The same can be said when I travel too. Other than the markets that you find all over the word, and the odd mall, some things on the road are still best to purchase online. A good example of that is when I bought a new DVD drive for my Macbook Air while in Thailand. I simply logged into Thai version of the Apple store and had the item shipped to me in Thailand. Since Singapore is one of their main hubs, it only took two days for that item to get to me.

To facilitate eCommerce, it is often helpful to have your credit card information on your computer in a text file. The problem with that of course is that if anyone gets access to your computer, they can easily get access to all your accounts. If you keep scans of your identify information (such as a Passport, which I often do), then it’s possible for someone accessing your computer to have all of your identify information as well, including where you live.

Using an Encrypted Drive

To best solution to this problem that I’ve found is to use TrueCrypt to store encrypted information on your computer. Basically TrueCrypt creates a file on your computer that when accessed looks and feels like simply another hard drive on your computer. The difference is that a TrueCrypt volume is encrypted with government-grade encryption that cannot be accessed without entering the proper password. And like a hard-drive, you can simply mount or unmount it at will – whenever you mount it, you will need to supply the password, which hopefully only you know.

Layering TrueCrypt on DropBox

I’ve actually taken this a step further and put my TrueCrypt volume onto DropBox. This means that I can access my encrypted information from any computer I have, and have that information reside up in the cloud. Since the volume is encrypted, it is simply impossible to access that information without knowledge of the password (which you choose when creating the volume).

I basically keep all of my credit card information, personal account numbers, bank transit numbers, scans of void cheques, and copies of my passport inside my encrypted volume. If someone were to steal my computer, and access it before my screensaver lock kicked in, they would be unable to see any of that sensitive information or forcibly access it by pulling the hard-drive out.

Some people may be content simply storing this information on their computer and trusting that the login password is enough, and that’s fair. But I much prefer using TrueCrypt (which is free) to add another layer of security for that type of information, ensuring that there really is no possible way that information can be extracted without knowledge of the password.

Now the idea of loading a backpack up and heading to a new country feels about as foreign to me as doing a load of laundry. If I saw a plane ticket somewhere for a good price, I could probably be at the airport in three hours, ready to go on a new adventure.

One of the pains of being away for an extended period of time though is figuring out how to accomplish many of the things you normally do at home (such as paying bills) while away. It’s not as easy as it sounds, and there are lots of different tricks I use to make it work. There are still a few areas that are problematic for me, but I’m hoping to take care of them shortly.

Phone Calls & Services

I use Skype everywhere to make calls. Since they have an iPhone application as well, I often can simply use my iPhone (when I have a data plan) to call most places in the world for pennies a minute. It’s super simple.

I still use Voice Network for virtual phone numbers, but not all that often anymore. Really I should set up a 1-888 number for myself, and simply give that to everyone who wants to ever call me. But then I would have to update it from time to time, and I have a feeling I’d forget. But one nice part of using that service is that it will email you messages after people leave them, which is a nice option. So maybe I’ll give it another go.

Banking

Before setting out on my first adventure, I switched my main bank from a discount bank to a full service bank account with TD. Looking back on all my travels, it’s something I am really glad I did, as TD really helped me out a few times when I was in a bit of trouble. For example, when I was in Argentina I left my bank card at an ATM machine and couldn’t take out money for a while. Since TD wasn’t able to get a new bank card to be easily, what they did do is modify my business bank card (which is also at TD) so that I could access my personal account from the “Savings” account on my TD business debit card.

I also carry a secondary bank card at PC Financial (a low-cost bank), and have both it and my TD card tied to my personal PayPal account. Using PayPal it’s possible to move money between my bank accounts, first by transferring money into PayPal from one bank, and then withdrawing it into the other bank. This process probably takes a full week to complete, but it’s an option to move money electronically between two bank accounts back home when I’m in another country. I haven’t had to really make use of this yet, but it’s all set up and waiting just in case I hit a snag sometime.

Paying Bills

Paying bills online is pretty straightforward: pretty much every bill I receive can be paid via TD’s website, including personal and business taxes. For my next trip I plan to set a few of them up on automatic payment plans, since it seems a bit silly for me to have to login once a month simply to pay the same amount (or very nearly the same amount) each time. That’s time I could be off doing something more fun, like exploring or trying some new foods.

Faxes

I hate faxes. Any company that still requires documents to be faxed should go back to the stone-ages where they belong. Generally the only faxes I’m forced to send are for our Visa and Mastercard merchant accounts for BraveNewCode and the odd government service.

I used to use MyFax in the old days, but it was a flat monthly fee that was expensive enough that I hated paying it. I also had a few bad experiences with them, namely the hassle I received when trying to cancel previously. So I can’t really recommend them anymore.

