Reloading Homebrew Inventory and Brining Cornish Hens

Now that things are settling down a bit, I’ve had a chance to get back to brewing and cooking.  First on the list was to get a couple homebrews going to restock my homebrew inventory (which was desperately low).  The first brew on the list was a re-brew of my Ruination IPA clone that I did last year (with a few updates from last year’s version).  The second brew is a Chipotle Ale, which is a recipe I saw online based off a loose clone of Rogue’s Chipotle Ale.  I packed both of these brews into one weekend, a couple weeks ago.

Big brewing supply order to cover me for a few batches, and then some.

The Stone Ruination clone that I brewed last year is one of my favorite brews that I have made, and is one of the ones that has gotten the most positive feedback from friends and family.  This beer demanded to be re-brewed.  After making a few tweeks to the recipe (essentially, turning up the IBUs a bit), I had a pretty successful brew day (aside from spilling a little bit of wort when I was transferring it into the carboy, which dropped the potential alcohol level of the brew).  After fermenting for about a week, I transferred it to a secondary fermenter and am going to dry hop it with a couple ounces of Centennial hops.  After tasting a sample from the fermenter last weekend, I remembered why I love this beer so much – the bitter punch from the first addition of hops, the aroma from the finishing hops, and the clean yeast profile – all the signs of a great IPA.  I am also planning on splitting the batch and bottling one half as the regular Ruination, and dry hopping the other half a second time with an ounce of Citra hops and putting it into a Party Pig.  I can’t wait until this one is ready to drink in a few weeks! 

Second on the list – Chipotle Ale.  I decided to do an all-grain half-batch on this one, because if I mess up and put too many chipotles in, I do not want to end up with five gallons of beer that is too spicy to drink.  It was also a good opportunity to do another all-grain batch in my new mash tun.  This beer brewed pretty similar to any other beer, except, I added in about four small, de-seeded, home-grown jalapenos that I roasted/smoked on the grill this summer and then froze.  After chilling the wort down, I added in most of the pieces of home-made chipotles right into the primary fermenter.  After taking a sample from this beer last weekend, I’m pretty excited about it.  The peppers did not seem overbearing at all.  They actually added a subtle smokey flavor to this malty amber.  This one should be going into bottles next weekend and be ready to drink in early- to mid-January. 

Chipotle Ale on the left and Ruination IPA clone on the right.  I can't wait until these are ready to drink!

In addition to brewing up these two new beers, I also kept busy that same weekend by bottling my Bulldog Brew and my second mead.  The Bulldog Brew came out great and is now carbonated and ready to drink, which helped replenish my beer supply.  This rye amber came out pretty close to what I was going for – a well balanced beer with a great malt character from the rye, crystal, and chocolate malts that were used in brewing this ale.  I am also planning on doing a label for this beer with a picture of my American Bulldog Abby, hopefully to come out soon.  :-)  I also bottled up my second small-batch mead, which tasted great from the sample that I took.  More to come on this mead in a few months, after it has conditioned a bit.

Sample of my second small-batch mead, made with local honey.

Taking a cue from Beer Advocate, I decided to make a beer inspired dinner last weekend with Cornish hens and Sierra Nevada Kellerweis.  The dish was inspired by a recipe for doing a beer brine with a turkey that was published in the November issue of Beer Advocate.  The original recipe called for brining a turkey in Allagash Tripel, tangerines, water, honey, salt, fennel, bay leaves, thyme, and a couple other spices for a couple days before baking it for Thanksgiving dinner.  I modified the recipe a bit for a smaller scale and for availability of ingredients, swapped out the Tripel for a few bottles of Kellerweis (I had a bunch of Kellerweis laying around at home) and swapped out the tangerines for oranges.  After brining the hens, I baked the two Cornish hens in a crock with chunks of potatoes, carrots, garlic, and onions in the bottom.  The resulting hens were delicious and moist.  Some stuffing and the veggies from the bottom of the pan rounded out the dish nicely.  This is definitely a dish I plan on making again.  Here are a couple pictures from the dish.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the finished product (great move, John!) but you get the point.

Sierra Nevada Kellerweis - a fantastic hefeweizen to drink and to cook with.

The brine cooking up.

Cornish hens brining up before they got baked.

With the holidays upon us, I wanted to take a moment and wish everyone happy holidays!  I hope everyone has a great time with friends and family and enjoys some time off!  Raise a glass of craft beer to great friends, great family, and happiness during this holiday season!

Song of the Day: “Angels We Have Heard on High” by Bayside

Beer of the Day: Allagash Four

I'm Married!

As a lot of you already know, I got married on November 19^th!!!   I couldn’t be happier to be married to my beautiful wife Theresa!!!  She truly does make me happier than any other person ever could!

