1. My blogroll – It’s pretty outdated. So I changed it a bit.

I see that my long ago blogging buddy Phil Stolle hasn’t done much with Thought Sparks in awhile, so I’m going to move that link to the bottom. I’m sure he’s just in the same boat I’m in, not enough time or motivation to blog away his days and nights

Looks like Phil gave up on Tech Fires, so I removed that one all together.

Scott Blitzen is still going strong. Go Scott Go! Well, if not going strong, at least he’s beating me out by a long shot. Scott, I just went to Red Rocks again a few weeks ago to see Cake, and I thought about when I took that picture there as a salute to you. Happy days!

My other primarily ignored and abandoned blog is Geeks on Tech, which although it changed from Two Guys Tech years and years ago, I still hadn’t updated the link in the blog roll. So I did that.

Since two blogs wasn’t enough to ignore, a good while ago I started yet another, called Good Homebrew, so I added that link. Yes, it’s being appropriately ignored as well.

Kudos to the following bloggers who are still going strong. Pearl over at Interesting Observations, Steve Wilson Marketing, Simple Help, Teckh, and Kelly at Kellementology (What happened to Sass and Veracity?).

I hope I’m not too hasty in my decision (feel free to appeal it if I am) but I also relegated Ghosts in the Machine to the bottom of the list.

2. Brewing Links – The tab at the top that says “Brewing” leads to a page, that has 3 links that lead you to pages that say, this page has moved. Who’s great idea was that? Oh, yea, I did it. Anyway, I changed those to go to a page that has the correct info on it.

3. Comments – About a week ago I noticed that I was getting quite a large number of spammy link farming comments. I quickly grew tired of spamming them, so I made a bit of a change to comments on the site. Now, once a post is 120 days old, comments are disabled. It’s sad to say that I effectivly disabled comments on the site since my last post was over a year old. Of course, now that I’ve posted this, you can comment to your hearts content.

So, does all of this activity mean I’m going to start posting again? Probably not. I still get creative spurts, but life is as busy as ever. Let’s just leave it at, we’ll see what happens.

Tuesday night (6/14) the wife and I went to see Cake at the Ogden Theater. We saw them once before in Denver, and were really excited to hear that they were coming back to Denver. The announcement was sometime in March, and we bought the tickets right away.

They went without an opening band this time, playing 2 sets. I didn’t realize that they weren’t going to have an opener until we got there, which was almost a disappointment. The last time we saw them they had a Bluegrass band named “The Hackensaw boys”, a rockabilly band named “The Detroit Cobras”, and “Cheap Trick”. Of course, since they didn’t have any opening act, they played two sets, which was great.

My only complaint is about the Venue. The Ogden is broken down into several "strips”, each raised a little higher than the one in front of it. The strips were absolutely packed, and it was near impossible to get in and out of there. If you left where you were standing, you had to really squeeze by people, and I saw a number of people with drinks in cups spill them all over the place. If they could somehow keep the back of the areas clear for people to walk in, it would probably help with that issue.

There’s also an upstairs to the theater, with some seating. Unfortunately we didn’t get there too early, and all of the seating was taken. If we go back there we’ll have to show up a little earlier so we can nab some of those seats.

Overall, great show. John McCrea is hilarious, and he has a lot of fun with the audience. I’ll also have to say that I’ve never went to a concert where they gave away a tree (a Red Delicious Apple Tree). You can check out the “Cake Forest” google map to see where all the trees they have given away are.

We recently went to Disney World, and visited some family in Georgia. The entire trip, I had my trusty 68 Quart Igloo cube in the back, filled with ice and beer. I started out by filling it with Colorado beers that weren’t available in Georgia, those were given to relatives and friends. I then started filling it with beers that I haven’t seen here in Colorado. Pictured above are the ones that survived the journey back.

Although I’m a fan of tasting new beers, and can tell you what I like and don’t like, I don’t feel qualified to give a really thorough review. All of the beer I had there was very tasty, and I liked all of them. Here’s what I had to sample.

– Orange Blossom Pilsner – Brewed by “Orange Blossom Pilsner LLC”. This was just plain delicious. I stopped in a large liquor store, and I could only find 2 beers from Florida, and the other one was Landshark which I’ve already had. Highly suggest this one.

- Sea Dog Blue Paw – Wild Blueberry Ale – Brewed by Sea Dog Brewing – Strangly enough, I found this beer brewed in Maine in the Florida liquor store that I mentioned above. If you don’t like fruity beers then you may want to skip this one. As it turns out, I’m finding that I really enjoy a fruity beer, especially in hot weather.