I switched to PayPerFax a while ago, and have been pretty happy with them. Instead of a flat monthly fee, you simply pay on a per-fax basis, which is a much better business model for how I use it. I sent a three page fax a while ago and I think it was $2, so if you send more than three or four a month then there are probably cheaper alternatives. But it’s nice for me to know that I can easily save something as a PDF, digitally sign it, and then fax it back if I need to using PayPerFax.

Credit Cards

I have a TD First Class travel VISA, which is one of the best credit cards available in Canada. It’s a premium card (i.e. it has a yearly fee), but since I keep $5,000 in my bank account at all times, TD gives it to me for free. That card offers a lot of travel perks, and I have been able to buy at least one flight using only points from it. The only annoying thing that I’ve experienced with this card is a few times when they’ve disabled it on me because I have been traveling in another country. Whenever I call them to complain, they generally lecture me about letting them know ahead of time whenever I go on a trip. From my perspective though it seems silly and ironic that I have to constantly update them with my itinerary, especially considering it’s a VISA meant for travel .

The amount of effort we put into this launch we basically an order of magnitude larger than the one we did almost three years ago. As if it wasn’t hard enough launching just a new product, we also completely redid the website and support infrastructure. For the period of time the website was down on Thursday, we basically replaced our entire web infrastructure from top to bottom.

The last launch I have been involved of this size involved about 50 people at a company I worked at in Vancouver – we did this launch with only six. I am amazingly proud of what everyone accomplished, and am ecstatic that the project is finally released upon the world.

Right now I’m sitting in the Hamilton airport, getting ready to catch a flight back home. I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again tonight, and for next week when I can resume my normal routine again. I haven’t really had any time off in over a year, so I am planning on taking some time off in June to travel around Canada and enjoy some sun.

We’ll be revealing everything on Thursday, but for now everyone will have to make due with a quick teaser:

If you’re interested in being notified when we launch in a few days, head on over to BraveNewCode.com and sign-up at the bottom. We’re definitely looking forward to pulling back the veil and showing everyone what we’ve been working on for quite a while now.

That said, one personal item I have been shopping for recently is a new wallet. I can’t say that I’ve ever owned anything special in that department; usually I just head down to the mall and buy whatever I can find, often some faux-leather item for about $20.

But recently an Australian company called Bellroy has been in the news for adding some sex appeal in the wallet department, and a few articles caught my eye. What I liked about some of their wallets was the thought put into what guys actually put in their wallets. Anyone who has seen Seinfield can probably relate with the size of George’s wallet. Between my personal cards and my company ones, my wallet generally fills up pretty quick. Since I’m fairly used to downsizing things in my life due to travel, I thought now would be a good time to downsize the contents of my wallet while upsizing the coolness factor.

Bellroy has two lines of men’s wallets, one where the owner is expected to fold their bills (i.e. their money), and one line where they don’t. I have a hard enough time folding clothes let alone money, so I opted for the line where most bills can slide right in. And since I wanted something relatively minimalistic, I eventually opted for the Note Sleeve Wallet:

A wallet should adjust to your lifestyle rather than forcing you to adjust to it. Inspired by tradition but brought to life through modern craft, our Note Sleeve incorporates first-rate construction and a versatile style that enables this slim wallet to alternate between work and leisure environments with ease. The Note Sleeve hits the sweet spot of functionality and sleekness, with a range of user-friendly features in a compact design that does away with pocket bulge. This leather wallet holds unfolded bills and coins, with easy-access slots for your main cards and a storage area with a convenient pull tab for infrequently used cards.

At $89, it’s definitely not a cheap item. But as I get older I much prefer buying higher quality items less frequently than cheaping out and having to replace items all the time. That’s always been my philosophy with technology – since my whole career path has been inspired and based off of most of the technology I use, I never hesitate spending money when it comes to anything gadget-wise. So I decided to start adopting that same philosophy in a few other areas of my life as well.

Unboxing the Note Sleeve Wallet

I chose the express shipping option, so my wallet arrived approximately one week after I ordered it. When I opened the containing envelope, I was pleasantly surprised with the actual packaging of the wallet itself.

Packaged ‘Note Sleeve’ Wallet

The wallet itself was encased in a thin protective paper, which in theory should minimize any scratches or what-not during the packaging process.

Sliding the wallet out

I say ‘in theory’ because my wallet did have a few very minor scuff marks on it when I removed the paper, but nothing really that noticeable. I assume all leather ultimately will scuff to some degree, so it’s no big deal. But I was surprised the leather wasn’t essentially pristine when I pulled it out.