The festivities kicked off with the rehearsal at the church (Nativity BVM right in Media) and rehearsal dinner (at Iron Hill in Media) the night before the wedding.   It was really great to have some good quality time with our closest family and friends that helped get us to this point in our lives.  It really did mean a lot of have all of them involved, not only in the wedding, but in our lives in general.  For all of you those involved in the wedding, we really would not be the people we are today without you, so I want to give you all a huge thank you!  After a great celebration with all of those involved in the wedding itself, I headed back to the hotel to spend some time with the guys.  It was a lot of fun to see a lot of my buddies and family from out of town and have a few beers.  I don’t get many chances to see a lot of them, so it was really fun to spend some time with them.  It also helped to make up for some of the time we lost at the bachelor party because of Huricane Irene haha. 

The guys at the rehersal dinner (left to right): by buddy Zorro, by best man Tom, my brother Marty, my brother-in-law Harry, me, my brother Keith, my  buddy Matt, and my buddy Veggie.

The wedding day was a gorgeous autumn day and was perfect for a wedding.  Around 2pm, I found myself standing next to the priest in the beautiful church watching Theresa walk up the aisle to me.  I don’t think I’ve had butterflies in my stomach like that ever in my life! :-)  After a beautiful ceremony, we were married and couldn’t be happier!!!  After posing for a few pictures at the church, the party began in the limo on the way over to Penn Oaks for the rest of the pictures and the reception.  After doing all of the pictures, we were able to relax and have an amazing time at the reception with some of our closest friends and family.  And I can honestly say, I really don’t think I’ve ever danced so much, or had such a good time in my life!  It really was an incredible night!  Here are a few pictures from wedding day:

Theresa and I with Father Belle during the ceremony.

Theresa and I walking down the aisle as husband and wife!

Theresa and I dancing in the middle of the dance floor - this is pretty much where we were most of the night :-)

Oh, this happened a few times throughout the night.  Veggie and I just like to get down on the dance floor!

Thank you so much for all of you who were able to get us to this point in our lives!  Thank you to everyone who was able to share the big day with us, and thank you for your thoughts and prayers to those who were not able to make it to the wedding!

On the Monday after the wedding, Theresa and I flew out to San Francisco for our honeymoon.  Neither one of us had been out to the West Coast in our adult lives, and we had heard lots of great things about San Fran, so we decided to go out there for our honeymoon for ten nights (all those Marriot reward points from my consulting days really paid off).  After settling in to the hotel the first night, we set out to see the sights in the city the next couple days.  After hoping on and off tour buses and walking all over the city for two days, we had seen a lot of the main sightseeing attractions in the city itself, including the Golden Gate Bridge.  Next, we got to have a very non-traditional Thanksgiving by doing a Wine Tour of Sonoma and Nappa Valleys.  As it turned out, there were only three wineries open that day, and we got to see all of them – Jacuzzi (owned by the same family that invented the Jacuzzi hot tub), Cline Cellars, and Hagafen (a kosher winery).  We had a blast on the tour and our tour guide, Vladamir, was awesome!  In keeping with the non-traditional Thanksgiving theme, we had a great dinner in Chinatown. 

The next couple days after that were filled with exploring around Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, and riding the cable cars.  We also had a chance to have some really good seafood at the Wharf.  If you ever find yourself around here, I definitely recommend getting clam or crab chowder in a sourdough bread bowl – its incredible!  To cap the weekend off, we did a really cool night tour of Alcatraz on Sunday.  It was a lot of fun to see this historic prison all light up at night (which was also a little creepy in places).  It also provided some of the coolest views of the city from the top of the island.

Monday brought a cool trip up to the ancient Redwoods in Muir Woods and the beautiful town Sausalito.  On Tuesday, we decided to get a little further outside of the city and rented a car to drive down the coast.  Although it was a very foggy day (which there are plenty of in San Fran), we were able to get South of most of the fog and get some absolutely incredible views of the Pacific coast.  I have never seen anything quite like it – the crashing waves against the cliffs really was breathtaking to see! 

On our last full day there, we did a brewery tour of the very famous and traditional brewery at Anchor Brewing Company.  It was really cool to tour the historic brewery and to see the equipment they use to keep with traditional brewing methods (including using open coolships as the primary fermenter for all of their beers).  For our last dinner in San Fran, we went out with a bang and went to an awesome Italian restaurant called Zingari (a big thanks to the Director of Operations at the JW Marriot who hooked us up with the reservation and a complimentary bottle of wine with dinner!).  After a long day of travel back home the next day, Theresa and I were both ready to be home and relax for a few days before returning to the work grind.

We went to some very cool places when we were in San Fran and I figure I should sum up some my favorite restaurants, breweries, and wineries that we had a chance to experience while we were there, in case you ever find yourself in San Fran looking for a solid place to go or drink to have.  Here they are in no particular order:

·         Zingari Restaurant – Probably one of the best steaks I’ve ever had.  And I love steak.  The service and food were incredible.  The bruschetta we had as an appetizer was incredible, and both of our entrees (the filet and the seafood ravioli) were perfect.