The blueberry aroma and taste in Blue Paw is so strong that it’s almost like a blueberry soda. The weather was extremely hot, and I found this beer to be very nice and refreshing. I think I’m going to have to find a clone recipe before next summer.

- Georgia Brown – Sweet Water Brewing, Atlanta Georgia – MMmmm Malty.

- Sweetwater 420 Extra Pale Ale – Sweet Water Brewing, Atlanta Georgia – Nice pale ale. I sampled this one at a restaurant.

- Sweetwater Blue – Sweet Water Brewing, Atlanta Georgia – Another Blueberry beer, not nearly as strong as Blue Paw. Very tasty.

- Golden Ale – Terrapin Beer CO, Athens Ga – Yummy

- Rye Pale Ale – Terrapin Beer CO, Athens Ga – Very nice pale ale. I had made a Rye beer not too long ago which was similar.

- Gaelic Ale – Highland Brewing Company, Asheville NC – Got a good laugh doing my Scottish impression saying that “All the other Gaelic Ales are crap!”. This was delicious, although I was a little confused that it’s described as a “amber American ale”, yet is named Gaelic Ale.

- Laughing Skull – Red Brick Brewing Company, Atlanta Ga – A very tasty and respectable Amber Ale.

Unfortunately, I took too long to write this post, and I didn’t take any notes about the beers I had. So my descriptions are lacking. I’ll have to remember that next time for sure.

After this trip, I realize how lucky I am to have the beer selection that I have here in Colorado. Although things are getting better in the south, selections from local brewers, as well as microbrew selection in general, is still pretty limited.

Remember folks, support your local brewers!

As you can probably tell from the color, I don’t think it’s going to come our red, like it’s supposed to be.

You can find the original recipe here on Homebrew Talk. What happened to me was that when I transcribed it into Beersmith, I entered 5 Gallons. Beer smith showed it coming out black, so I adjusted the grain bill to make it red.

After I bought all the grain, I realized that the recipe was for a 10G batch. Once I adjusted that, it looks like it’ll come out yellow. I may brew the correct recipe at a later date, but for now, I’ve got 10 gallons of this. I’m sure it’ll be tasty.

12# Maris Otter (I used Colorado Malting Company’s 2 Row)

4# Vienna Malt

.75# Roasted Barley

.28 Crystal 120

2oz Fuggles at 60 Minutes

1oz Goldings at 15 Minutes

Wyeast 1272 American Ale Yeast (I used this for 5G and 1056 American Ale for 5G)

Mash at 150 Degrees F for 75 Minutes.

I’ll let you know how it comes out.

A seasoned brewer will see pretty quickly that these are all rookie mistakes, so I’m kind of ashamed to admit them, but hey, you live and you learn. In the interest of furthering the knowledge of others, to help you, I’m going to commit these mistakes to the blog. That’s right, I’ll take one for the team.

For this brew day, I had kind of shuffled back and forth between what to brew. 10 gallons of this, or 10 gallons of that, 5 gallons of this, etc. I finally decided I would make it a regular brew day, and went with two recipes at 5 gallons each. The two recipes I planned on brewing were for the Marine Corps birthday on Nov 10th, and I wanted to get a head start. First up was "Crimson Corps Bulldog Ale", followed by "Semper-FI(PA)!" Not too ambitions right? I mean, I’ve brewed up to 15 gallons at a time before.

Part 1: The Brew store debacle OR Why you shouldn’t be in a rush

I get to the brew store, and I realize that I printed off the stuff I needed for both recipes on a single piece of paper. This isn’t good. I usually mill my grain together so that I only have one bag to dump into the mash tun. This time, I had 2 different grain bills, plus I was planning on roasting some of the barley, which should have been kept separate. So I called my wife, and asked her to list off the ingredients for the recipes. She was nice enough to help me out.

Only problem is, I messed them up on the list. Somehow I ended up with a bag of 20L when I should have had a bag of 120L, or at least I wrote 20L on it. Was it 20L, or was it 120L? If it is 20L, then where did the 120L go? Who knows? I sure didn’t.

Crimson Corps Bulldog Ale:

Started out with this Irish red recipe. When I was entering it into Brewsmith, I noticed that it was going to be almost black. Not exactly what I expected. So I adjusted the grain a little bit to make it more of a Red.

Then, after I got back from the brew store, I started calculating the water volumes and temperatures I would need for the mash and sparge. That’s when I started realizing something was wrong. I had an awful lot of grain for a 5 gallon recipe. Want to guess why? It’s simple really, it was a 10 gallon recipe.

