Not So Famous…

There are plenty of reasons why, but for a statement of faith from him, check out this link!

http://www.covenantnews.com/ronpaul070721.htm

Well worth reading.

(To begin, I would seriously like to apologize for taking so long to get this final post up. I had hoped to do it awhile ago, but had a couple problems with the pictures. When I finally did get the time to do something about it, I had just installed Vista, which killed everything I didn’t back up. Hooray for Windows Live Writer, because it apparently saves drafts in My Documents, which I thoughtfully backed up. I thought I had killed the Draft I saved of part 4 of 4, but when I installed Live Writer, I discovered that my drafts are right there. WOOO! In addition, I discovered that in copying my posts from the original single post into multiple smaller posts, the pictures didn’t get copied correctly. :( This meant that when you clicked on the pictures, you just got the same sized picture, which was not my intention. I have since fixed all the pictures in the previous Brew Day posts. If there was a picture that you would have liked to have seen larger, you now can. On to the final post.) :)

Hops - Hops add aroma and bitterness to the finished product. They are used both as a preservative, as well as to cut the sweet maltiness of some beers.

So after it boiled for 15 minutes, we added the hops. Adding hops early in the boil is done to give a hop aroma to the finished product. Adding hops late in the boil adds the bitterness. This is the early (and only) hop infusion to the Scotch Ale. A Scotch Ale should not be bitter…thus, no bittering hops were used. The hops are in a nylon mesh bag to make retrieval of the hops easy!

Then, we dumped them in the boil. Looks like I need a bigger hop bag, to be honest. :)

Now, in hindsight (yet again), I wish I’d made more time for the boil. Because it boiled down pretty darn quickly to my 5 gallon limit. A Scotch Ale is supposed to be boiled for at least an hour and a half from what I’ve read, and longer is preferred. Had I had more time (read: started earlier, DANIEL…) I would have added more water and boiled it down some more. At any rate, I don’t have a good measure of time as to how long the boil lasted, but I would guess a little over an hour, tops.

After the boil comes the cooldown. You cool the wort so that you can pitch the yeast without killing or shocking them. Yeast love to be pitched between 60-80 Degrees F. My recipe said to pitch at 60 degrees F, but to be honest, I would have loved to pitch at about 75 degrees. We had no idea how well our other piece of equipment would work:

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is our homemade Wort Chiller hanging on our back doorknob. (It’s hanging there, because I didn’t really have a nice, clean, flat surface on which to place it while I did the mash and the boil after I cleaned it thoroughly. A Wort chiller is a length of copper tubing, wrapped into a coil, with ends on it where you can attach a hose of some sort. Essentially, it works like a radiator in that the coil is placed into a vat of very HOT liquid. (In fact, it should be boiling so as to sanitize the copper so it doesn’t introduce infections.) Then, cold liquid is passed through the chiller, leeching heat from the surrounding liquid and chilling the hot liquid very effectively.

We made this chiller from copper tubing that a friend already had, and garden hose fittings (compression fittings) that we bought at the hardware store. This thing turned out so well, and no one even lost a finger! I hereby nominate it for inclusion into the Dow and Friends Projects Hall of Fame. Cost of a wort chiller from a store? $90. Cost to us? ($10 for the fittings, and whatever the remnant of Daniel’s copper tubing could have fetched. I’ll tell you right now that it’s not anywhere near the $80 I saved by making this ourselves.) lol

Prior to us making this chiller, we used a bathtub packed with ice water. (Following the Mythbusters’ recommendation on the fastest ways to chill a beer.) It took hours. Brewers recommend that you chill it down much faster than this, so that you can take advantage of what happens when you chill boiling wort quickly. Namely, there are apparently proteins that come out of suspension when you chill wort quickly. In addition, every minute the wort sits exposed to air, is another chance that you’re introducing bacteria or other nasties into your beer. That bacteria will love your wort as much as the yeast will, and won’t taste as good. lol.

This wort chiller worked great. We dropped it from boiling to 75 degrees in about 27 minutes. Needless to say, I was thrilled….no really….ask Erin. :)

This is a yeast starter that I cooked up the day before brewing to give my yeast a much better chance to survive the pitching. Today’s brewers’ yeast comes with plenty of yeast cells. My Wyeast pack said something about 10 billion cells. (Awesome.) I decided to do a starter anyway, and it seemed to work very well, as I got fermentation results within an hour of pitching.

This is us pitching the yeast. We’d just poured the wort into the bucket, making sure to splash it around enough to aerate the wort, making life easier for the yeast.

Yes folks, this is me….in our basement….crouched down. :) I love our basement when beer-brewing is involved. :) Anyway, after pitching the yeast and taking a sample, I got the Original Gravity at about 1.093. Not as much as I was aiming for, but enough to make at least a 130/- Scotch Ale!