·         Nick’s Lighthouse – A delicious casual seafood restaurant right on the Bay.  The oysters and the chowder were awesome.

·         Jacuzzi Winery – A really nice boutique winery in Sonoma Valley.  It is owned by the same family that invented the Jacuzzi hot tub and a bunch of other patents.  Since they produce smaller quantities and focus on quality, their wines are incredibly flavorful and aromatic.  I highly recommend the Merlot, the Nero D’Avola, and the dessert wine in a chocolate shot (not included in the tasting but definitely worth the $2).

·         Tropisueno  – An awesome authentic Mexican restaurant in San Fran.  Their carne asada and pollo asada were both incredible.  If you’re looking for a really good Mexican dinner and a restaurant with a really cool vibe, check this place out.  The margaritas are great too!

·         Franciscan Crab Restaurant – This place has some outstanding food and has a very nice atmosphere.  I highly recommend their tureens (which is kind of like a seafood stew in a tomato broth) and the sizzling seafood platter. 

·         The Stinking Rose – If you like garlic, eat at the Stinking Rose.  The whole menu and theme of the restaurant is shaped around it.  Their garlic humus is really good (hope you don’t mind garlic breath) and their Italian meatloaf and lasagna were incredible.

·         Anchor Brewing Company – A vacation wouldn’t be complete without a brewery tour, and Anchor Brewing is definitely a cool one to check out.  They use some different equipment (like coolships) than a lot of other breweries do because of their more traditional nature.  One of the other cool things about this brewery is the fact that it is their main production brewery so you get a chance to see pretty much every part of the process, including the bottling line.  While in San Fran, don’t just restrict yourself to their most popular beer, Anchor Steam (which is relatively easy to find in other parts of the country), and branch out to some of their beers that are less-widely distributed.  Make sure to check out their Liberty Ale and their seasonal (I liked their Christmas Ale a lot).

·         Speakeasy Ales and Lagers – A San Francisco brewery.  I had a chance to try a couple Speakeasy beers while out to dinner in San Fran – Prohibition Ale and Big Daddy IPA.  I particularly enjoyed Prohibition Ale.  Check these guys out if you get a chance.

Here are some pictures from San Fran:

Theresa and I at Jacuzzi Winery.  This place had some awesome wines!

Anchor Brewing Company had an awesome tasting room with all sorts of old beer signs and brewing memorbilia from, not only their company, but from a bunch of other old breweries from all over the country.

The jellyfish all lit up in their tank at the aquarium at the Academy of Sciences.  This place was really cool with an aquarium and a self-contained rain forest.

One of the butterflies in the rainforest section of the Academy of Sciences.

Me in front of one of the old walls on Alcatraz.



Alcatraz at night while we were approaching the dock on the ferry.  This was definitely one of the coolest things we did while in San Fran!



 

Desert wine in an edible chocolate shot glass at Jacuzzi Winery - well worth the extra $2!



Me in one of the ancient redwoods at Muir Woods.  I've never seen trees so tall and straight in my life!



The Golden Gate Bridge on one of the foggiest days we were there. 



This is one of the gorgeous views that we had when we were driving along the Pacific Coast.

Theresa and I on the Golden Gate Bridge.  This was on one of the beautiful afternoons that we were there.  The fog would usually clear off by the afternoon most days that we were there.

Well that about sums up the wedding and honeymoon, and now its back to reality (returning to work after being out for two weeks is not fun haha).  I am hoping to be updating this blog a lot more in the coming months and hopefully finally get around to posting some brewing recipes and other goodies up.  I have some brews coming up that I am very excited about and I am planning on brewing like crazy the next couple months (I desperately need to re-stock my supply of homebrew), but more on that in the next post.  Until next time, stay frosty.

Song of the Day: “Stand by Me” by Pennywise

Beer of the Day: Namaste from Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales

There Is, In Fact, Life Outside of this Blog and Beer

Sorry folks, its been awhile since I’ve had the time (or, probably more accurately, the energy) to update this blog.  Considering I’m getting married in a little over a month (very excited!), it probably won’t come as a surprise to any of you that I probably won’t have many posts in any sort of consistent frequency until December.  However, I figured I needed to throw a post up here to at least attempt to update you all on my life the last month or so. 

Life in General:

Wedding plans have been coming together well, and we are getting closer to the big day.  I’m extraordinarily excited to get married to my incredible fiancée Theresa!  I can’t wait to finally tie the knot and go on our honeymoon to San Fran!  We have heard lots of great things about San Fran, and can’t wait to get away for 10 nights just the two of us! :-) 

Other than activities for the wedding, my life has also stayed busy from work.  We just got through a “go-live” where we switched a lot of business units onto the new SAP system we have been configuring and testing.  This is always a hectic time for any IT professional.  However, overall, it has gone pretty smoothly for my team.  Last week I was down at a major plant of ours in Texas to support the users as we switched over to the new system.  Although we did have some issues, there were certainly no more than a typical go-live.  Just enough issues to keep me busy enough to not really be able to do much in Texas other than work-related activities, but not so busy that I was working crazy hours.  It was definitely nice to get through this milestone.