When I was transcribing it into Brew Smith, I mistakenly entered 5 gallons for the batch size, when in fact it was a 10 gallon recipe. That also explains why my color was off.

I’m fermented 5 gallons of this with the American Ale II yeast that it called for, and 5 gallons on the American Ale (Wyeast 1056) yeast cake from my Sweet Mutt batch.

Semper-FI(PA)!

This was another minor debacle. I think I got all the correct stuff, of course there’s still the matter of the missing 120L, but it too had a ton of liquid. I didn’t see that it was a no sparge or super low efficiency on the recipe, so I just mashed and sparged like I normally would.

I ended up boiling it forever to get it down to 6 gallons, which is about where I start my 60 minutes. It was pretty think, and I think it’s going to end up being something like 8.5% alcohol.

I put this wort on top of the Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast cake from one of the Sweet Mutt batches.

As you can see, I had 2 Carboys of Sweet Mutt Honey Brown Ale that I needed to bottle. So all in all, I was brewing and bottling for about 13 hours that day. It was a productive day, but I had really hoped to go hiking or something else too, so it was kind of a bummer to use the whole day up brewing.

This was the second brew day in a row, and the second brew day in a 30 day window, where I brewed 15 Gallons at a time. I’m hoping to brew some lambics next, which is going to tie up my fermentation equipment for a little while, so I don’t want to run out of tasty beer to drink.

One thing that helped my out immensely was my brand new immersion chiller. It cooled the wort down to pitching temperatures in no time flat. I’m running the water off into a 50G drum I have, and after I get a water pump set up, I’m going to be pumping that water onto my lawn through my sprinkler.

My Vienna Lager is really tasty now. I’ve been having some carbonation problems with it, but I haven’t minded sampling it repeatedly

I tried my Hefeweizen for the first time the other day, and it’s still pretty young. Tastes more like a wit bier right now, but I’m sure it’ll come around.

In June I’m scheduled to do my two Marine Corps Birthday brews, and I’m hoping to get those done pretty quickly so that I can maybe get a couple of unscheduled brews in as well. Although I have a decent quantity of beer laying around the house, there’s still very little that’s ready to drink. I’m hoping to rectify that

Until next time, keep brewing!

I scheduled 2 brews for yesterday, figuring it would take less time than doing it individually. Boy was I right!

Not only did it save time, but having all the equipment already out made the second brew just fly by. I was even considering trying to do three in a row.

I did all of the mashing in the kitchen, heating that water on the stove in a couple of pots, with my mash tun on the kitchen table. Then I would carry the wort out into the garage with a bucket where my brew kettle was sitting on the propane burner.

After finishing Sparging, I didn’t have to sit around waiting for my kettle to come to a boil, I was busy in the kitchen getting ready for the next batch. I did have a hour and a half delay in between batches though, I had to roast some malt and I didn’t realize it was going to take as long as it did.

While the first batch finished boiling and was cooling, I was getting the second batch ready. While it was coming to a boil, I was racking the first batch.

All in all, it went really well. The delay worked in my favor, because there wasn’t a point where I could have used a second burner. I did however just pick up another burner, and as soon as I get a high pressure regulator for it, I’ll be good to go.

I’ll also be taking part in a group buy in Denver later on in the month, and I’ll have 100 lbs of malt on hand, I may have to throw even more extra brews in the schedule. We’ll see.

If you didn’t check it out, don’t worry, because I had to make some changes to it. Here’s what I did:

1. Re-scheduled missed brews – I was late on both my 90 Shilling clone, and my Octoberfest. Those were supposed to be brewed in February and early March, but I skipped right over them, just too busy. I moved them to the first weekend in April.

2. Moved the Lambics – Since I’m going to need a big pile of fruit for those, I thought it made good sense to make them when that fruit was actually in season. It’s going to be like 6 to 18 months before I drink them anyway, so it’s not like I’m in a hurry.

3. Added a Hefeweizen in April, and a Rye beer in May – I don’t know why I didn’t have these on the schedule anyway, Hefeweizen is one of my favorites, and I’ve always wanted to make some rye beer. Not to mention it will give me something a little lighter to drink in the summer.

If you look at the schedule, April is going to be a busy month, I’m making 2 brews on one weekend, and a third the next weekend. July is pretty busy too, with 3 brews that month too. We have some relatives visiting us over the summer, so I wanted to have a good selection of beer available.