Wallet with protective paper removed

Other than a few velcro wallets I had when I was a kid, every wallet I can remember has been black. This time I decided to try a different colour and opted for the brown version. I have to say, it did look pretty sexy when I pulled it out of the protective paper, so I’m glad I made that decision.

Wallet, removed from packaging

One of the goals for this new purchase was to significantly cut down on the contents of my wallet. To that end, I’ve basically opted to only carry the following inside:

• Driver’s license in the card slot contained in the bill area
• Personal VISA and debit card in the main card area, since these are used the most frequently
• Business VISA in the one-card slot opposite the main card area
• Nexus card (for US travel), two business debit cards, and my gym membership in the card drawer that pulls out
• A few Canadian bills

Inside of the ‘Note Sleeve’ Wallet

So in total I have one ID card, two high-use cards, one medium-use card, and four low-use cards. Compared to my other wallet, that’s not a lot of content. But the reality is that I don’t think I could fit any more inside, and I’m ok with that.

Final Thoughts

I’ve only been using the wallet for about 12 hours, but already I’m extremely happy with the purchase. When you hold the wallet, it definitely feels like a high quality item. The placement of the cards is intuitive, and as long as you spend some time grouping items by how often you use them, the wallet is really functional. I also like the fact that you can store a bunch of different cards in the little pull-out drawer – it makes it so you can bring a few of the lesser used cards, but not enough to make the wallet thick or unmanageable.

‘Note Sleeve’ Wallet next to an iPhone 5

If you’re not prepared to downsize your current wallet (assuming you have a typical sized one), then you should definitely opt for one of the larger Bellroy wallets. But for me, this wallet is the perfect size, and it’s a high-quality item that I think is definitely worth the price paid for it.

I’ve probably done close to 10 all-grain brews so far, and I wanted to share some of the things I have learned in this adventure. Had I read a post like this before I started, it probably would have saved me lots of pain and grief. But in the nature of giving back to beer drinkers and brewers around the world, here are some of my thoughts about all-grain brewing.

Mash Temperature Is Important

Mashing

One of the hard parts about brewing beer is that almost everyone gives you different advice. For example, I’ve had some people tell me that the temperature of the mash isn’t really all that important. Others have told me the exact opposite, in that it is crucial to maintain the target temperature.

My own experience has led me to believe that mash temperature is pretty critical to achieving the desired result in your beer. For example, I brewed an oatmeal stout that most people said tasted really good. Unfortunately I ended up mashing it a bit too low, and the resulting beer lacked both head and a substantial mouthfeel (i.e. the thickness of the beer). So while it tasted good, the experience of drinking it wasn’t ideal.

I actually meant to mash that one around 153F – 154F, and should have ended up with a medium mouthful. Unfortunately it turns out that the way I was mashing was actually causing the temperature to be quite a bit lower than I thought, which led to a thin (i.e. watery) beer in this case.

And that leads me to the second point.

Stir Your Mash

The flaw in my process was that I wasn’t stirring my mash enough after doughing in my grains. I would normally put the grains in and then give it a few good stirs, but it turned out there were quite a few hot and cold spots around the mash. So while some areas in the mash were at 158F for example, others were around 145F, which is way too low. Depending on where the thermometer probe was placed, it would register anything from 145F – 158F, and often something in the middle which made me think it was the correct temperature.

After stirring the mash for longer, and taking care to thoroughly distribute the grains, I quickly realized that the mash temperature that it stabilized at was often a few degrees lower than my target temperature, causing the beers to come out thinner than desired. I quickly adjusted to this deficiency by increasing the temperature of my strike-water by a few degrees, which has helped reach my target. If anyone has any doubts about their process, I recommend sticking your temperature probes in a few different places in your mash to check the temperature – if it deviates at various spots around the mash, then it’s time to keep stirring.

I still have issues with my mash cooling off too much during the mash though, so perhaps I need to invest in a better cooler. I currently have to add boiling water a few times during the process, and then stir until I get back to my target temperature – this works, but it is a bit of a pain as I have to constantly monitor the mash when I’d much rather be drinking and beer and relaxing.

Don’t Let Your Wort Burn

It seems weird at some level that a liquid can be subject to burning, but it can happen with wort, and sometimes does. For a while I noticed that some of my beers were coming out slightly darker than predicted, and I wasn’t entirely sure why.

Wort

I just assumed it was caramelization of the sugars in the wort and moved on. But it wasn’t until a few weeks ago when I decided to do a really hardcore clean of all my pots when I noticed what looked like scorched wort on the bottom of my brew kettle. It was only a small amount, but I suspect it was probably contributing some weird toasted flavours to some of the wort I boiled in it, and possibly contributed to some darkening.

