Quick Pic

From yesterday, the cream stout that I was writing about:

Yum! Brewing my oktoberfest this weekend...

MIA

Well well well, feels good to be back, With a lot of things going on right now the blog wasn't exactly at the forefront of my priority list. So, what's new you may be wondering? Since the last post waaaay back in august, a lot has changed. We were treated to what very well could be the last glorious day of 2009 last Saturday when it was about 75 and sunny. The next day, God decided to turn down the thermostat for MN because it hovered in the 50's all day. It has been that way since and looks like there will be no reprieve until about, ohhh, I'd say April. That's ok though. I love Fall, with the mild temps and change in scenery, I really like the hoody weather for running around town on a saturday. Also, it gets cheaper and cheaper to golf, so we'll be playing nine every now and then until about November. Or whenever it snows.

Well, no big deal. The new house I moved into did not have the boiler turned on until yesterday. I woke up at 5 AM yesterday morning shivering. I could see my breath!

'This shit is unacceptable for what I pay in rent' I thought to myself. I threw on an extra blanket and drew sophie close. She didn't seem to mind the perceived increase in attention. As soon as I got up and got coffee made, I promptly wrote my landlord a short but sweet email imploring her or her husband to get their asses over to the house after work and turn on some heat. (You may be wondering why this could not be done by myself... well, I live in the upper floor of a house and the access to the furnace goes through my neighbors living room to the basement, so gotta respect some privacy, ya know?) Being the good people they are, sure enough I had some heat by 6:00 PM when I got home. The only really weird thing about the arrangement is that I pay for electricity from excel, while the home owner that I rent from pay the gas? Is this strange? As such, they keep the house at 68 for the entirety of winter. Now, 68 is fine, but I want my place to be at least 70 when its sub zero out?

Install a god damn automatic thermostat! I think green! I'm not going to leave it cranked to 75 while I'm gone for half the day! We'll see if this turns out to be a bigger problem than it is. My back up plan is the oven. I turned it on and opened the door a little bit the other morning, and sure enough my kitchen was noticeably warmer by the time I got out of the shower. Genius!

The other focus of this site has been lacking, and that, my friend, is beer. I bought kegs and made a kegerator back in June for ease of storing and enjoying my home brew. Originally, I had been bottling all of the beer I had made. Believe me, bottling 5 gallons of beer in 12 ounce bottles is a pain in the rear. Not only do you have to make sure each bottle is not just cleaned but sanitized, you have to siphon the beer from a bottling bucket, its time consuming, and friggin messy. Also, we add a little priming sugar into the beer before we bottle. This gives the active yeast remaining in the brew something to chew on while we wait for it to carbonate. After the bottles are capped, they must be stored in a cool, dark environment for up to three weeks (depending on beer style or personal preferences) While the yeast work their magic. As the yeast consume the sugar, the beer continues to ferment. We all remember from high school biology that the by-products of fermentation are CO2 and alcohol. it is this two-three week conditioning period that carbs our brew and adds to the final gravity (alcohol content) of the brew.

Anyways, with the kegs, after your brew is done fermenting in your actual primary fermenting buckets/carboy/copper stills you simply gently transfer the nectar (beer) into your keg, attach your hose from the CO2 tank to the keg, crank up the PSI to about 30, and your beer is carbed, chilled, and ready to drink in about 48-72 hours.

Needless to say, kegging is awesome, but the most crucial component to the whole operation is the kegerator. You wouldn't believe how hard it was for Alex and I to get that into the second floor of my house. Unbelievable how awkward and heavy it was to move it up the stairs. Anyways, it took forever but we did it. Somehow. And it is no kind of embarrassing to admit that I FINALLY have beer on tap after a month of having the kegerator in my apartment. Better make good use of it. On tap is a cream stout I made almost two months ago. It had been sitting in a sealed, sanitized keg that was not under pressure for almost a month. Its still pretty good, but would undoubtedly be better had I stored the keg in better conditions before chilling it last week. Pics to come, it's jet black stout with a nice creamy white head. It is called a milk stout because when boiling the wort, we use lactose as an un-fermentable sugar to sweeten the brew a bit, and for it to lend a silky mouthfeel upon drinking. I also added more fermentables during the boil in order to bump the gravity up a bit. I'd say we're sitting at about 5.5% - 5.7% ABV for this brew... the alcoholic notes balances nicely with the silkiness of the brew, and the characteristic dark roasted malts in the grain bill (for stouts) give it that burnt/caramelized taste that is so prevalent in famous stouts such as guinness.

