There’s something about brewing and kegging beer that makes me think of Top Gear BBC, probably because it’s very easy to set up my laptop and stream it through Netflix while I’m working. Last night I ventured out into the rain to dump water out of a tub of empty bottles I’ve been soaking, and then scrape the remainder of the glue and paper off them. It took a bit longer than I was expecting–I started at 10 and finished after midnight–but they’re all cleaned, washed, and ready for beer. If I get time this evening, I’m going to transfer the Irish Stout into a bucket, bottle the batch, and let it sit for a few more months. With any luck, it’ll be perfect for Thanksgiving. Now, to design and print some labels…
The Belgian Dubbel I brewed last weekend is happier now that it has fresh yeast; as it turns out, I bought the kit all the way back in last October so the original yeast was long past its due date. Thankfully I bought fresh steeping grains for it a month ago. I’m going to let it sit for another couple of weeks and then transfer to the secondary, and it too should be ready by Thanksgiving.
Finally, I’m ordering a third beer from Austin Homebrew for general sipping. Something not as heavy as the stout or dubbel, but with more flavor for the winter months. I’m looking at their Viking IPA, which is lighter than most of the IPAs I’ve brewed, or their Texas Red Ale, which would be a little hoppy but more of a malty selection. Decisions, decisions…
Wow, what a great weekend. I got some great news late on Friday (more on that later) and the three of us joined our neighbors after lunch to walk downtown for ice cream. Saturday Finn and I got up early and got some breakfast, then jumped in the Scout to go check out the first big wave of fall yard sales. There wasn’t too much that interested us, although I found a set of 24″ carpenter’s clamps for $8. We spent the rest of the morning working in the yard and cleaning the garage, until Finn got picked up by her aunt and uncle to spend the evening. Jen and I scrambled to make a walnut, gorgonzola, apple and viniagrette salad, get showered, and make it over to a food and beer pairing party where our dish was the second in line. The beer and food were delicious, and we enjoyed staying out late.
Sunday morning we paid for it; all that unfiltered beer gave me a walloping headache. However, it was a beautiful morning, and after devouring breakfast and an Advil, Jen and I sat on the couch in the den with the windows open and indulged in long, uninterrupted adult conversation over coffee until Finn was dropped off.
Later in the day, the girls went on a playdate, so I took the opportunity to brew a Belgian Dubbel I’ve had in the basement since spring. I also set up a tub of water to soak labels in preparation for bottling the Irish Stout that’s been fermenting since late June, but they’re going to take a few days to come off easy.
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One of the projects I’ve been thinking about lately is rebuilding the speakers I built my Freshman year in college. When I originally built it, I cut a sheet of 4×8′ particle board with a circular saw in my apartment living room and screwed them all together with as much precision as I could manage, but they never looked good when they were new. I’m thinking now about a sheet of 4×8′ MDF cut down with precision on a table saw so that butted 45° joins are possible, and spraying it with black satin paint for a smooth finish. I’ll buy some actual rubber feet so they don’t scuff the floors, and this time I can buy premade ports to amplify the bass (and I’ll be able to tune it properly). I dug out the schematics I used to build them in 1990 but I can’t find any of the notes or math I used to calculate the port length, so it’s back to the drawing board to recheck all my calculations. It’s all based on cabinet volume, so I’m thinking I might refactor the sizing to make them narrower and taller to lessen the footprint.
A few weeks ago, I bought a really nice Crumpler camera bag off Craigslist to take better care of my gear. I’d been bumping it around on my shoulder like my old D70, which is dented and scarred, and after one frightening near-drop situation I decided it would be wise to protect my investment. This evening I answered an ad for a Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 lens, and Finley and I drive out to Randallstown and met a nice man in a CVS parking lot to look it over. It’s a replacement for the kit lenses that came with our cameras (Nikon 18-55 f/5.6); it’s a faster pro-level lens so it’ll last much longer than cheaper plastic and add more flexibility to our bag. My strategy is to keep my eye out for good used gear to build up our DX collection until the time when we’re ready to invest in a full-frame kit.