So I think it’s super important to do a hardcore clean of the brew kettle after each and every beer you brew. In my case that means using steel-wool and a lot of pressure to get rid of that stuff at the bottom of the kettle (whereas before I was just doing a thorough clean with soap and a cloth).

Make Sure Fermentation Is Complete

One of the first stouts I made was an oatmeal stout. It tasted quite good, and was a drinkable beer at first, but after a while I noticed that most of the bottles I would open would gush all over the place and make a mess. If it was just beer dumping out the top, I wouldn’t have worried about it much. But the gushing process also disturbed all the yeast at the bottom of the bottle, which meant that you’d have to drink yeasty beer, or wait until it all settled later on.

Fermentation

I originally thought that these beers got a small infection, and that infection was causing the gushes. But after brewing 5 or 6 more beers, I actually think what had happened is that I simply hadn’t let fermentation finish. At the time I bottled it had only been about 10 days of fermentation, and the bubbles had stopped mostly after around day 4. But the final gravity I measured was quite far off of the one that was predicted – I think I was expecting around 1.020, but it ended up at 1.030. I measured it over the course of a few days before bottling, and it seemed stable, but I think the reality was that it would have slowly fermented further had I left it another week to ten days.

And what had happened in that case is that it had finished fermenting in the bottles. Not enough to cause any of the bottles to deform, but enough to produce carbon dioxide and essentially cause over-carbonation (that increased with time) in those beers.

So ultimately patience is the key. It’s hard to be patient on your first couple of brews (I was anxious to bottle after a week), but now I don’t find it hard to wait 3 weeks to see if fermentation is done (mostly because I have several previous brews around to drink and pass the time).

Be Careful With The Foam

For sanitizing my equipment, I use Starsan foam like many other home brewers. It’s an acidic solution that can kill most organisms in as little as 30 seconds, but it is recommended to leave the solution in contact for 2 minutes or longer. One of the great things about Starsan foam is that it is advertised as a non-rinse sanitizer, meaning you can simply leave it in the bottle or the kettle, and pour your beer or wort into it as well.

Beer Colour

For whatever reason, I have found that leaving Starsan in my bottles has led to the darkening of my beers over time. I can’t be 100% certain it is the Starsan, but as it’s the only real culprit, it does seem likely. Starsan is an acidic product, so it basically kills organisms based on its acidity. In theory when you add enough liquid, it’ll dilute the Starsan and make the solution more neutral from a pH perspective.

I had one beer in particular where it was definitely a nice yellow/golden colour when fermentation was complete. After bottling though, the beer seemed to get more and more red as time went on. When I opened one around the 3 week more, it resembled more of an amber ale than it did a pale ale. The local beer supplier suggested it was due to a pH change in the beer, which made me consider Starsan. To test the hypothesis, I added a mild solution of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to a glass of the reddish beer. Sodium bicarbonate essentially is a buffer solution, which in theory should bring the pH closer to normal After mixing it in the beer and waiting a few minutes, the beer slowly turned back to a golden/yellow colour, albiet a muddier version.

It’s quite possible the fault was mine – I may have made an extra-concentrated solution of Starsan and used that to sanitize my bottles. Or it’s possible there is something in the local water that may be interacting with the Starsan (my Starsan solution goes cloudy quite quickly, which others seem to indicate that there’s a reaction going on with the water). But going forward I’m not taking any chances – I decided to rinse the Starsan out of everything after it is sanitized, and then use it right away. I bottled a German Hefeweizen last week, making sure to rinse all the Starsan out of the bottles before filling them. It’s been a week and the beer appears to be the same light-yellow colour it was when I bottled, so right now confidence is high that the Starsan was the culprit, at least for me.

Have Fun

After correcting most of these issues slowly over time, I’m at the point where I feel pretty confident that when I brew a beer it is going to turn out to be a good beer to drink. But hopefully others can learn from some of my mistakes and save themselves a little bit of the learning process, resulting in better brews in less time.

I had an opportunity the other day to record an hour long podcast with my friend John Biehler. John recently started a technology-based podcast called TekEh that has a particular emphasis on Canadian content and guests.

His first episode was Kemp Edwards from HootSuite, and talked mainly about the experiences of being in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest.

I was excited to be the second guest in the series, and spent an hour sipping a rum and coke and talking about WordPress, our experiences at BraveNewCode creating commercial plugins, having clients, photography, travelling around the world, and everyone’s favourite beverage, beer. It was a really fun experience, and I hope I get additional opportunities to record a few podcasts in the near future.

To take a listen, head on over to TekEh and subscribe to the Podcast on iTunes or listen to the embedded audio there.