Homebrewing:

So I haven’t really provided much of an update on my oatmeal stout or the pair of single-hop pale ales that I did a while back.  The end results of all three beers were very good.  The two pales gave me a good idea on how the two hops that I was trying out would work.  Of the two, I like the Calypso Pale Ale better (a nose of pear and apple with solid bittering and flavor capabilities while the Sonnet gave a profile more like a UK Golding).  I will probably not use either of these hops again in a single-hop beer, but I think they would both play well with others.  In fact, I am planning on using the Calypso again in a rye amber I am planning on brewing this weekend.  In the future, I will most likely use the Calypso for bittering and dry-hopping, and the Sonnet mostly for finishing and dry-hopping. 

I was very pleased with the way the Fork ‘N Knife stout came out for a first iteration of a house oatmeal stout recipe.  The roast flavor and aroma came through very nicely, the appearance is exactly the opaque black I was looking for, the head retention is great, and the mouth feel is solid.  Definitely some room for improvement though.  I would like to see it have a bit more body with a little bit more chocolate flavor rather than the coffee-dominated roast profile that it has now.  It also seems to be missing something in the middle of the taste.  The roasty finish is about what I want but there isn’t as much of a presence in the middle of the palate.  Overall, I am very pleased with this iteration, but I think it would be even better with a little tweaking to the grain bill.

Although I haven’t had all that much time to brew lately, I have been working on several recipes.  In fact, I will be brewing my first crack at my house rye amber this weekend (named Bulldog Brew).  I’m really excited to brew this one because I’ve been craving a solid amber ale to have on hand for awhile now and this will be the first time I will be brewing with malted rye.  Should be a very tasty brew.

By piecing together spare bits of free time at home, on train rides, and on flights, I’ve also managed to develop several new recipes and concepts that are all ready to brew when I get back from the honeymoon.   I’m basically planning on doing a whole lot of brewing this winter to test out a bunch of these recipes.  Among these recipes, I am also putting together a couple new series of beers that I am very excited about.  One of these will be an annual installment series, while the other will probably be a themed release every few months.  More on those later, but for now, here are the beers that I’m most excited about that are coming up in the next few months:

·         Ruination Clone – I originally did a clone of Stone Brewery’s Ruination IPA last December.  My version of Ruination and Theresa’s Ale are the two beers that I am most proud of the outcomes.  These beers are also the ones that got the best feedback from friends and family that tasted them – by far.  I figure, that pretty much means its time to re-brew this clone and try to improve on it with new techniques and equipment that I have acquired in the last dozen or so brews that I have done since I brewed Ruination last winter.  This time around, I am also planning on doing a double dry-hopped version (probably in a Party Pig), similar to Stone’s very limited double-dry hopped releases that they have done recently.

·         Smoked Porter and Hopbursted American Pale Ale – I am planning on doing a pair of ales for one of the themed series that I mentioned earlier.  I am planning on doing a smoked porter and a hopbursted (a technique where most of the hops get packed in towards the end of the boil) American pale ale.  These beers will be meant to be themed together and, as such, I am also planning on taking half of each batch and creating a blended beer in the secondary.  The result will be each beer alone and a blended beer.  Much more on these beers to come in a couple months.

·         Imperial Stout – Imperial stout is one of my favorite styles of beer and I figure its about time I take a crack at one.  Wait, I’m doing two?  Kind of.  I’m planning on brewing a full batch of imperial stout and splitting the batch in half during the secondary fermentation.  I will ferment one half out as a standard imperial stout, and the other half will get an alternative treatment.  I haven’t landed on a specific treatment yet but I am getting closer.

·         Chipotle Ale – I have been meaning to do a beer with hot peppers for quite some time now but just haven’t had the right timing to do it yet.  This summer I managed to let some of my homegrown jalapeños stay on the plant until they were red and grilled them up to get them nice and smokey and roasty.  I have four or five of these babies in my freezer right now just waiting for a malty home.  I have a recipe together that is rough clone of Rogue’s Chipotle Ale.  I’m very interested to do this beer and can’t wait to see how it turns out.  This is definitely one of those beers that has a chance of either being great, or really terrible.

Other Beer-Related Matters

As always, I have had some great beers over the last few weeks, but the craft beer highlight for me since my last post was definitely a Stone Brewing Company event that Pinocchio’s hosted in late September.  For the event they had a bunch of Stone kegs on tap, including a couple very limited edition kegs – a double-dry hopped Ruination, and their 15^th Anniversary Ale (both of which were incredible!).  In addition to the tap take over, they had a great special where you could buy a limited edition Stone Brewing/Pinocchio’s swing-top growler filled with any of the Stone beers for $25 (except the rarities which were a little more)!  Given the quality of the growler (which on a normal day would retail for $20 empty) and the quality of the beer, this was a great deal!  I also picked up a couple bottles of the Anniversary Ale. 