Believe it or not, I’m actually hoping to squeeze in some more brewdays, but we’ll see about that. I’m hoping to start on making a electric Hot Liquor Tun (HLT), which basically just heats and holds hot water, which would save me a  lot of time and propane. I hope that I’ll also be getting a wort chiller for father’s day. Both of these should cut some time off of my 8 hour brew days.

Next month I’ll be picking up a 50 pound sack or two of malt from a group buy I’m taking part of in Denver. Near the end of the year, I may have to start brewing a little extra in order to use that all up.

I’ve been having some trouble with my kegging setup, nothing real bad, but I still need to do some work on it. Of course, Pinewood Derby is coming up pretty quick, so I may be doing more of that over the weekends rather than hobby projects. I’ll find out tonight if the Vienna Lager I made is carbonated well enough.

Hope everyone has a good weekend, and thanks for reading!

1. 1. Cut Men’s risk of dying from a heart attack by 30 – 35%.
2. 2. Raise your HDL (good cholesterol).
3. 3. Make your blood cells less likely to clog an artery.
4. 4. Help protect against type 2 diabetes.

I also ran across this article in wired citing a study that linked beer consumption with higher bone mineral density. Evidently Beer has a good deal of bio-available Silicon, which our body needs.

I’ve also seen research, but am too lazy to go look it up now, that shows that an active chemical in hops may be able to help stop prostate and breast cancer. Those studies are still in the early stages though.

Go Beer!

I’m not really too concerned with the color, and I was going for a Negra Modella type beer, so dark was OK with me.

I ended up using the 3 pounds of Vienna they had, then 4 lbs of Dark Munich, and 1 LB of light Munich. All this is being fermented by some Munich lager yeast.

This is actually my first lager, and I’m hoping it turns out well. I had purchased a chest freezer on craig’s list, and a temperature controller. All this time I had been brewing in warm weather, and I’ve only recently realized that the challenge may no longer be keeping the wort cool, but rather keeping it warm. My garage has been a cool 40 degrees lately, which would be ok for the lagering stage, but could cause issues with the fermentation stage. (Lagers generally ferment around 50 – 55 degrees.

I left the carboy in my kitchen overnight, and had some nice activity going in the vapor lock when I woke up this morning. Then I moved it into the freezer (which isn’t plugged in) in the garage, and the temp quickly rose from 40 degrees to 50 degrees. I’m hoping that the fermentation activity and the mass of the liquid will keep the temp in the freezer in the 50’s.

This should be the first batch that I keg. I’ve got everything to keg now except for some tubing, and the Cornelius kegs.

I’m very much looking forward to kegging the beer, bottling is just a pain in the neck sometimes.

Original post:

At Christmas I tried a batch of beer I had made, luckily it was only a 1 gallon batch, and there was something terribly wrong with it. It tasted like water, but with a funky taste to it. I figured I must have had an infection in it.

So now I’m a little paranoid, and I’m wondering if I did something wrong with my last batch of Centennial Blonde. It has these green floaty things on the top.

I made a 10 gallon batch, and split it between two carboys, and used a starter of a American Ale yeast in one, and a package of Nottingham yeast in the other. The American Ale yeast carboy has these green things across the entire carboy, and the nottingham yeast carboy only has a few of them, in a 4 inch circle.

I took a whiff of both carboys, and they smell fine to me. I’m just a little concerned since I had the problem with that 1 gallon batch, and I was planning on putting a Stout on the yeast cake of the American Ale Carboy.

I’m going to post to the Homebrew forums to see what those knowledgeable folks have to say, but I figured I could share here as well.

It took quite a bit more time to get the water to boil off, I ended up with almost 14 gallons of wort to start with, but it ended up only taking an hour or so more than I’m used to. I also ended up with 11 Gallons of wort instead of 10, which was good because after reviewing the recipe, it turns out it was actually for a 11 Gallon batch.

I think I’m going to have to buy a real immersion chiller soon, that would probably cut close to an hour from my brew day.

I was a little worried that the Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast that I had rinsed from a previous batch wasn’t going to be ready in time, but Saturday it just took off, and I was able to use it in one carboy after all. The second carboy has the Nottingham yeast that the recipe calls for.

So my storage room now has 2 carboys full of the delicious Centennial Blonde. I’m curious to see if I can tell the difference in flavor between the two batches, since I used different yeasts.

I’m planning on doing a quick extract American Stout recipe in 2 weeks, and I’m going to put it on the American Ale yeast cake.