This is what it’s about, folks. Right here, I’m looking for signs of fermentation, and within the hour, I had them. (I also topped up the airlock here to help protect against contamination.) The fermentation should be done within a week or so. Flocculation and settling should take another week, maybe. Ultimately, I’m hoping to bottle on the 30th. After that, it’ll be 2-3 months (and longer is better) and we’ll have some stellar ale, I hope!

We had a lot of fun, though this post seems to be more matter-of-fact than most. Much good ale was consumed, and after we set the beer to fermenting, we made corn dogs, which were awesome, as usual! (Also an Alton Brown recipe!) I look forward to the next one!

When I first had this beer, I thought it really wasn’t worth having.  Basically, I believe I said that if the beer tasted this watered down, it would be better to just drink water.  I don’t know if I just had a bad batch or what, but I’m drinking one now, and it’s just tasty.  I can’t recommend it enough.

For those of you who aren’t a fan of wheat beers, I recommend trying this one.  Something about the Belgian processes and the Belgian wheat make for an infinitely drinkable beer.  :)

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

But first, Outstanding Business: I realize I’ve been delinquent in not posting the conclusion to the Brew Day 2007 series.  I don’t know why, but when I wrote out all 4 blog posts, parts 1-3 saved just fine.  Part 4, however, screwed up all my pictures.  So while I have the text of the post saved, I have to re-insert the pictures. Lucky for me, I know what pictures go where.  I just haven’t had time to fix them.  I’ll probably either do it tonight or tomorrow.  :)

Now, to e-Sword.

e-Sword is an excellent piece of free software that allows you to download all kinds of different modules like Bibles, commentaries, devotions, and others. It comes with the King James Version (1611) with Strong’s Concordance.  When you see a Strong’s number, you can hold the mouse over the number, and the Strong’s entry will pop up, so you can see the original Greek or Hebrew and the definition.  I downloaded the English Standard Version of the Bible, as well as Keil and Dilich’s Commentary on the entire Old Testament, Spurgeon’s Treasury of David commentary on the Psalms, Matthew Henry’s Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible, Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening Devotions, the Geneva Bible Study Notes, Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Spurgeon’s All of Grace, Luther’s Concerning Christian Liberty, Doctrinal Works in the Reformed Tradition (Belgic Confession, Canons of Dort, and the Heidelberg Catachism), Fox’s Book of Martyrs, Schaff’s History of the Christian Church, and the Westminster Confession of Faith…all for free.

Free software isn’t worth much if the software isn’t worth anything to begin with, but that definitely can’t describe e-Sword.  From a Parallel View where you can compare up to 4 translations of the Bible, to the fact that each version of the Bible is tied to the same reference, so if you click on a verse in the KJV, and then click the ESV tab, you’ll see the same verse highlighted, to the fact that when you click a verse or word, the tabs for the commentaries and/or lexicons let you know via an unobtrusive icon whether they have anything to say on the verse or word.  For example, look at this screenshot:

I have clicked 2Peter 2:17.  You can see by the icons that the Geneva Study Bible and Matthew Henry have something to say about this passage.

Here, I have selected the KJV (w/Strong’s), moused over a Strong’s number, and gotten its definition.  I could also have clicked the number, and seen it appear in the bottom pane.

What’s more, I can customize this software to look and act exactly as I want it.  It has a Prayer Requests Database built in, and a place for you to enter your own Study Notes.  It really is worth the download, if you’re not already using it.  There are so many tools available for it out there. I know I’m going to use it for preparing our family devotionals.

Man dies after police jolt him with stun gun - CNN.com

Ultimately, the comment that made me want to write about this was this blurb from someone at Amnesty, International:

“The organization has called for police departments to suspend use of the devices pending study of their possible risks.”

Let’s study the possible risks to POLICE OFFICERS if Amnesty, International gets their wish, and police departments lose one of their few normally non-lethal weapons.

You know, the police have a job to do because of certain elements in our society.  I wish people would remember that.

Perhaps Amnesty, International would rather police returned to their other popular weapon…firearms.  I’m not sure, but I THINK that the firearm has a little higher of a fatality rate than 150 people in 6 years.

Don’t be retarded, people.

The Boil - According to Wikipedia, the brewing process "serves to terminate enzymatic processes, precipitate proteins, isomerize hop resins, concentrate and sterilize the wort." In a traditional Scotch Ale, the long boil caramelizes the sugars, and makes for a much more caramel- or butterscotch-like finished product; a hallmark of a good Scotch Ale.

Here I am trying to see how close this wort is to boiling.