Anyways, pics to come. Thanks for reading.

Up next, my opinions on god's team versus the viqueens this monday, and the nostalgia of a story concerning my brush with death two years ago in honor of the Gopher/Badger game at the bank.

Stay Tuned!

~Bros

(Don't knock the misspelled words and poor grammar, it's early in the morning and I'm too lazy to go back and edit)

A Couple Things...

Just wanted to share a few things even though there's a lot I would like to rant/rave about, here is what's on the forefront of my mind:

How fucking cute is this dog?

It's sunday afternoon, I'm laying on the couch and I look over to see my little sophie pup in serious contemplation mode. What could she be thinking about... belly rubs? squirrels? Beggin' strips? It's probably food...

Which brings me to the next thing I would like to share with anyone reading this. One reason I like brewing beer so much is that it's a lot like cooking, While there are only four ingredients that comprise beer, (water ,hops, fermentable grain, and yeast) there is such a large spectrum of ingredients with each of those ingredients. For Example, you can use the same water, hops, grains, and preparatory methods for two batches of beer, but select two separate yeasts for each batch and you come away with two completely different beers with their own distinct characteristics.

Similarly, were you to use the exact same ingredients for two batches, but prepare each batch different, you get the same result. Maybe that means boiling your wort for fifteen minutes longer, or adding your hops at different times throughout the boil. Either way, minute changes in the recipe and cooking method can sometimes results in completely different beers... This is what primarily drives me to brew better beer, trying to find that perfect combination that results in a delicious elixir fit for gods.

Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that brewing beer is a lot like cooking food, and cooking is one of my hobbys as well. So I'd like to give y'all a simple recipe for making one kick ass pizza that is easy to make and undeniably good...

Ingredients:

2 smallish vine ripened tomatoes

1 6-8 oz ball of FRESH mozzarella cheese

2-3 leaves of Basil

1 can pillsbury pizza dough

I usually keep it simple and just use the above ingredients, however last night I got fancy and added pepperoni for the first time (good choice). Whatever else you choose to put on your pizza, make sure it's fresh! Red pepper, mushrooms, and onions are other fan favorites.

Cooking Directions:

Cut tomatoes into small cubes. Remove the inside, jelly like blobs inside the tomatoes and throw them away. you should end up with two small hand fulls of diced tomatoes.

Do roughly the same thing with the mozz ball. The fresh mozz is kind of gooey, so do not attempt to grate the fresh cheese with a cheese grater. Trust me. Instead, cut the ball into slices, and then cut the slices into balls/gobs/bits of cheese.

Finely slice the basil.

Unwrap the pizza crust from the container. Grease a sheet of tinfoil and lay upon cookie sheet. work the dough into a flat shape of equal thickness on the greased tinfoil. Gently roll up the edges to make a small crust. Lightly salt the entire dough. Brush the crust you made with olive oil. Throw just the dough into a 425 degree oven for approx. 5-6 minutes, the dough should just be getting flaky and hard, but not yet starting to brown. Take the crust out of the oven.

Liberally apply the mozz. It will not cover the dough in its present form, but will envelope the entirety of the pizza as it melts. Next, throw your tomatoes on the crust, followed by the basil, followed by other toppings.

Bake an additional 12-15 minutes. I try and set a small metal measuring cup at the back of the oven and let the pizza bake at a slight incline. Then when I pull it out of the oven, all the juice from the cheese has collected near one end, and I can simply drain the juice off. Otherwise, if you let the juice stand, the crust will not remain crispy for very long...

Cut that bitch up and go to town! Save some for tomorrow as this pizza may even be better coldthe next day. Unless you have a roommate that comes home blasted drunk at 12:30 AM on a sunday and devours your hard earned pizza in three bites, and passes out with shit all over his shirt on the couch. Which happened to me last night. God damn you Alex.

I know it looks a little deformed, I was a few beers deep in preparing this last night...

t(-_-t)

Well Well Well...

I must have some pretty important people reading this because I came home yesterday and...

Voila! ABOUT TIME...

Unfortunately we did not get to witness a pedestrian/cyclist/vehicle and F their day up (we can dream, right?), but on the flip side, I now have the entire width of the road to weave through so I'm pretty pumped about that. I think if I go home tonight and the caution signs are still up I am going to ninja kick them over and be the first to drive on that virgin piece of asphalt.

The small pleasures in life

t(-_-t)

Really Minneapolis?

