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)