I’m writing this as I sip on a Texas Bock I brewed from an Austin Homebrew recipe; I’m very pleased with the flavor and the color. It worked out to be about 4.5% ABV, and it’s smooth with a hint of caramel that I like very much. It’s lighter than the IPAs I’ve been brewing which makes it more of a session instead of a sipping beer; I tend to have half a glass of IPA after dinner while I can drink a pint of this and not feel intoxicated. It’s also a friendly beer; the Belgian IPA I brewed in the spring guaranteed a dull next-morning headache while this has none. I have to try and squeeze some time in in the next week to brew the Belgian Dubbel I’ve got to be ready in time for Thanksgiving.
Finn and I have been beating the heatwave by sneaking next door to the neighbors’ pool. The house is empty while they sort out the estate, but the daughters told me we can hop in whenever we like. I’m trying to keep it very low-key and keep it to when I know they’re not visiting. I think all those mornings of shoveling snow from the walk paid for themselves. Finn takes to the water like a duck, and I have to drag her out after the sun has dropped behind the trees. Thankfully the water is balmy and warm and comfortable at dusk.
I used some copper wire to separate the coiling on my new wort chiller, and bought some new hardware to connect it up; now all I need is an inexpensive pump to recirculate water and I’ll have the entire rig ready for use. I’ve ordered a Shiner Bock recipe from Austin Homebrew to get something in the kettle before I kick the parade kegs.
This morning, I picked up a 6.5 glass carboy and a bare-bones copper wort chiller on Craigslist for a ridiculously low price.
The wort chiller is just coiled copper tubing, so I’m going to need to source and create the connections to hook it up to a garden hose. A little Internet sleuthing revealed this page: How to Make a Wort Chiller, which has everything I’ll need to find. The wort chiller, plus a cheapo fountain pump, will mean more control over the wort once it’s done brewing.
Wow, this is awesome: Austin Homebrew Supply has free shipping on all their recipe kits. And they have a huge selection to boot. I think I will go shopping on my next payday…
I went through a series of backflips with my kegerator setup in order to have two batches of homebrew ready for the Fourth party. I have three Cornelius kegs, two full-size and one metric, which is a little less than 5 imperial gallons. One of the full-size kegs has been rock-solid dependable, and the other two are flaky in that they don’t seal properly around the lids. I’ve been able to get the second full-size to work up until this weekend, when no amount of trickery, brute force, or cursing could prevent it from spitting, hissing, or foaming my precious beer out around the lid.
Friday night I decided to ditch Keg #2 and transfer it into keg #3, and a preliminary seal test was successful. Upon opening the kegerator I found both kegs sitting in about 2″ of beer. After freaking out a bit, I realized it wasn’t the faulty keg, but a bad connection on the tap connected to the good keg (keg #1), which meant I lost about 6 glasses of IPA to a slow drip.
After fixing the leak, I cleaned keg #3, sanitized it, moved the beer, put it in the kegerator and gassed it, and… it foamed out around the pressure valve. I swapped the lid from Keg #2 out and gassed that with the last of the CO2 in my tank, but still couldn’t get a clean seal. So, at the end of the night, I had two bad kegs, flat beer, and no gas.
At the homebrew store, a kind employee and I went through two replacement kegs before we found one that held a seal properly, and once I got that home everything went much smoother. The hefeweizen is carbing and tastes fine, even after having been moved four times in the last week, so hopefully it’ll stay good until the party.
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In happy house news, several large bits of heavy, pointy metal have now left the property. I enlisted my neighbor to help me hump our old kitchen radiator off the back porch (it’s been there for 6+ years) and lift the boiler from the garage up into the Scout; we then loaded his pickup with chunks of my old Scout top, a skid plate, and other assorted ferrous metals and hauled it all to the recycling center. Where they told us they don’t take metals anymore. We did recycle the copper, aluminum, and other more expensive stuff we had; I got $21 for an aluminum G5 case and several pounds of copper heatsinks. We found another recycling center down the road who takes metal, and ~400 lbs of radiator netted me another $26. $.07/lb is pretty weak, but all of that crap is GONE!