To go along with these great Stone beers, I also recently got a copy of Stone’s new book The Craft of Stone Brewing Company, which was co-authored by the two main founders of Stone and one of their PR guys to celebrate their first fifteen years.  The book contains four main sections: beer basics, the history of Stone including a beerography (pretty sure that’s not a real word, but oh well) of their releases from the last fifteen years, food recipes from their bistro, and a bunch of clone recipes for some of their beers, including some limited releases and collaborations.  I am through about half of the book and am about to get into the food recipes section.  The book is very interesting and entertaining and I am very excited to read through the recipes section and give a few of the dishes a shot (the ones that I have peaked at so far sound really good!) and try out a couple of the clone recipes.  This book is definitely a must for any Stone fan – especially if you like to cook and brew.

Perfect drinking and reading pairing - both in celebration of 15 years of brewing excellance from Stone Brewing Company.

Video Games:

I have also managed to piece together some time to spend on my other major hobby – video games.  I finally finished up Mass Effect 2 just in time to start playing Gears of War 3.  I just beat the single-player campaign a week and a half ago and I was very impressed with the game.  This is easily the best of the Gears of War trilogy and is a great conclusion to the series.  The story has a great pace to it and the gameplay mechanics are very smooth.  Additionally, the multiplayer modes are all a lot of fun.  Horde mode (where you and your buddies have fend off increasingly difficult waves of Locust) makes a triumphant return, as well as a new mode called Beast mode (basically Horde mode in reverse where the player is the Locust).  Even the Versus mode (their version of standard matchmaking which I was not a big fan of in the first two games) is a lot of fun in this installment.  All in all, Epic created an incredible capstone to one of the Xbox 360’s flagship game franchises.

Well folks, that’s basically the abbreviated version of the highlights of the last few weeks in the world of John Maynard.  I don’t really expect things to slow down until about December.  So, until next time, cheers!

Song of the Day: “Good People” by Jack Johnson

Beer of the Day: Stone Brewery’s 15^th Anniversary Escondidian Imperial Black IPA

Great Times with Great Family and Friends

This past weekend was my bachelor party weekend, which brought several of my close friends and family into town for some celebrating. :-)  It was great to see them all in one place for a couple of reasons.  For starters, it marked the first time I had seen a few of them in a few years.  Additionally, it was really fun to see my buddies from all the different phases of my life – my family, Theresa’s family, childhood friends, college friends, and friends from around where I live now – in one place, having fun together.  It really reminded me of how blessed I am to have so many loving people in my life! :-)

After everyone rolled into town on Friday, we got together for a couple drinks then went to a great Phillies game.  The Phils lost, but it was still a very well played game.  Afterwards, we went back to the hotel room where a bunch of my friends were staying, put on our drinkin’ boots, and did some damage on the alcohol supply of a well-stocked room of beer and liquor.  It was really great to just hang out and catch up with my friends and family who made it down for the weekend!

Some homebrews and a taste of the homeland (a.k.a. Labatt Blue Light and Saranac)

After shaking off the dust from the night before, the original plan for Saturday was to head out in Philly for the day and hit up a couple brewery tours and some great brew pubs throughout the city.  Hurricane Irene had other plans.  Because of the threatening hurricane, we ended up just hitting Iron Hill for lunch and the out-of-town guys ended up leaving a day early.  It was a bummer to have the weekend get cut short a little, but it was still awesome to be able to see so many important people in my life and at least spend a day with them!  Thanks to everyone who was able to make it down for an awesome weekend!

The rest of the weekend was pretty much dominated by Hurricane Irene.  As expected, we did lose power around 10pm Saturday night until early afternoon on Sunday.   However, other than that, we made out pretty well – no major damage or flooding to our apartment or cars.  Overall, it ended up not being as bad as I was expecting. 

Now it’s time to settle in for a pretty relaxing Labor Day weekend.  Most of my weekend will consist of hanging out with Theresa, brewing a beer (an adaptation of Charlie Papazian’s recipe Cherries in the Snow), bottling a small batch of mead, making another small batch of mead, and playing some Mass Effect 2.  Should make for a pretty solid low-key weekend. 

Hopefully be posting again soon with some brew day notes and tasting notes on the two pale ales and the stout that I brewed recently.  Until then, stay classy.

Song of the Day: “Layla” by Eric Clapton

Beer of the Day: Southern Tier’s Pumking  

Low on Beer! Only one solution.