While I have been to South America twice now, there is one destination there that I have never been able to make happen on my previous trips – I have always wanted to visit Peru, and in particular Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas (now found, thankfully).

Machu Picchu, photo from Wikipedia

I’ve also aligned the trip to coincide exactly with my birthday, which will be a nice change from my normal birthday (which I usually always try to make rather quiet, but ends up usually involving shooters and a hangover).

Machu Picchu is one of the New Wonders of the World, and it’ll be the 4th one I’ve visited. Technically there are 7 of them, but the Pyramids in Egypt get an honorable mention, so I’ll try and visit that one too someday. But I already have an empty frame on my wall in a set of Wonders of the World, and I’ll fill it with a shot from Machu Picchu as soon as I’m back.

I will only be back in Canada for about a week after Australia, and then I will board a plane for Lima, Peru. I’ll spend a night or two there, and they fly to Cusco, which is basically the staging area for Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley. I am also debating flying to the Amazon as well, and spending a few days in a totally Internet-free area in the Amazon Rain Forest, which seems like a pretty cool adventure.

The Sacred Valley, Photo from Wikipedia

The highlight for me will of course likely be Machu Picchu, and I’ve sort of planned my itinerary around me being there on my actual birthday, which is April 7th. I’m hoping I can find a fun group of Peruvians in a bar somewhere to help me with a few drinks in the evening, but hopefully seeing the sun rise above Machu Picchu on my birthday will be a pretty unique experience.

It’s a quick trip, and one of the only ones I have taken in a few years where I plan to not do any work whatsoever. If I do the Amazon trip, then I really can’t do any work since there’s no Internet (and often no power at all for most of the day). But given that I’m heading to Australia in two days, I haven’t really given my Peru trip too much thought at this point.

But once the trip is over, I’ll be at home for a few months before embarking on another pretty exciting adventure, starting in June. But that’s a post in itself, and I’ll save it for a later time.

This year I really only had two goals in terms of where I wanted to visit. The first one is Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas, located near the city of Cusco in Peru. The second place I really wanted to visit this year is Australia. My friend Vanesa (from Buenos Aires) has been telling me for years what an amazing place it is, so I decided last year that I would make it a priority this year. I was originally thinking of going around May, but a friend of mine in Sydney convinced me that I really should try and go as close to summer as I can.

So about a week ago I decided I would head down to Australia for a few weeks at the end of the month. I leave Canada on Wednesday, February 27th, and arrive in Sydney, Australia in the morning on Friday, March 1st (I lose a day because I have to cross the date-line).

Sydney, Australia. Photo from Wikipedia.

I don’t really have any accommodation lined up, and other than visiting a few friends and checking out the beach scene, no real concrete plans. I’ve been told by more than a few people that I should also visit the city of Melbourne, so I’m going to try hard to make it there as well.

This isn’t a vacation for me – I’ll be working during the days, same as I do when I’m in Canada. But during the evenings and weekends I plan to do some exploring. This is a trip I’ve been looking forward to for a long time, so it’ll be great to finally go “down under”. The only downside is the 15 hour flight to get there, but I’m pretty sure I have enough ativan to get me through it.

A beer I’ve always quite enjoyed is Howe Sound Brewery’s Oatmeal Stout, so I thought I would try my hand at one of those. An oatmeal stout, as the name implies, uses oatmeal as part of its grain bill. While the oats don’t really add a dominant taste, they do impart a particular body to the beer as well as some complexity.

Recipe

The local home brew supply shop I normally use was pretty much out of every English yeast I wanted to use for this stout, so I ended up grabbing some Windsor Dry Yeast. I didn’t really research it all that much, since it’s basically all I could get my hands on at the time, but I’ve since learned it’s not a very well liked yeast.

Notes

The Windsor yeast is known to ferment very quickly. In my case it lived up to expectations – at the end of 48 hours the FG hit 1.030, and it basically stayed there forever. While this yeast is a pretty poor attenuator, I was expecting to get down to 1.020.

At this point I let the carboy warm up to around 70F, stirred up some of the sediment, and also pitched some additional yeast. Other than to produce a few short-term bubbles in the airlock, none of that had any long-term affect. At day 5 the FG was still at 1.030, so I just assumed that was all she wrote.

I mashed this one at 156F to try and shoot for a fuller bodied beer, but given the results I think I’ll shoot for around 154F next time. The OG in the fermentor was 1.065, which puts the final ABV at 4.6% – definitely lower than I was shooting for, but not horrible.

Given the reviews of the Windsor yeast and the basic end to my fermentation after 48 hours, I decided to just bottle it at the end of day 7 to free up the fermenter for something else. My plan is to bottle condition it for three of four weeks, after which point it’s hopefully somewhat drinkable.

