Archive for the ‘photography’ Category
Carrie came to visit this weekend and gave me a nice break from entirely too much homework. When she leaves, it’s back to the grind for the final stretch of this ridiculous semester. The scary thing is this is probably the least ridiculous semester I will have for the rest of my college “career,” and I’m not even sure my GPA will survive this one.
Carrie, in natural light.
With all commotion last week, I almost completely forgot I had beer fermenting under my stairs! The Adventure Ale (so named because it really doesn’t fit any particular style, nor do I know with any certainty what my fermentables were) had been doing its thing down there for more than two weeks. Given the attenuation expectations of the yeast I used and my final gravity reading of 1.009 (temperature corrected) I decided to go ahead and rack to secondary.
The beer was already very clear, but in an effort to minimize any sorts of sediment I’m going to be using secondary regardless of whirfloc use (or non-use). To my surprise, the time it spent in fermentation calmed the incredible level of hop flavor down a good deal. It still certainly has a hop bite, but that bite is replaced with an interesting malt character on the aftertaste. I don’t know what to think about that, but I imagine with proper carbonation this will end up with a unique mouthfeel. I can definitely live with that.
Gravity and temperature
The last day and a half, or so, has been quite the circus. The post preceding this one managed to have me quoted, in error, as a helicopter pilot by Yahoo! News. Since there was a link within that erroneous article, I’ve managed in excess of 135,000 hits to my server in less than 48 hours. Such a thing is, to me, rather mind boggling.
At any rate, all I have to say about the whole WikiLeaks ordeal has already been said and I will be resuming life as usual. In short, neither my physics nor my calculus-two assignments are going to complete themselves and in the grand scheme of my personal life those are far more important. So, too, are the interactions with people about whom I care a good deal. I’d rather enjoy those at this point and that’s precisely what I will do.
I’m going to leave you now a suggestion to enjoy some photography from a few photographers I enjoy, because this is my blog and I can do that if I want.
In no particular order -
Enjoy!
To understand what this post is even about, you need to understand “The Itis.” To do so, there is really no better way than watching the episode of The Boondocks titled “The Itis.” For a synopsis of this episode, you could always just hit up Wikipedia. In short, when you eat a lot of food and drift off into a sleep not even an explosion can rattle you have “The Itis.”
My best friend, Jordan, and I have been on a quest for the perfect version of The Itis Burger for several months. Each time we change the recipe, I increment my version number. Last night saw version three enter the world. Several people were coming over to watch UFC 111, and I intended to make us all have a battle of our own. A battle against the itis.
Armed with some bison meat, grass-fed beef, bacon, onions, green bell peppers, sliced white mushrooms, baby spinach, whole wheat kaiser rolls, and some Sierra Nevada Porter and Spice brown mustard I set the stage for this battle. Some sausage made it onto the grill with my burger patties, and was also eaten with the burgers. A glorious fight it was. Everyone eating one of the full itis burgers had to take a break, or risk losing to the itis immediately.
The next version will also have at least three meats, and more than one kind of cheese.
The Itis Burger v3.0
It’s been a while since my last brewday, and my good friend Joesph came to town for a few days, so I decided to fix that little problem. A few weeks ago, I decided an IPA would be my next style. Today’s brew, however, is more an Adventure Ale. Why is it an Adventure? I have no idea what is even in it, beyond the hops.
I took a drive down to DeFalco’s, and again spent more than I planned. Two one-gallon glass carboys, with stoppers and airlocks, came home with me. I also picked up a stopper to use when I finally start bottling from the keg. Whoever helped me at DeFalco’s took off grabbing ingredients when I said I wanted to brew an IPA. I failed to get an ingredient list, and I certainly did not get what is in any of their recipe kits online, so beyond knowing I used 1.5 ounces of Columbus hops, an ounce of Centennial hops, and an ounce of Cascade hops – I really couldn’t tell you what I did.
Support materials
Given that I had no idea what was in the specialty grain bag, I just took a SWAG and heated 2 gallons of water to 150°F and steeped for 25 minutes. I definitely got color from the specialty grains, a very dark amber. Anyway, from there I brought my volume up to 6 gallons and stirred in my unknown amount of liquid malt extract (I also don’t know which variety LME I used, I seem to recall seeing pilsner on the side of the barrel it came out of, but who knows). Once everything was dissolved, I kicked up the heat and brought things to a heavy boil.