That’s right ladies and gents, time to brew up some beer.  I actually do have a couple cases worth of big beers in storage currently, but I really do not have much in the way of session beers.  I pretty much have a drawer full of homebrews in the fridge (a mix of session beers – mostly hefeweizens – and stronger beers), and that’s about it.  Solution?  Five gallons of oatmeal stout and two half-batches of single-hop pale ales. 

The first half of the solution was brewed about two weeks ago.  Fork ‘N Knife Stout is my first attempt at a very sessionable oatmeal stout.  I had written the partial mash recipe for this a few months ago and finally got around to brewing it.  This was also the first beer to break in my mash tun and wort chiller.  The mash tun worked great without a single leak!  It worked a lot better for controlling the mash temperature than steeping on the stove top or by putting the pot in the oven to maintain temperature.  Mash and sparge done, time to boil.  The boil went as smooth as any other brew I’ve done – only had three additions: 1oz of Centennial at 60 minutes, 1oz of Glacier at 30 minutes, and some Irish Moss at 15 minutes.  Boil done, time to chill.  As expected, the chiller did its thing and got the temperature down in the 80s in no time.  I ended up doing an ice bath for the rest of the temperature drop because the tap water was struggling to get under 80.  I was eventually able to chill it down the rest of the way and pitch the yeast. 

The mash tun as it was draining the wort into the brew kettle, leaving the spent grains behind.

I ended up sticking the carboy right next to the AC unit to make sure it stayed down in the right temperature range.  That really was my biggest obstacle in this brew – the temperature.  In all my infinite wisdom, I decided it would be a good idea to brew on one of the hottest days of the year.  Smart move, John.  There were a few issues with this.  Since I had my supplies shipped to me, the yeast was actually feeling pretty warm from the few days it spent on a delivery truck, despite the fact that I had them add a couple ice packs in with the yeast.  Definitely should have done a starter on this one, but oh well.  After about a day lag, the fermentation kicked in pretty good and had a pretty healthy fermentation.  Another issue with the heat was chilling the wort down.  It’s a lot harder to get the wort down to temperature when the kitchen feels about 100F (it actually probably was up around there – definitely in the 90s I’m guessing).  Heating up a kettle a few times for mash water and sparge water, and doing an hour long boil of three gallons of wort, heats up a kitchen pretty quick.  I had initially intended on doing the pales ales the next day but decided against it since the temperature in the apartment was still recovering from the mass amount of heat I generated the day before. 

I just put this stout into bottles (one Party Pig, and the rest in bottles) this past Sunday.  It did taste pretty delicious from the sample that I took from fermenter.  It definitely had a punch of coffee flavor from the roasted grains but not excessive amounts.  I’m excited to see how it tastes once it is carbonated, but so far, so good.  One regret with this one.  I had originally intended on adding in a couple ounces of cocoa nibs into the Party Pig to impart some chocolate flavor into half the batch.  However, on bottling day, I realized that I forgot to add in the cocoa nibs (or even get them out of storage for that matter) about two seconds after I closed up the Party Pig and activated the pressure pouch.  Wah wah.  Oh well, no big deal. 

A sample of the oatmeal stout before it was bottled.

Where was I to be found this past Saturday?  In my kitchen all day doing my first all-grain batch.  Started off with ten pounds of American 2-row and a half pound of Crystal 60L in the mash tun at about 152F.  After the mash and sparge, I ended up with about six gallons of pale ale wort.  I split this into two three-gallon boils (I ended up draining the mash tun into my bottling bucket to collect the six gallons I needed and then put three gallons into the brew kettle, boiled, chilled, put that batch into the fermenter, then drained the other three gallons into the brew kettle for the second boil since I only have one large brew kettle).  For the first boil I added three additions of Calypso hops (.25oz at 60 minutes, .25oz at 15 minutes, and .5oz at 2 minutes), and for the second boil I added three additions of Sonnet hops (1oz at 60 minutes, .5oz at 15 minutes, and .5oz at 2 minutes).  I am planning on dry hopping each of these with an ounce of each of the respective hops.  I probably won’t bother putting these two through a secondary fermentation since I am looking to get some more beer sooner, rather than later.  Also, the main purpose of these two ales is to showcase the two hops so that I get a better idea of how I want to use these hops in future beers.  I am not too worried if these ales aren’t perfectly clear – John needs to stock his shelves with beer, so he’s not patient enough for a secondary on these two.  :-)  These will probably be bottled in about a week and a half. 

If all goes well over the next few weeks, I should have about three cases of beer and a Party Pig (about the equivalent of a case) ready to drink.  I see some delicious stouts, a couple interesting pale ales, and perhaps a few black and tans in my future.  :-) 

That’s all for now folks, stay frosty.

Song of the Day: “Stand Tall” by the Dirty Heads

Beer of the Day: Iron Hill Media’s Yin Yang

New Maynard!