At some point during the year, Finn told her pre-K administrator I brew my own beer, and she offered me a kit her son-in-law was given and never used. It came with a bunch of new gear and a two-year-old Irish Stout kit, the ingredients of which were definitely in need of replacement. I hit the homebrew store in my building to replace the grain and the yeast, and today I broke out my new propane burner and brewed it up. My hefeweizen is in the secondary to clean up before it gets kegged on Tuesday, and the IPA is tapped and ready.
The new burner is fantastic. The stove takes 20 minutes to get the kettle boiling versus about 7 minutes outside on the burner; it’s worth every penny. And, Finn can help me stir the wort!
Saturday was one of those days where the heat sneaks up on you and covers you like an itchy, humid woolen blanket. I started out the day early, and made it to the dump before the line got long and the sun got hot, disposing of cast-off swingset wood, the remainder of the old garage workbench, and two armfuls of hedge clippings. Upon my return the lawn got mowed, and when I was done it was 96° and lunchtime.
After eating we made a quick trip to a landscaping store to price out plants, and by the time we returned all my steam was gone. In a rare bit of wisdom, I laid down for a sweaty siesta on the couch.
After I woke back up, I retreated to the cool basement and took apart Finn’s big bike to troubleshoot the rear wheel, which wasn’t holding air. I also pulled the training wheels off the smaller bike to see if they would fit the larger one—no joy. Right before dinner Mama took to the A/C with a migraine so Finn and I grilled some hot dogs, hitched up the trailer bike and the two of us took a spin around the neighborhood in the cooler evening air. Then we drove the Scout out to Target to find a new tube for her bike and some Round-Up for the driveway.
After I put her to bed, I broke out the kettle and brewed a batch of Hefeweizen for the second parade keg; it should be low ABV and perfect for sipping on a hot Independence Day.
Sunday after church we hung out at the Strawberry Jamboree for an hour or so with friends and squinted up into the drizzle. I had made plans to sell some Scout parts to a fellow out in Reisterstown, and ran out to do that while Mama and Finn worked outside. When I got back they were napping so I mixed up some liquid death and sprayed the driveway in the hopes that it’ll reveal some pavement under all the vegetation.
After dinner we got Finn bathed and dressed and into bed with some books, and when she fell asleep we crept back downstairs just in time to catch Game of Thrones (a friend remarked on Facebook that this episode should have been called Game of Throats). Jen went to bed early again so I broke out my neighbor’s beer gun and filled eight bottles full of Belgian IPA after some experimentation. It’s clear to me now that I need to drain the keg, so I’m going to hook everything back up at some point this coming week and empty out the rest.
I got this pretty present in the mail this week from Northern Brewer: it’s a propane-fired burner for brewing beer. I’m low on propane right now, otherwise I’d test it out with the Hefeweizen kit I just got in the door. I borrowed my neighbor’s beer gun as well, so I’m going to bottle up a bunch of the Belgian IPA and clear out my kegs for the oncoming batches (there’s been a Belgian Dubbel waiting in the wings since last fall, so that will probably be the burner test batch).
This morning Mama, Finn and I all got up unnaturally early independently of each other. I staggered out the door and down to Patapsco State Park to get a half an hour’s hike in before leaving for work. At 7AM the bike trails are cool, quiet, and empty of spandex-clad missiles, which means I can enjoy the sounds of the forest and get my blood pressure up to natural levels. It’s going to take some work, but I’m resolving to hike every morning next week, no matter how sore the weekend leaves me. Hopefully I can turn it into a good habit instead of a dreaded event.
Speaking of bikes, I dropped my ancient Cannondale off at our local bike shop last weekend for some much-needed and long deferred maintenance. The total bill took me by surprise but so did her condition when the mechanic looked her over. They replaced the rear cassette, chain, brake cables, brake pads, and did overall maintenance, and the bike I got back rides like it’s brand new.
One of the things I’ve got planned this weekend is a long tandem ride with Finn on her trail-behind, and if we can fit it in before the rain, I’d like to get her practicing on her bigger bike. We got it at a yard sale the same year we got her first one, and for $5 it was a good deal. Last weekend I scrubbed it down with some car detergent and sanded the rust off with steel wool, and it looks 100% better. The tires are dry-rotted so we have to find some replacements at Target. I’d really like to peel all the Barbie stickers off the metal too, but I think that would take too long…