Michaewa

I’m sure I’ll be back in the states from time to time, but some things are just too good to pass up.

Yesterday I jumped back in the ring, deciding that waiting for my kettle was simply not a possibility any longer. I had a throwback of a brewday, going back to basics and doing most everything the way I did on my very first batch. I’ll be interested to see how it turns out with the relatively simplified process.

I used an aluminum kettle and had enough room for about 3.5 gal initially - I didn’t steep any specialty grains so I boiled the water on my turkey fryer setup and stirred in about 1/2 of the extract. This is on some recent reading and listening I’ve done. The boil proceeded as normal until about 15 minutes left, when I turned off the burner, and stirred in the balance of the extract. The theory here is to keep the wort close to OG during most of the boil to avoid scorching and darkening of the extract.

On to the big bucket o’ ice, and I chilled the wort down to 80F in about 20 minutes by swirling the pot around (lid on) in the bath pretty frequently. Added a few gallons of filtered water to get to 5.5 gal, and pitched a starter (1 pint of water / 1/2 C of DME / yeast vial) made the day before. Fermentation looked to be starting up by the time I was getting ready for bed. The picture above is at about 15 hours after pitching. The only ‘modern’ device I used was my oxygen stone, I hit it with about a minute and a half of oxygen after pitching.

Plan is to secondary in one of my new corny kegs, and see if I’m feeling inspired enough to move to a serving keg or just go from the 2ndary. More likely the latter.

The recipe was very simple:
7lbs Pale Liquid Malt Extract
2/3 oz Centennial pellets (60 min)
1/2 oz Centennial pellets (5 min)
WL California Ale yeast (WLP001)

Swapped out my empty CO2 tank yesterday at a welding supply shop. I was a little nervous after reading that some others had been denied filling / exchange service because their tank was stamped ‘Pepsi’ or similar. Mine, of course, was - but the guy either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

I also recently gained access to the inner workings of my kegs, which at least for me, was a little challenging. They have a wide variety of fittings, so I ended up having to buy three different deep sockets to go on my new socket wrench in order to get them open. Cleaned them up inside and out, and had one earmarked for a batch of Champagne that I started up on New Years Day this year.

Last night I thought it would be a fairly quick process to keg it, but as per usual, it was a bit of a struggle. The first problem was my ignorance about the regulator. The first few times I tried to hook it up I was met with a blast of CO2 when I opened the tank valve. Finally I got the ‘quick’ disconnects on the keg posts, and ran some sanitizing solution through the cobra tap on the out side.

Partway through this process, a hose blasts free from the regulator and does a stunning impersonation of a snake charmer snake on methamphetamines. I managed to turn off the gas without losing an eye, and called the sanitizing process good.

Then getting the disconnects off took at least an hour and the majority of the skin from my hands and knuckles. I think that at some point the gas and liquid posts got reversed, and the disconnects must be slightly different sizes - in any case neither would come off without herculean effort and no small amount of damage to the disconnects themselves.

At the end of the day I wound up with one keg full of champagne that will be primed naturally (assuming, of course that the seals on the keg hold) and we’ll find out several months from now if it is even possible to serve champagne from a keg (obvious violations of social norms aside).

The other project was the building of a counterflow chiller, as per the design in the Jan / Feb 06 issue of Brew Your Own. The 1/2″ threaded by 3/8″ compression fitting must be a west-coast only item, as everyone looked at me like I was crazy when I was looking for it. I decided that plumbing is more of an art than a science anyway, and got 3/8″ compression fitting on one end with a 1/2″ sweat fitting on the other end. That way I won’t have to ream out the fitting as described in the article, we’ll see if it will hold water. Have all the parts for that one but I’m going to wait a bit to start assembly after proving to be a danger to myself and my environment last night.

So our kitchen has been recently remodeled, and I assumed (incorrectly) that ‘newness’ would be roughly equivalent to ‘cleanliness’ - until I noticed a little brown mouse scurrying back and forth along the baseboard. A few times a day it would run from underneath the stove to underneath the dishwasher and back, apparently making meals and then cleaning up his dishes and utensils.

Enter the tried and true ‘Victor’ mousetrap. Balls to a better mousetrap, this thing wiped out a family of three in under 4 hours. The most amazing part to me, perhaps a testament to poor sense of judgement on the part of mice, is that the second mouse was dispatched quite violently, and blood smeared all over the cheese and the trap. This didn’t deter mouse #3, who was caught jaws gaping, a big hunk of cheese in his mouth.

A fantastic counter-attack on telemarketers. I can’t wait to use this one the next time the Fraternal Order of Police call me asking for a donation.

Talk about a headache…nearly impossible to make your mind accept this picture.

Link to source

My wife got me a great gift for Christmas, an old sanke 1/2 barrel keg. Strange that the item atop my Christmas list is a discarded old beer container. So it goes.

In any case, I am working on getting it converted, once the top is cut out and I have some couplings welded in the bottom for a ball valve and a thermometer, it will make a great brewing kettle. If anyone ever tells you they got into homebrewing to save money, they are clearly imbalanced or of limited intelligence. I’m afraid to add up my costs, as I have purchased 3 corny kegs, all associated tubing and disconnects, a CO2 tank, a regulator, stainless steel couplings, a ball valve, a thermometer, several deep sockets for dismantling and cleaning my corny kegs, a bazooka t-valve and sanke coupler, and I have yet to brew a batch of beer since 2004. Perhaps I should have stuck with the stovetop boil and bottling in recycled bottles.

With any luck I’ll get my kettle converted within the month and fire up a batch sometime in February.

NYE was an interesting affair. A great night throughout, until the very end. Low key, entertaining, full of smiling happy people, with the added bonus of some pretend gambling.

Enter 2006 when several friends decided to try a different sort of gambling, for real money. Someone forgot to check the guest list at the door, and let in a hyper-insecure, overly aggressive military brat. Before long, every $1 raise was met with “Fuck you, motherfucker! I raise you $10!!”

Hopefully there is a pharmacological explanation, and some strange cocktail of drugs during basic training is responsible for his antisocial behavior. If not it just confirms my suspicion that The Cramps were right after all.