Big congratulations to my brother Keith and his wife Sueann on the newest addition to their family, Megan Elizabeth!  She was born last night and both Sueann and the baby are healthy!  I'll be cracking open a couple beers tonight to celebrate the newest Maynard! :-)

Song of the Day: "Over the Hills and Far Away" by Led Zeppelin
Beer of the Day: Iron Hill Media's Yin Yang

An Update on Things Non-Beery

The last few weeks have been pretty busy.  Here’s a few of the highlights (excluding brewing activities – another post to follow soon on these).

It has been awhile since I talked about my goals to get back into shape.  To be honest, I fell off that wagon pretty good for a couple months.  While I was still eating decently and maintaining about the same weight, I found that I really wasn’t running or going for hard hikes very often, and as a result, was not really getting in any better shape.  A couple weeks ago I decided to give myself the proverbial kick in the ass and start exercising on a more regular basis.  I still am not in quite as consistent of a routine that I would like, but I have been getting a few runs each of the last couple weeks.  With the summer heat in full swing, I have been trying to get my ass out of bed by 5am at least a few times each week (not fun!) and go for a run.  When I do manage to do this, it has worked out great – I get my exercise done for the day, Abby gets her exercise in before it gets too hot (that little bulldog is not a fan of the heat), and it clears my head and gets me ready for the day.  It really is an invigorating time of day.  There are almost no cars outside, the birds are chirping, and I can often still see the moon out in the sky.  It is a very serene way to start out your day.  Once I smooth out a consistent routine, I will be back in the saddle and on my way to getting back in shape.

I was able to take a couple days off this past weekend to enjoy some time with Theresa and just relax.  This was the first time I have had a chance to take some days completely off from work since January (long overdue).  Theresa and I made our way to Citizens Bank Park to see the Phils play the Giants on Thursday.  The Phillies lost and we got rained on a little bit but we had a lot of fun and had some good seats!



Fun seats in center field!



One of the perks of traveling as much as I was in my old consulting job is that I accumulated a lot of Marriot Reward Points.  These come in handy for last minute plans to go on trips.  The rest of this past weekend turned into one of those situations.  Theresa and I ended up getting a hotel just outside of Atlantic City so that we could go to the Shore to relax, enjoy the beach, and hang out with Theresa’s sister (whose birthday was on Friday – happy birthday Gail!) and some of her other family.  It turned out to be a beautiful weekend and just the relaxation that I needed.  We ended up spending most of our time in a combination of Sea Isle, Avalon, and Ocean City and had a really good weekend! :-)

The last few weeks I have also made an effort to spend a little more time playing video games to catch up on a couple games that I have been meaning to play.  I was finally able to finish off Mass Effect a week and a half or so ago and was very impressed with the game overall.  I loved the RPG balance in the game and loved the story.  Hooked into the story and wanting to play further into the story, I borrowed Mass Effect 2 from my buddy Jim and starting playing it a couple days later.  The second installment is a blast to play but does have some notable differences.  The RPG elements are much lighter in this one (a little too light in my opinion) and the combat seems much faster and forces you to play a bit more aggressively.  I am not far into the game yet so I can’t make a complete judgment on the game but it seems like BioWare has made some noticeable improvements to the series in this installment, as well as some detractions (in my opinion), but overall the game play is very fun and very solid.  The storyline is very well written and addicting so far.  Overall, although I would have liked to see them keep the RPG mechanics closer to the first installment, I am very impressed with this game.  I am trying to get through this one (or at least most of it) prior to October.  Since the end of September will see the release of Gears of War 3 and November will see the release of Halo CE: Anniversary Edition and Modern Warfare 3, the time that I will have for video games this fall, will most likely be spent with these three sequels to three of my favorite game series to date.  More to come on Mass Effect 2 as I get further into the game.

Song of the Day: “Lullaby” by Jack Johnson ft. Matt Costa

Beer of the Day: Yards Brawler

Update: Mash Tun Done

I pulled apart the valve assembly on my mash and switched out a couple seals and put it all back together on Tuesday.  After doing a half-hour leak test, it looks like it is holding a much better seal and I am good to go.  As promised, here are a couple pictures of the finished product.  If all go as planned this weekend, I should be breaking this baby in on Saturday and/or Sunday!

The plastic spigot that was originally on this cooler was replaced with a 3/8" ball valve.

An inside view: I built a little screen filter out of the stainless steel mesh from a washer connector hose.  This should keep the grains out of boil kettle.

Song of the Day: "Good People" by Jack Johnson
Beer of the Day:  Sam Adams Summer Ale

DIY Homebrew Gear Update

Homemade wort chiller and mash tun.  Done and done.  Sort of. 

I spent a decent chunk of my free time this weekend building a couple new additions to my homebrew kit, as I discussed in my last post.  With a shopping list of parts and hardware in hand, I set off to Home Depot to get all the materials I needed.  A couple hours later (it took me forever to find all the stuff I needed and some of the staff their seemed like they were covering areas they don’t normally cover, making it take way longer to find what I needed), I was back in my apartment ready to go. 