I really do love this great city. The vibrant, diverse communities, excellent dining, and proximity to so many venues really gives its citizens the freedom to pursue any interest any day of the week. We may pay exorbitant taxes, however we reap the benefits of clean streets, an awesome parks and recreations division, and (relatively) plowed streets to drive on in the winter. However, like any city, Minneapolis is run by a government, and like any government, ours is hampered by bullshit and bureaucracies. Lets take this little gem of a picture here as an example.

Maybe this is OK for 24 hours at most, but we're pushing a week here. Really Minneapolis? Really?!? I'm sure digging up half the street was fun and all, but when it came time to fix it, the constructions workers said 'fuck it! it's 5 o'clock, let's get the hell out of here!'

And I guess the constructions workers got so drunk they just done forgot about it altogether! That's convenient... I guess... right?

It just pisses me off a little bit that all that has been done so far after tearing up the asphalt is haphazardly putting these striped caution signs with a strobe light. Literally, all these things do are act as targets for drunk kids to kick over at night. Every single morning these things are on the fucking ground!

FIX MY GOD DAMN ROAD

I guess the one good thing this has brought to us was a (weak) source of entertainment. It would make my life if I could see some bluehair blindly carom into this thing without a freaking clue as to what just happened. Maybe that's a little cruel, so how about a drunk driver screaming into that abyss? Anyways, my roommate and I sat in our screened in porch having a few beers and praying for a lawsuit inducing accident that we could laugh at.

Actually, the best thing would be to see a cyclist blindly fly off his bike after crashing down into that hole...

I hate bikers.

No luck yet...

About Time I Got This Up...

Check it out, I got this bad boy up and running a few weeks ago but never took the time to post pictures. In a word, it is awesome. I have cold, carbed beer out of a keg only 20 feet from the couch! More to come...

Props to Alex for stenciling our favorite respective teams onto the front of the fridge!

I can't take credit for this...

helped me out a lot this afternoon...

Q: I have keg leak problems. I installed a new main lid o-ring, but I still can't get a good seal. I think I have some leakage through the pressure relief valves as well. I should replace them, but they are rather expensive. 

A: A few ideas about leaky kegs. This is based on my experience working with about 30 of them, both ball-lock and pin-lock. 

First of all, I'm surprised about your problem with leaky pressure relief valves. I've only had to repair one relief valve and that was because the little rubber stopper came unglued from the spring. A drop of superglue fixed it easily. I suggest you just take the reliefs out of the lid and really clean the lids and reliefs with an overnight soak in some TSP [Trisodium Phosphate available at your paint store] followed by much rinsing. When you reinstall them, use a little Petro-Gel or Silicone Grease and I expect you'll be fine. 

As far as lids leaking, you should check both the lid and the keg for little dents. You can bang those out with a hammer. After checking and repairing any dents, you can permanently fix the problem by bending in the little legs of the clamp. This will be difficult and you'll probably need a vise and big pliers. A quick temporary solution is to put dimes under the feet and that will tighten the lid. You don't need much added thickness to make the lid seal tighter. 

Another problem that I've seen is that the popit leaks. Usually the same solution as the relief valve. Take apart and thoroughly soak. Sometimes either there is a small nick in the rubber seal or where it seats inside the post. If that's the case, you'll have to buy a new one. I've also seen problems with the popits either being too loose so they don't seal well or too tight so that it's difficult to install the QD's. If that's your problem, take the disassembled post to your HBS and try the four different types of popits in the post. Over the years, your corny has been repaired many times and probably the wrong popit was installed and is causing the problem. 

And lastly, the o-rings. Change all 5 of them regularly. They are cheap insurance against problems. I buy them by the hundreds from http://www.mcmaster.com. And when you have the keg disassembled, really check it carefully because sometimes double o-rings have been installed by mistake. Or parts of them still remain inside the post. Make sure everything is removed and clean before reassembling. 

McMaster Numbers and Prices on January 2005 
Dip Tube O-Rings [I use the same ones for both pin- and ball-lock kegs] 
9452K172 BunaN #109 Pkg 100/$2.24 
Post O-Rings 
9452K23 BunaN #111 Pkg 100/$2.77 
Lid O-Rings 
9452K218 BunaN #417 Pkg 10/$12.50 

Added later: I found this Canadian firm that sells replacement parts for all the various models of SS kegs. They have parts for some old kegs that I haven't seen sold here in the States. 
http://www.simgo.com/replacem.htm

Brewer Tom

Master Brewer

 

Posts: 6946

Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2001 12:01 am

Location: Hudson WI

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