This was my first attempt at bottling, and for the most part it went off pretty smoothly. Unfortunately though, despite my best efforts at preventing it, I still ended up with some trub in my bottles as well as quite a lot of yeast. I’m not too worried since I’m sure I can still pour a good glass of beer with it, but it doesn’t look very appealing. The Windsor yeast is known not to clear very well, and I would definitely agree. I also didn’t use any Irish Moss during the boil, and it’s possible that could have helped. I don’t really have the means to cold crash a carboy or bottling buck yet, so I don’t have any other options except to perhaps leave the beer longer and hope more crud settles out.

Results

Despite using a yeast that generally isn’t well regarded, I actually quite liked this beer when I tasted it. I gave a few away to friends and family, and they really enjoyed it as well. Right after sampling a few glasses of it I went down to the local pub to try a few different porters and stouts, and this beer definitely held its own (at least for me) amongst them.

Unfortunately there were a few issues during the bottling. The first was that I measured out the amount of corn sugar to use based on the batch size I thought I had. I added this to the bottling bucket and then siphoned the beer on top of it. Once I left some of the trub behind in fermenter though I realized that I had about 0.75 gal less in the bottling bucket than I thought. That meant I basically over-primed the beer by a significant amount.

It also turns out that I probably should have stirred the liquid at this stage to make sure the sugar was well dispersed. Basically as I opened these, it became clear that the ones at the start of the process (which came from the top of the bottling bucket) were very much undercarbonated, and the ones from the end of the process (which came from the bottom of the bottling bucket) were very much overcarbonated (which would gush all over the place when opened).

Unfortunately for me I gave most of the undercarbonated ones away, and those were actually pretty nice to drink. The few I left for myself in my fridge were so overcarbonated as to be basically undrinkable (half would gush out the top and the rest would be a gross suspension of yeast for 30 – 60 minutes).

I’m definitely looking forward to doing another run of these sometime soon though, hopefully correcting all the mistakes I made along the way with this one.

Las Vegas

Las Vegas

Samantha in Cape Town, South Africa

Penguins near Cape Town, South Africa

Cape Town, South Africa

Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa

Sunset, Cape Town, South Africa

The moon rising over Cape Town, South Africa

Me in Vancouver, the night before flying back to South America

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Near Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Friends in Brasil

Stella, near São José dos Campos, Brasil

Stella and Thiago, São José dos Campos, Brasil

Stella’s family, São José dos Campos, Brasil

Ipanema Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Me in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Annie in Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Vanesa and Waddles, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Me in Montreal, Canada

Sliema, Malta

Beach in Malta

Krisztina in Malta

Me, dipping my feet in the Mediterranean

Krisztina and Waddles, Malta

Friends in Malta

Near the Vatican, Rome, Italy

St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City

Sistine Chapel, Vatican City

The Coliseum, Rome, Italy

Trevi Fountain, Rome, Italy

Pantheon, Rome, Italy

Thiago and Stella, Nantes, France

Novi Sad, Serbia

Where Amelie worked, Paris, France

Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

I hope everyone has a really amazing New Year’s eve – all the best to everyone for 2013.

I spent some time looking at other milk stout recipes and ultimately crafted something in BeerSmith2 that I thought would taste pretty good (based on a theoretical imagination in my head of what each of these base malts taste like).

Unfortunately I missed my FG on this one by a huge amount (like 15 pts). I finally tracked it down to an improper estimate of mash efficiency in BeerSmith2 based on a few other changes I made. Ultimately I have a huge problem with how BeerSmith2 calculates this number. From a home-brewer’s perspective, mash efficiency is a pretty important number as it’s something that influences the amount of grain to buy and also something that can easily be measured and adjusted. Unfortunately there’s no direct way in BeerSmith2 to make this adjustment. What can be adjusted is something known as the Brewhouse Efficiency, a number that represents the efficiency of the entire process.

So if you want to change your mash efficiency number in BeerSmith2, you basically have to mess around with your Brewhouse Efficiency until it indirectly calculates the Mash Efficiency you want. I’ve seen the author of the program defend this position, but many others have the same frustration as me. It’s something so fundamental to the process that it really seems like something you should be able to adjust. It makes far more sense in my mind to adjust Mash Efficiency directly and have Brewhouse Efficiency be calculated indirectly based on all your other loses in the system. I took a look at Beer Alchemy (another brewing program) and it allows for Mash Efficiency to be entered directly, so I may switch to that.

Sweet Stout

Regardless, Beer 1202 arrived stillborn from the kettle at approximately 11pm on December 8th, 2012 – he was properly disposed of after a short period of mourning. I supposed I could have boiled it for 5 hours or so to get my gravity where I needed it, but then I probably wouldn’t have been left with much to bottle.