The wort (unfermented beer) chiller went pretty smooth.  I ended up getting a 20ft. coil of 3/8” copper to mold into my chiller.  Since the copper came in a nice coil, a lot of the work was done – I only needed to shape it into the size chiller that would fit in my brew kettle.  My 8 qt. stock pot worked like a charm as a nice mold.  After that, all I had to do was bend up the intake and the outtake (so they will be sticking out of the kettle to be able to hook hoses to) to the top of the chiller.  This was where I had to be a little delicate to not kink the piping (which would disrupt water flow through the piping and make the chiller much less efficient) while bending the two ends up.  Since Home Depot did not have the proper size bending tool for me to use (which allow you to bend pipes without kinking), I had to do this by hand.  No worries though, I was able to bend it up fine without kinking the pipe.  After clamping on the hoses and the sink fitting, I was all set to give it a test run.  After a quick leak test and tightening the clamps a bit, I was ready to give it test to see how fast this puppy would cool down a kettle. 

Ready to chill :-)

Fast forward to Sunday.  For the chilling test, I put about three gallons (my normal boil volume) of water into my brew kettle, brought it up to a full boil, then took it off the burner, hooked up the chiller, and started the timer.  This chiller took the boiling water down under 100F in about 10 minutes, which I was very happy about (this will carve a whole lot of time off the ice bath method).  The one tough part was that it only got it down to the mid 70s after 20 or so minutes.  However, after a little investigating, I realized my tap water would only go down to around 74 or 75 this time of the year.  A little problematic if I want to pitch my yeast in the 60s.  Looks like I may have to use an ice bath at the end of the chilling to get it down the last 10 or so degrees.  The other option would be to build a pre-chiller (basically a smaller version of the chiller that you can put in an ice bath that would be upstream from the wort chiller to chill the water further before going into the chiller).  Either way though, this chiller will definitely help me out a lot and cut down the time of my brew day.  The only part I don’t like much is the sink fitting that I used to hook the intake hose up to the sink.  It’s clamped straight to the tubing which makes hooking it up to the sink kind of a pain.  I may end up looking into getting a couple extra pieces that would make this easier but for now I just went with a little bit of a cheaper method.  No biggie though – I can definitely make do with it as is.  Here is the link to the site that I used as my rough design.

One piece of equipment done.  Now, on to the mash tun.  For those unaware, a mash tun is basically a heated or insulated container that you “mash” your malted grains with hot water to extract the fermentable sugars from the grains.  The solution that a lot of homebrewers employ is to convert a water cooler into a mash tun since it is very well insulated.  The basic idea is to swap out the plastic spigot for a ball valve, put a mesh screen or false bottom on the inside opening to keep the grains out of the runnings, and you’re good to go.  Add grain and hot water, let it rest, rinse the grains with more hot water, and you have wort. 

Get home from Home Depot on Saturday.  Take off plastic spigot.  Done.  Start assembling ball valve.  Correctly sized hardware?  No?  Bunk.  Pause until Sunday. 

After going back to Home Depot on Sunday to get the right size washers and o-rings, I was able to finish up the build on the mash tun and do a couple tests.  First test was without the screen on the inside with room temperature water.  Not even a hint of a leak.  Next, I put on the mesh screen I put together from the stainless mesh off of a washing machine connector hose.  Time for a hot water test with the final assembly.  After adding in a couple gallons of hot water into the tun, I noticed a little leaking around the outside of the washer and o-ring on the outside.  Nothing big though – should be easily remedied by either tightening the assembly a bit better (I didn’t have the right size wrench for the ball valve so it is only hand-tightened) or by playing with the o-rings and washers a little bit to get a combo that seals up a little tighter.  Either way, I should be able to fix this up and get a pretty sturdy mash tun for use in all-grain and partial mash batches.  Here is the link to the design that I roughly based my mash tun off of.  They also have a design over there for converting a rectangular cooler into a mash tun.  I'll post a picture of my finished mash tun soon.

I ended up going with a 5 gallon water cooler (which is actually only big enough for enough grain to produce a beer around 6% ABV if you’re doing an all-grain 5 gallon batch of homebrew) for my mash tun due to space, price, and use issues.  No big deal though – since I am still restricted to brewing in my apartment’s kitchen, I will mostly be doing partial mashes and all-grain half batches in this mash tun, giving me plenty of space in this tun.  Occassionally, I will do a full-sized all-grain brew, but this will be pretty rare since I would have to split the wort into two boils since I am brewing on my stove.  In light of this, I am fine with the restrictions of a 5 gallon mash tun for now.  I’ll probably upgrade to a bigger size when I have more space to have a proper all-grain set up.

Song of the Day: “Lay Me Down” by The Dirty Heads (ft. Rome from Sublime with Rome)

Beer of the Day: Sam Adams’ Blackened Hops (Sam Adams Longshot Homebrew Contest Winner)