Ah, that close. Just so you know, you should NEVER immerse a probe thermometer like what I am using in the above pics completely in any liquid.  The metal part is designed to get wet. The part where the metal meets the cord?  Not so much, despite what Alton Brown instructed me to do in his beer-brewing special. You owe me a probe, Mr. Brown.  (Just kidding, of course.  A.B. is awesome!)  :)

I am the impatient sort, I suppose. I was also concerned that there might be some syrup left on the bottom of the pot. That would have burned, and would have been…not so tasty.

I am master of all I survey. A note, I find that wearing a shirt with a beer brand on it contributes to the ju-ju of the brew day.  (Not really, but that is one of my favorite shirts.)

We realized, after the sample I took cooled down, that we did not have enough gravity to make the Scotch Ale I wanted. I could have made a passable Scotch Ale, but it could not have truly been called a 140/- Scotch Ale.  So we decided that more syrup needed to be added.  This time, we got a picture of it.

When adding syrup to a boil, good stirring is a must. Erin is foregoing her picture taking to help make sure we make good beer.  THAT is taking one for the team!  Thanx, Erin!!!

This is what Amber Malt Extract Syrup looks like when you empty it into the pot; like a black worm.  Mmmmmmm…I’d love to have this stuff on my pancakes, to be honest.

(to be continued…)

So, for my 140/- Scotch Ale, the recipe I was basing my recipe on required me to mash at 158 degrees Fahrenheit for 1.25 hours.  Using this calculator, I calculated that my strike water (the water you pour into the grain) needed to be at 179 degrees F. (Putting 179 degree water into nearly 8 lbs of 65 degree grain gets you a batch of 158 degree mash.)  :) It was pretty darn close, so I didn’t need to add hot or cold water to fix it.

This is us heating the water, while I weighed the grains and tossed them into the mash tun.

That’s the roasted and peated barley. I added a BUNCH more after this.  lol

Once the water was to 179 degrees, we added it to the grain, and were instantly alarmed. To begin with, the mash for a Scotch Ale is supposed to be thick.  This means that we did not need to worry about room.  We only mashed with 9 quarts of water. (2.25 gallons.) However, when we added that water, I thought I was destroying the inside of the mash tun when I started hearing many cracking sounds.  I think now that it was a combination of the sound of grain being immersed in nearly 180 degree water, and the insulation of the cooler expanding in the walls.  It was scary.  In addition, there was much in the way of bubbling, as the air in the space between the grain rose while the water sank into the grain.

This is us wondering if the water level would go down at all.  I am preparing to stir the grain with that monster spatula. BBQ Tools FTW!

Here you can see the insane amount of bubbles I had to deal with. This is after most of the air escaped from the grain bed.

At this point, you can see how halfway through the mashing process, the mash liquor had already turned the color I wanted to see.  When I saw this, I was so happy I took a picture. :)

After draining the mash liquor, this is what I had.  After this point, I added the hot sparge liquor to extract the remaining amount of sugar from the grains.

This is the mash liquor, itself.  Seems a bit dark for Scotch ale, but the sparge liquor will be much lighter. After that, we’ll even top the kettle up with some more water. Color won’t really be an issue, I don’t think.

This is the frothy wort, after adding syrup and turning up the heat. At this point we’re trying to get it to "the boil".

(to be continued…)

Overall, the day went pretty swimmingly. For those who aren’t up on what we were planning, we were brewing a 140/- (140 shilling) Scotch Ale that I had created using a brewing program. Now, we’ve had two brew days before, so for the most part, I knew what I was doing. This one was singularly different for the addition of 2 new pieces of equipment, and 1 new process to the whole experience: the Mash/Lauter Tun and process, and the wort chiller. (Pictures of these newcomers can be found below.)

To begin with, my goal in brewing is to get to the point where I can brew with nothing but grain. This is how beer has been made for centuries, and with modern equipment, even that which has been cobbled together from household parts, there’s no reason why we should not be able to brew superior ales using the same methods. I’ll describe some of these methods here:

Malting - Malting is the process by which grains (in our case, barley) are made to germinate using hot water, and the quickly dried to stop the germination process (Wikipedia, Malt). Now, grain contains a lot of starch.  Starch is not readily usable by the plant, so when the grain germinates (starts the sprouting process), it releases enzymes, which help break the starches up into sugar. However, the process is halted with rapid drying when malting, so the enzymes are there…they’re just not unleashed upon the starches yet.

Now, malting is a more exact process than what I do when brewing, so I don’t foresee myself buying raw barley, and malting it myself.  It’s easier to just buy pre-malted barley from companies who know what they’re doing.  I’m not saying I’ll never try it, mind you…just that I don’t plan on making the equipment to do it myself all the time.  It’s more of a pain than rewarding, from what I can see.  :)

Mashing - Mashing is what you must do to Malted Barley to extract all the fermentable sugars, and THIS is the process that is new to me.  In a nutshell, what you must do to mash malted grain is to hold the grain at a certain temperature in water for a period of time. The temperature of the grain is important to extract the maximum amount of sugars from the barley without extracting harsh tannins from the husk of the grain.  In order to mash, you need a vessel to hold everything, a method for maintaining the necessary heat, and a way to get the sweet mash liquor from the mashing tun to the kettle (called lautering.) This is how it went down.