After this event I adjusted my equipment profile in BeerSmith2 to properly reflect my setup, so hopefully that will carry over to expected gravity readings.

Ingredients

Looking at the ingredients after the fact it probably should have been apparent it would have come up weak, but I trusted the numbers the software gave me at the time, which turned out to be a bad idea. This smelled heavenly while it was mashing/boiling, so I’ll probably do a proper one up at some point.

Key Take-aways

• Make sure whatever software you are has a mash efficiency that reflects the process you are using. For BIAB I usually hit around 65-66%. I’ve been told for batch sparging that 75% is a reasonable target

I decided when I was in Europe that the first method for all-grain brewing I would attempt when I returned back home would be Brew In A Bag (BIAB). Basically you use a big-ass nylon bag to hold all your grains and have your brew kettle do double-duty as a mash tun as well. This method was apparently started by Australian home-brewers as a method to save both time and equipment.

The downside to this method is that you often need a fairly large brew kettle to account for all the water and the grains.

Design

I used BeerSmith2 to do the design for this batch, but unfortunately during the process of setting the software up on another computer, the original recipe file was wiped clean and I lost that information. From memory though it had a starting gravity of 1.066, a final gravity of 1.014, and a colour of roughly SRM 13.

Columbus Hops

The hops during the boil were Cascade, Columbus, and Simcoe, and the dry hop varieties were Willamette and Amarillo. I was shooting for a bitterness rating of around 62 IBU I believe.

For Yeast I decided on something basic: Wyeast 1056 (American Ale). I found the weird Wyeast blister pack to be sort of strange, but I managed to figure it out eventually. I made a small 1L starter for this batch about 24 hours before. I’ve since read that many people ferment starters even longer, up to 5 days or so, so I’ll definitely do a longer one next time.

Notes

I brewed this one out of my patio using a 10G brew kettle on a propane burner. The process went fairly smoothly until it came time to remove the bag that the grains were in at the end of the mash. I didn’t realize it but the bag had become hooked on the built-in temperature probe in the brew kettle. As I lifted the bag out my desire for beer was apparently so strong that I managed to rip open the side of the bag, ultimately causing about 1lb worth of grain to dump into the wort. It wasn’t a huge deal as I just transferred it to another container via a filter and removed most of the grain prior to the boil, but it did cost me a pretty nice brew-bag as well as 15 minutes worth of extra time.

Unfortunately in the apartment I am in there aren’t really any faucets around that I could modify with a hose-adapter. That makes the use of a wort-chiller really difficult. What I ended up doing is filling up a cooler with cold water and then adding a pile of ice cubes to it. I picked up a $50 pond pump down at Canadian Tire and then fabricated a wort chiller from 50 feet worth of copper tubing from Home Depot and a few 3/8″ cables. I connected the wort chiller to the output from the pump and submerged it into the cooler. Using this setup I was able to take the wort from near boiling down to about 78F in 30 minutes or so. I had to drain the cooler once and add new cold water, which involved me carrying a heavy cooler of water through my apartment out to the patio again (not very fun). I also had to basically empty the ice-maker on my fridge to get enough ice to chill the cooler. This part of the process was pretty sketchy, and it definitely needs some rethinking for future batches. I’ve been considering adding a tee connector onto my washing-machine so that I can connect a hose to it, but meddling with water supplies in an expensive apartment complex is a bit scary.

Ultimately I ended up doing a 60 minute BIAB ‘mash’ for this batch and followed up it with a 90 minutes boil. Based on sites I’ve read since, the mash was probably a bit too short to get maximum BIAB efficiency, and the boil may have been a tad long (I’ll probably go to a 75 minute boil later).

I decided to turn my laundry room into my main fermenter area. Unfortunately it turned out to be one of the warmest places in my apartment, and the carboy quickly hit 74F. The workable range for the Wyeast 1056 yeast is up to 70F, so I decided to try and cool it off. I did this but putting it into a bigger bucket filled with ice-water for about an hour, which brought it down to about 69F. Later I moved it into my spare bedroom, which is now basically my brew-house. The main advantage of the bedroom is that it has a large closet, as well as a window I can open to cool the room down (since it’s winter and pretty cold outside). The temperature of the carboy was around 68F for the rest of the fermentation.

Fermenting away in a 6G carboy

After a week the FG stabilized at 1.014, so I transferred it to my 5G carboy along with 2oz of hop pellets (Willamette and Amarillo). I originally tried using a nylon bag, but it quickly got jammed up on the way down so I just abandoned that idea and dumped the pellets in directly (assuming they would simply drop out over time in the fermenter). I’ve been told that many people simply use a primary fermenter these days and most don’t use a secondary, but for my first area it seemed like a good way to maximize my chances of having a clearer beer at the end.

