When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough...

...brew beer.

There's a hurricane evacuation in place here. People are already fleeing town, for something that is 3 days away with a 20% prediction accuracy. I didn't quite know how to react. So when in doubt - relax, don't worry, have a homebrew...and brew! I'm brewing a Saison today. While my neighbor cuts his grass again. Right now I'm in the final 10 minutes of my boil, so I need to get back to the garage.

In the meanwhile, we'll see how things look tomorrow. If we have to hook up the trailer and leave, I hope I can keep the beer cool during fermentation...

I'm looking for cool names for my new creation, please. It should have the word "Gustav" or "Hurricane" or something similar please.

Until the Front Porch evacuates...cheers!

Kalamazoo Konnection

One of the biggest highlights of my brewing hobby is that one special day, about once every month, that I crack open my first beer from the batch I brewed the prior month. Today was that day. I couldn't wait to get home and try my first-of-the-batch Two Hearted Ale; a clone I made of a beer of the same name from Bell's Brewery in Kalamazoo Michagan. Yesterday, I carefully placed my little babies in the kegerator in preparation for today's unveiling. I thought about them all day; little work got done as I dreamt at my desk of Amarillo and Centennial hops wafting from a glass of the clear, pale nectar of the gods. I wasn't disappointed. It was perfect - the balance; the hoppy nose, the bittering flavor of some of the finest agricultural products ever to come out of the northwest. Ahhhhh......I can't wait for the keg to be ready by this weekend.

Note the clarity and the the really great glass that my daughter gave me. The head is a little light, as the beer is actually still conditioning. I haven't the patience to wait for it to finish...

Even the Pope Drinks Beer

I had one of these this summer, albeit in Louisiana. It was pretty tasty. Now, I'm feeling even more enlightened by my imbibement...

Cheers!

The BIG Ad

I watched this in 2005 when it came out. It is the most amazing marketing for beer I've ever seen. Check out the story here if you like.
Turn your speakers up...

I suppose that I should try a Carlton Draught...

Ever Had a Tui?

If their beer is half as good as their marketing, somebody's got to try one of these and let me know how they taste...

Mulate's

We went to Mulate's the other weekend. After the alligator tour. If you want cajun food and authentic, jammin', play that fiddle faster, what did he say in French, momma's got a squeeze box, I can't stop my feet from dancin' live cajun music and you want to bring the whole family, Mulate's is the place to go. Live Cajun music 7 nights per week! And fried catfish. Check out their website for their rich history. If you're ever in Breaux Bridge call us; we'll drop everything and meet you there!

Be sure and leave your business card on the ceiling. I'm not sure if you have to bring your own thumbtack. I kept looking for a yellow card...

The bad news, no micros. We had Heinekens.

Cheers!

Thinkin' With the Left Side of My Brain...

I purchased a sixer of Eel River Pale Ale at Homsie's the other day.

My son-in-law gave me a Boonville beer glass last year.

I thought: Why not combine the two?

What a beautiful photo.

Just think...in about 70 days I can do them both fresh, with oysters...

Where There's a Will, There's Beer...

Mayor Letch is my new hero. Check out the video.
Hey Tracy - he's a Stella man!

Cheers to Frank Letch!

Can You Spot the Gator?

Babs and I visited Avery Island this weekend. You may recognize it as home of Tabasco Sauce. We found out that it has a lot more than that; from the worlds biggest salt dome to egret habitat to a 26 room house that the McIlhenney's lived in after the civil war, to gators. Yep, they got alligators in them south Louisiana marshes. They are the ultimate maters of disguise. check it out below:

It looks like algae, but the swamp here is actually covered by millions of tiny little leaves from tiny little water plants. The gator uses these plants for cover from his unsuspecting prey.

And there he is!

More tiny plants...

And there's another one!

These guys weren't worried about hiding

They actually had signs that read "Please Don't Feed the Alligaotrs". I wonder if alligators have signs that read "Don't Eat the People"?

Two Hearted Ale in the Pail!

Brew day started early in order to avoid the afternoon heat. I started heating the water at 0615 and was mashing by 0700. It was already 82 degrees in the garage. I moved my propane rig outdoors in order to keep the heat from building in the garage.

10 lbs 2-row; 1/2 lb Munich; 1/2 lb Crystal 20L; 1/2 lb Carapils

Heating water for the mash. I mash in the 5-gal coolers

I started with 10 gallons of water from the local market Culligan dispenser; I still need to get a water analysis from town before I’m comfortable brewing with tap water without any adjustments.

The first thing I noticed with my supplies was that there were no Centennial hops. Two Hearted ale is made with 100% Centennial hops! Due to the hop shortage, my supplier had substituted Amarillo hops for the Centennials. Being a forward thinking kind of guy, I had purchased several packages of Centennials some months ago and stored them in my freezer, anticipating their shortage. So I decided to do a mixture of Amarillo and Centennial, saving some of the remaining Centennials for another batch of brew later this year. I used the Centennial for bittering and aroma and used the Amarillo for flavor and dry hopping. It will be an interesting experiment.

These babies are like gold nowadays

Reheating the first runnings

Daddy's little helper

Boil in process

The sparge went quickly, too quickly actually. My final gravity came in about 20 points low and I noted a good deal of residual sweetness still in my spent grains. I should have held the sparge in the grain bed longer in order to rinse all of the sugars. Next time I’ll slow it with a clamp on the outlet of my sparge hose.

I used my counterflow heat exchanger in series with a copper coil immersed in an ice bath in order to get the wort from boiling to pitch temperature in one pass as quickly as possible. Tap water at summer temperatures won’t do the trick. It worked well; I measured the wort at 75 degrees and the waste water at 125 degrees. I collected the waste water and used it to water the plants.

$2.50 gets me 32 lbs of ice at Twice the Ice!

See if you can trace my cooling path (hint: the cornie is just to support the heat exchanger)

These copper coils were covered in ice when I started the cooling process

As stated, my final gravity was a bit light at 1.040. I added some Beano tablets to the secondary today in order to convert some of the residual complex sugars and get a bit more alcohol out of the beer. By the way, the Beano really works – you can watch the yeast come back to life after a day. I’ll leave the Splenda out this time, I used way too much last time and had to dump my beer:(

There’s 5 gallons in the secondary as I type. Preliminary tasting shows it to be a great, hoppy start to a great pale ale. I’ll let it condition for a couple of weeks, then rack half of it to my kegerator and half to bottles.

If you swirl your wort before you open the valve to drain it, the hops will mound in the center of the pot and not get mixed into your liquid

A perfect 5 gallon measure into the primary

My neighbor Brian, who chose to cut his grass with his new mower instead of helping me

A bubbling airlock the next morning signals a successful brew session!

Until I rack to the kegerator, Cheers!

Beer Drinking Birds

These would make great pets. Especially if you could teach them to drive you home from the pub...

Cheers!

PS - here's a little related item for the Dr. Macs of the world...

Schlitz Makes a Comeback!

I haven't had a Schlitz since high school, when we used to get the seniors to drop off a case in the woods on Friday nights. I was 15 when I had my first beer - a Schlitz. It was probably the bad stuff they detail in the article, but hey, I was 15 and it was beer! Maybe I'll give it another try, but I doubt if I'll travel to Milwaukee...



Cheers!

Fat Tire News

It's official; you can now get your Fat Tire in aluminum cans (according to my latest Aluminum Association periodical). I prefer bottles, but I suppose now you can take your New Belgium poolside.

Cheers!