Steeping Grains
After the foam dropped, in with an ounce and a half of Columbus hops. 40 minutes later, an ounce of Centennial went in, and at flame out an once of Cascade. Something, that’d be my tongue, tells me this was entirely too much alpha acid. Entirely. Too. Much. Makes for good pictures though.
Columbus Hops
All things considered, I will be very surprised if this beer ends up being drinkable at all. That said, it wasn’t a complete waste. Joseph got to experience a brewday and see how things generally go together and make beer. Carrie got to participate too, via Skype, by telling me just how much fun it was to watch “brown water boil.” I will leave the fermenter in the closet, and keep an eye on things, but I am not expecting to get a good beer out of this. Time will tell.
Flickr Slideshow
For a while now, I have been talking about building a “keezer.” If you do not know what that is, allow me to explain. A keezer is a beverage dispensing device housed within a chest-style freezer. Mine serves beer, from 5 gallon soda kegs via two Perlick 525SS faucets. All of the plumbing, kegs, and beer serving hardware for this project came from Jeff over at kegcowboy.com. You might be able to find a better deal somewhere, though I sure couldn’t, but you will not find a nicer guy to do business with. If it has anything to do with kegging, my money is going to Keg Cowboy for sure.
The build was actually quite simple, and can be done for far less than I spent on mine. Impatience won out, and I ended up converting a brand new chest freezer rather than scouring classifieds in search of one that wasn’t three tanks of gas away. In short, get a refrigeration device, some kegs, a temperature controller, faucets, a CO2 system, and plumbing for your fluids. Drill some holes for your faucets and hook up your plumbing. Serve beer.
Perlick 525SS faucets
You didn’t really think I was going to leave it at that, did you?
In the interest of not having to post every single image, I’ll do another slideshow, but first a brief rundown of how everything happened.
First, I bought a G.E. chest freezer from Home Depot, along with some sheet metal for my drip tray, black appliance paint, and some textured paint for the collar. I also bought wood to make the collar (a spacer to increase the vertical clearance inside the freezer – and keep me from having to drill through the side of the freezer). When I got that home, I took the lid off the freezer and sanded the whole freezer.
Building the collar was easy, as I already had the dimensions for the top of the freezer and had the 2′x4′ piece of plywood cut when I bought it. Butt joints won today, and were covered up with wood filler and sanded smooth. Just like it never happened. Since I was mounting the lid to the top of the collar, I decided to reinforce where the lid would attach by gluing and screwing another board in at the mounting point. Insulation was next, adhered by my friend Liquid nails. A few moments with a measuring tape and pencil and I had center marks for my faucet holes. Once all of that was finished, I hit the whole collar with sandpaper and washed it off to apply some cool looking textured paint.
While the collar was drying, I hit the freezer with a few coats of black appliance paint. Sadly I got rushed, a little high (from the fumes, people), and ended up with some drips here and there. Attempting to fix those later was an exercise in failure. Sanding a thick, hard, epoxy paint doesn’t work so well. If only I had a sandblaster. Anyway, it still looks pretty decent so I finished the build by drilling a hole for my temperature controller and leaving the probe in a bottle of water. It won’t get cold enough to freeze the bottle, so I didn’t bother with glycol or anything like that.
The only thing that is incomplete, as of this posting, is my drip tray. I bent, with a hammer, sheet metal in to a box and sealed the corners up. Right now, paint is drying. Tomorrow I plan to mount the drip tray to the keezer and post up a final photo. I do have my keg of German Kölsch on tap #1 at this very moment, and do believe it’s a perfect time to go pour myself a glass.
Flickr Slideshow
A few days ago I picked up a homebrew kegging setup from Keg Cowboy. Today, I put them to use after getting my CO2 tank filled at Katy Propane. Kegging took far less time from start to finish than bottling.