That is my mashing/lautering setup. The insulated cooler helps keep the temperature of the grain pretty steady.

In this shot, you can see that I chose to go with Denny’s Batch Sparge setup. In short, what this is is a water supply hose (like what connects your water spigots under your sink to your faucet) with the ends and rubber tubing removed.  It’s just the stainless steel mesh jacket hooked directly to a PVC reinforced length of hose. This acts to strain the grain, if you will.  The mash liquor will pass through the hose, while the grain husks (not a good beer ingredient) remain in the mash tun.

This is the PVC reinforced hose I was talking about.  I have put an inline ball valve near the cooler wall, which helps me, obviously, control the flow of water. The water will sit in the grain for as long as possible, and I don’t have to mess with clamps and the like, which would work less well on this hose than the valve does.

The Grain Bill - A good high-gravity Scotch Ale can require around 16 lbs of grain to do it justice. I don’t have the capacity to boil the 8 gallons of wort that THAT much grain would net me. So I did about 7+ lbs. of grain.  I took the original recipe, substituted some Peated Barley (Barley that has been roasted over a peat fire) for some of the Roasted Barley, and fiddled with the various malts until I ended up with a Lovibond rating (a scale measuring the darkness of malts and the finished product) and Original Gravity (density of a liquid relative to water at 60 degrees F) that I was happy with.  This is the grain I was working with.

For the record, that is (from the left) 1 pound of Roasted Barley, 1 pound of Peated Malt, 7 pounds of Pale Malt, and 2 pounds of Carapils. (Carapils is a malt used for pilseners that has been malted, mashed and kiln-fired. Perhaps Rick can help me with this, but I don’t THINK that carapils needs to be mashed, and I may have done better to steep the grain rather than have it in my mash, as I did.  Hindsight is always 20/20, but who knows.)

As I said before, I’ll not be able to hit my target gravity with just grain.  So I’m going to have to add malt extract syrup.  Basically, if someone mashed grain, and then boiled the resulting wort down into a syrup, this is what they would get:

That is 4 pounds of Amber Malt Extract and 7- pounds of Pale Malt Extract.  We’ll add that as we’re bringing the wort to a boil.

(to be continued…)

I’ve been getting requests to post a recap of the brew day, with pictures.  :)  I WILL do this, but part 1 won’t be until tonight, I fear.  The pictures are on Kim’s camera, and while she gave me her memory card yesterday afternoon, I’ve not had time to put the pics on my computer yet.  I’ll get the pics tonight, and I’m hoping to post part 1 at that time.  For now, I’ll say that the day went relatively well, actually.  Until I can post, this story will have to suffice…

So, this morning I’m driving in to work.  Most of you know that I’ve got a 1 hour drive each way, and it’s a nice time to get ready for and wind down from work. This morning was a typical drive: lots of people driving really slow, Bob and Tom on the radio, coffee in hand. Until, that is, I’m driving down West Main St. toward Crows Landing Road.  A nice, straight road, thank the Lord.

So I had just taken a sip of my wonderful coffee, when I looked out the driver’s side window and saw a spider crawling on the inside of the window…

Needless to say, I freaked out.  My impulse was interesting, however.  Normally, I just try to get away as quickly as possible.  It usually involves me running much faster than you’d think a guy my size can run, with my knees hitting my chest from trying to keep my feet off the ground. It’s definitely comical, as Gabe can tell you.  However, when I’m in a car, my impulse changes.  I would expect that I would try and get away from the window, which would involve me ending up in the passenger seat of the car. (A dangerous thing, to be sure, with all the controls for the vehicle staying on the left side of the car.)  I didn’t do that.

What I DID do was to try and drive the truck away from the spider.  So I jerked the wheel to the right, hoping, apparently, that the window with the spider on it would stay where the truck was…  I stayed on the road, but only barely.  I then had to drive straight while looking for something to squish the spider with.  I got into my lunchbox, grabbed my napkin, and squished the spider.

All’s well that ends well, I suppose, but that could have ended very badly. Telephone poles are somewhat immovable…and hard.  :)

(p.s. The spider was small…very small.  Like…an eighth of an inch, small…)

Someone tell Daniel that he’s ruining it.  He’s late…again.  Who knew?

Anyway, we’ll be taking pictures of the day as it progresses so you can see every screwup.  Should be very entertaining.  :)

As soon as Daniel gets here (assuming, of course, that he DOES get here) I will have no time to write, so this will have to suffice until it is finished.