of being able to produce something I wasn't supposed to have). I still have my notebook from that time, complete with tipsy reminder on the front that "Yeast and pigs are proof that God loves us." The notes are for mostly malt-and-yeast-driven English beers that I brewed, along with plans for some Belgian styles that I never got around to. This phase continued when I moved back to Maryland and got married and then followed me to my first year of law school, when I lived in an older house with a basement. I did a lot of experimentation, especially adding fruit to beers, and even having the time to painstakingly design labels (!) for my beers. That seems pretty crazy right now, but I have the image files, and some of them are pretty good.
But all good things come to an end, and the increasing demands of the law and the arrival of my first child pushed brewing good beer off the top of the priority list. I still enjoyed drinking good beer, but it wasn't until my youngest hit the magical age of 4 and a half, when some switch flipped from having a toddler (aka, suicide machine) to a charming small child that I thought about brewing again. And this time, I had resources. I might write about that at some point, too.
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