4 days after dry-hopping with Amarillo and Willamette

Ingredients

That’s quite a bit of crystal malt for an IPA, and I’ve found some references to lots of crystal malt ultimately becoming sweet or cloying. In the future I’ll try a batch with less.

Results

This was one of the first brews that I had attempted, so I didn’t really have huge expectations for it. After I made it I found that many people recommended against using this much crystal malt as it tends to dominate the flavour.

After two weeks I decided to crack a bottle and taste it. It was still pretty young tasting, and the carbonation was still pretty weak, but it was definitely a drinkable India Pale Ale. I was sick at the time so I couldn’t smell the aromas, but I’ll take another taste in a few weeks and see where it’s at.

I have quite a few friends that have written books – now they can sell them at events and take credit cards there. Other friends of mine are in bands – they can sell merch themselves at events now. Have a restaurant or a pub – you can now impress customers by letting them pay using an iPod or an iPad.

Today was the day I got to take it for a test drive, and I have to say that I was really impressed. I recently picked up an iPad mini (which I think is the perfect size for doing something like this), so I decided to install the Square application there and try it out.

After installing the application, the first thing I was asked to do was to login to the iOS app using my email address and password that I used when I signed up to Square.

Log-in to your account

You’re then presented with a 6-page mini-tour that you can use to find out more about the process, or simply skip (which is what I did).

Square welcome message

The first thing I did was attempted to add an item. In this case, I added an item to my inventory called “World Peace”, priced at the low price of $1.00.

Adding an item

I then clicked on that product, which immediately added it to the top as an item to be charged for. The total price was updated to $1.00, and I was given the option (by pressing that button) to charge that price to a credit card.

Plugging in the reader

I didn’t have the reader plugged in yet, so I inserted it at this point in the process. The application immediately detected that it had been inserted, and put an overlay on the screen with that information for a few seconds.

At that point I swiped the card through the reader, which immediately brought up a screen showing the card was being authorized.

Authorizing the card

Once that’s done a screen comes up requesting the card holder to sign. I thought this was pretty cool – you basically just grab the device and use your finger to make a signature. I noticed that the signature wasn’t able to be accepted until it was something substantial (i.e. a quick mark wouldn’t work – you need to make at least a few scribbles).

Signing for the purchase

Next I was asked where I wanted the receipt to go. You are given a few options, via a text message or by email. I chose the option to have the receipt by email, and simply entered the email address that I wanted to receive it at.

Opting for an email receipt

Email sent confirmation

It took about 3 or 4 minutes for the email receipt to show up in my inbox, but eventually it came. The header image and the logo are both configurable via the Square website, so it’s very easy to customize the branding.

Email receipt

After that was all done I decided to head over the Square website and see what information was presented there. There’s actually a really informative dashboard view that shows you all your sales as well as which items have been purchased.

Square dashboard

All in all I found the process to be extremely user-friendly and definitely well thought-out. I really think this device is going to be a game-changer, and I’m glad there is a new evolution of payment solutions going on besides for PayPal. The most incredible thing about this for me is that it’s all free – the application is free to install and the credit card reader was free (sent from Square after signing up). You have to pay merchant fees of course, but they are definitely reasonable compared to other offerings such as PayPal. I’m definitely impressed with this device, and I hope they do well with it.

In terms of my surgery, I think the end result is quite a bit better. I had a private CT scan done in Serbia so I could gain some peace of mind with regards to the outcome, and here was the end result.

CT scan from after my third surgery

You can basically see the titanium mesh which is under my left eye (shown on the right), and the complete lack of bone underneath it, which was the source of most of my issues. The implant has restored the proper configuration of the inside of my eye socket, and the final position of my eye is almost back to where it used to be.

For now though I’m back at home, and in the process of unpacking into my apartment. My plan is to lay low for the next few months, save some money, hit the gym, and then possibly head out around April for a few weeks somewhere. I typically have advertised where I’m going before I go, but I think for the next trip I’m just going to up and leave one day and take a well deserved internet break during the process. I think it would be interesting to go completely offline and then post all the photos when I get back (you know, like people used to sort of do).

My 2nd beer: a milk stout

I’ve also taken up a new hobby around home – brewing beer. I was originally inspired by my friend Dave, so I decided to try my hand at it. I’ve already made two different batches, and have made quite a few mistakes during both. But I am making process, adapting, and so far having a bit of fun as well.

It’s a little premature, but as soon as I make some more progress I’ll start a new “beer” category on this site and share some of the results. That’ll most likely be sometime around the time that I get to taste the end result of the first batch.