I took the kegs apart, cleaned everything, replaced the O-rings, and then treated both with some more of my 12.5ppm Iodophor solution. From there the process was a lot like bottling. My priming solution (1/3 cup corn sugar in a cup of water) was added to one of the cleaned and sanitized kegs, and I siphoned the beer from my fermenter to the keg. I did manage to make a pretty huge mess, but I’ll solve that problem with a longer section of tubing before I keg another beer. Now that one of the kegs has beer conditioning inside, I’ve got a week or two to actually finish my keezer build. Better get a move on it.
Kegs + Carrie
Well 9 days in bottles isn’t very long, but I couldn’t wait any longer. Knowing that the beer will improve as it ages just makes leaving it alone that much harder. It tastes pretty excellent already!
American Amber Ale
YouTube Video
Monday proved an excellent day for my second 5 gallon brewday. On deck was a German Kölsch from Austin Homebrew Supply. This was from their Haitian Restoration Recipe kit line, to help out the people who lost everything in Haiti.
This time I did a few things different from my first 5 gallon brew, mostly because I needed to save as much time as possible. As always, clean and sanitize everything. Yes, everything. Just do it, stop arguing. It doesn’t take that much time, nor does it cost that much.
Faced with at time crunch, I did not do a full boil this time. 2.5 gallons of drinking water was heated to 155°F in my main brew kettle. In went the half-pound of Carapils® malt to steep for half an hour. The instructions this time around said to cut the heat, but when I did that the cold air outside managed to cool the pot down below 150°F very quickly. Right then, low heat it is.
Steeping Carapils® malt
When my steep time elapsed, I used let the grains drain and added my liquid malt extract. Boil time! A 110,000 BTU jet burner will bring 2.5 gallons of wort to a massive boil very quickly. When I say a massive boil, I mean one so large you end up facing a boilover from 2.5 gallons in a 10.5 gallon pot. Yeah, full power was a bad idea. Good thing I move quickly, and managed to cut heat and get the foaming under control before I had a large problem.
A few short minutes after I cut the heat on, there was a very pronounced hot break. Cue the addition of an ounce of palisade hops for bittering, and the start of my timer. 40 minutes later, I would add half an ounce of hersbrucker hops for flavor. The final 5 minutes of my hour-long boil would see another half ounce of hersbrucker hops for aroma.
Full Boil
Once I had the pot off the burner and in the house, I put my sanitized wort chiller in the pot and stirred with one hand and poured in another 2.5 gallons of water with the other. Temperature dropped quickly. The 8″ strainer I picked up for a few bucks did a great job of keeping the sludge at the bottom of the pot from making its way into my fermentation bucket. With everything properly cooled, and in the bucket, I brought my volume up to the full 5 gallons and gave everything a healthy shake to make sure I had plenty of oxygen in my wort. A gravity reading was also taken, and temperature corrected to 1.049 (a point shy of my target of 1.050). In went the yeast, on went the lid, and in went the airlock.
Right now, the fermentation bucket is under the stairs sitting at a fairly stable (though still too warm) temperature. The job is now in the hands of some White Labs yeast. As Tom Petty once said “the waiting is the hardest part.” Good thing the American Amber Ale is just about ready to chill and drink!
Today, I bottled the American Amber Ale I started a few weeks ago. This is probably the last beer, at least of the 5 gallon variety, of which I bottle the full volume. Kegging is in my future, without a doubt. I will still bottle for transportation, but cleaning and sanitizing that many bottles is just not my idea of a good time at all!
Final gravity was 1.007, down from an original gravity of 1.055. My American Amber Ale will pack a little more punch than is typical of the style, at 6.3% ABV. That, my friends, is not a complaint.
The clarity is pretty excellent, thanks to extra time in secondary (and an auto-siphon rather than tipping it out a spigot). My favorite part is the taste. Unlike my West Coast Pale Ale experiment from Mr. Beer, this beer actually has a nice balance between hop and malt character.
To say I plan on waiting a few weeks to try this with carbonation would be to tell a most uncool lie. I have one bottle that filled enough to get decent carbonation, but not the full monty. In a week or so, it will be popped open and enjoyed. Good chance I take some video of the first pour, like I did last time, as well.
American Amber Ale, with great clarity.