The only strange thing is that I still seem to be running a pretty bad efficiency, this time it seems to be 65%, but I keep hitting my Original Gravity targets. So I’m not too concerned with it.

Once I open a bottle of the Centennial Blonde, in about 4 weeks, I’ll have to take a picture.

Of course, this week is Christmas, I hope yours is wonderful!

Or is it that brewing is excitement? A few weeks ago, I set a brew date for myself, and it’s this Sunday! I started getting excited as soon as I set it, and have just been gearing up since.

I won’t be brewing at Great Divide Brewing Co, but it was a fitting picture for the post.

This time, I’m making a 10 gallon batch of a recipe called “Centennial Blonde” that I found over at Home Brew Talk forums. I’ve made it once before and everyone loved it, but I only made 5 Gallons of it, so this time I’m going to double the pleasure, double the fun.

This will also be my first 10 gallon batch, so I’m hoping it doesn’t add too much to the brew day. The original idea was to use some yeast that I “rinsed”, which is basically a way to re-use yeast, but my starter doesn’t seem to be active, so I think those yeasties are either really sleepy, or dead.

To add a little interesting twist to the recipe, I think I’m going to use the Nottingham yeast that it calls for in the recipe for one of my 5 Gallon Carboys, and buy some new American Ale yeast for the second carboy. This way I can compare them and see if I can tell a difference.

I’m already plotting to try and put a Stout on top of the yeast cake after I bottle, but we’ll see if that happens.

Oh yea, and Christmas is coming up too. I am pretty psyched up for Christmas, I think I got some good gifts for my family, and I’m looking forward to having some good friends over for Christmas Eve dinner. Maybe they can help me empty some beer bottles for my next batch.

This last Monday, October 19th, 2009, our family lost it’s best friend.

For 14 years, you were our child, our companion, protector, and friend. Always happy to do whatever it is that we wanted, or go where ever we were going, enthusiasm wasn’t in short supply with you.

I can’t put into words what those years meant to us, or what they meant to me.

We will never forget you.

Good Boy Fantus!

I was worried about getting my un-fermented beer cooled down quickly, and had been looking around at immersion chillers. Having spent enough this week on brewing equipment, I was thinking that I could probably just use a clean garbage can full of water, and pump cold water from the bottom every now and then.

I know it’s not a perfect solution, but it worked pretty good. I only had water in the pot, and it brought it from boiling to 100 degrees in about 20 minutes, and I wasn’t changing the water out very much.

It took about another 20 minutes to get it to 70 degrees, but when I have real beer in it, I’ll have some ice on hand to help it out.

I’m sure I’ll be in the market soon for a chiller, but for now, I think this will do.

In my last post, I mentioned that I had been doing a lot of reading about beer, and was thinking of starting to brew my own. Well after a summer of not being home, between various work travels and vacation, I’m now pretty far along with that hobby.

Directly after the last post I ended up brewing a delicious Hefeweizen, and I was incredibly pleased with how well it came out. Then came all the travel.

My next batch of beer was a “No Sham Shamrock Irish Ale” from the book “The Complete Joy of Homebrewing”, and I only have 6 of those left. They also came out terrifically.

Right now, I have a few weeks before the next batch is ready, it is Presidential Pale Ale, which I hope I like as much as I like Bristol’s Red Rocket.

Then last night I brewed Thunderstruck Pumpkin Ale, which I found on the most useful Home Brew Talk Forums. Highly suggest a visit there if you are interested in the subject.

I’m up to 20 Gallons brewed, and I’m looking forward to my next batch.

So in my journey down through the wonderful world of beer, I tried Liberty Ale from Anchor Brewing. What a great beer! Just enough hops to keep it really crisp, it’s very refreshing and delicious.

Maybe in the future I can add more constructive comments, but for now, let me just say that it’s really really good. With the hot summer months coming up, I can see getting more  of it.

It was very good, with the kids doing different songs or dances from different parts of the world.

When we were leaving, I reminded the kids to watch out for cars, because “Everyone gets hit by a car in the same language”.

As you probably know, I’ve been spending most of my time over at Two Guys Tech, and even over there, I haven’t been posting.

So, what’s going on you ask? Well, the Pinewood Derby is coming up before too long, so I think that Zane and I will start working on our cars here pretty soon. I’ve also had a few other hobbies on my mind, and I may or may not give those a try soon.

More later.

Watch CBS Videos Online

Some of my Favorites from the video:

“The American Medical Association doesn’t recognize me”

“Good old fashioned healthy Lard”

“Only try this under scantily clad medical supervision”