Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Blaand update
I took a sample of the two jugs today. Whey only gravity was 1.020. This would give an ABV of about 1.5%. Whey with honey was 1.016. This ABV would be 11.5%. The whey doesn't taste great. Not horrible but I wouldn't order two of them. The whey plus honey is a little better. It tastes like a shitty dry mead. I guess I'll need to bottle them up later this week and take them to some drinking party.
Friday, July 13, 2018
Blaand
Blaand is fermented whey. It sounds like the most disgusting fermented beverage known to man. So let's make it. To get whey, I need to make cheese. So we will be making cheese today. Then making blaand. This post is more for me to gather my thoughts and come up with a procedure than anything.
Blaand is an old Viking drink from the days of yore. There's a reason it's not too popular anymore. It probably tastes like shit. And any normal man would avoid such hellish creations. But I am not your normal man. Lactose is the sugar in milk and brewers yeast can't digest it. So it will be a trick to break it down into something fermentable. We will use lactaid which is just the lactase enzyme for people to eat who are lactose intolerant.
How you may ask did our Viking brothers achieve fermentation then? Well I have done some homework and have some theories. One is they may have used a SCOBY which stands for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. The bacteria would carry the lactase enzyme to break down the lactose and then the yeast could ferment from that. It would taste fucking gross. Another is that there is an enzyme in the stomach of calves to break down the lactose which makes sense. They used cow stomachs as canteens to store liquids since it would be water proof. They may have figured out that if you store the milk in a calve's stomach for a few days it would then be fermentable. Lastly, there is a yeast that can metabolize lactose into ethanol. It lives in dairy (shocker!). So if you just put whey in a fermenter and wait long enough, I guess you can get drunk off of it. But, also all the bacteria that make lactic acid would be there too. You know, the stuff that makes yogurt and such. So it seems to me it would turn into this putrid acidic nasty liquid that I guess would get you drunk. If you didn't puke it up. Anyhow, we will use some modern science and get something that is safe. And probably tastes bad. And hopefully will get you drunk.
Which brings me to another point. Blaand apparently was like a wine. There's not enough sugar in milk to make wine. So they must have spiked it with something sweet. Probably honey since they were already familiar with mead. We will make two batches. One with just whey and one with whey and honey. Honestly, they probably added the honey so they wouldn't puke when trying to swallow it.
Step 1: Make cheese
Ingredients - 2 gallons of milk. Lemon juice
Equipment - 2 big ass pots. Cheese cloth. Strainer.
Procedure:
1. Put 2 gallons of milk in the first big ass pot. Bring it up to 175F. Stir often to keep from skin forming on top and scorching on the bottom.
2. Remove from heat and add lemon juice. I've seen 1/2 cup per gallon. So for 2 gallons I guess would be a cup. I also see folks say to just add little bits at a time. The curds and the whey should separate.
3. Let it to sit and finish the separation process for 15mins.
4. Get a small muslin bag and put it in a strainer and scoop out some of the curds. Squeeze out as much of the whey as we can. Put it to the side. This will become cheese and we will eat it as a family later.
5. The rest of the curds are unfortunately a by-product for us today. Which is ironic since most of the time when making cheese the whey is the by-product that gets tossed. Line the big cheese cloth over the second pot and pour the contents of the first pot over the cheese cloth. The cloth should catch the curds and the whey should filter out into the second pot.
6. Grab a small sample of whey at this point. We will want it for sampling.
Step 2: Make Blaand
Ingredients - Whey, honey, yeast
Equipment - Fermenters, air locks, flask to rehydrate, pot to boil re-hydrate water, funnel, chuck of styrofoam for temp control.
Procedure:
1. Get the whey to around 100F. Hopefully by now it has cooled down. Add the lactaid to convert the lactose in the whey to fermentable sugars for the yeast. 2 gallons of milk is about 8000g. I'm guessing after we remove the curds we will have 5000ish grams of whey. Wikipedia claims every 100g of whey has 5g of lactose. So 2 gallons has 250g of lactose. So how much lactase do I need? Should be a simple question to answer. Nope. I spent 20mins on this and couldn't get a straight answer. My pills have 9000 FCC Lactase units. Sounds made up. Whatever. It says you can take two. I did read you can't really hurt yourself and take too many. I assume that means within reason. Like don't do the whole box every day. So I'm going to just take a SWAG here and go with 4 tablets for my 2 gallons of whey. We may not convert all the sugar but we will convert some. The instructions say to take more pills after 30 or so minutes so I take that to mean that they denature after that time (assume around 100F cause that's what people are). So we will wait 30mins for the proteins to do their thing. Take a sample and compare to the one we took before conversion and pray that science works.
2. Wait for enzymes to work. Take this time to boil up and cool some water for re-hydrating yeast.
3. Boil whey to kill germs. 15 mins should be fine.
4. Cool whey. Try to get it to 70F. Take this time to re-hydrate the yeast.
5. Transfer whey to two separate 1 gallon fermenters.
6. Add honey to one fermenter. I got 1.5 pounds. That should make a dry mead. 3 pounds per gallon is typically what you want for sweet meads.
7. Add yeast. I got 71B-1122 wine yeast from Cellar Science. Packet claims 1 gram per gallon. Ok. I'll use 1 gram in the honey fermeter and half a gram in the other. I have no idea the nutritional value of whey for yeasts, so I'll add 0.5g of DAP and 1g of FermaidK in each.
8. Move to fermenter. Add styrofoam chunk to fermenter for better temp control.
9. Ferment at 70F.
2:34pm - I needed 2 pots to warm up the milk. It seems 1/2 cup of lemon juice per gallons is perfect. They are sitting now. Minor screw up. I didn't stir one of the pots enough and now there is chunks of burnt milk in there. No problem. We will make cheese for the family from the other pot.
3:25pm - Forgot about ice. I called Ellie and she will bring some later. It looks like we yielded about 1.5 gallons of whey. I'm sure I spilled some along the way. Anyhow I've added the lactaid. So we will wait about 30mins to let it do it't thing. I might stretch it to 40mins. I cooled the whey in the sink and it got down to 95ish. So it may take a little more time to convert. Also they should denature slower. I guess I got time to make fish.
4:06 - The whey has converted to sugar. I'm not saying it all did. But some did. I can taste sugar. So can Ellie. I actually got a little gun shy adding the lactase. I was about to put it in and hesitated for just a second. And then I said out loud "science" and I put it in. I'm pretty proud I used my knowledge of biology and got this to work. Also, I eyeballed the DAP and FermaidK. I just couldn't figure out a sanitary way to get it measured and poured into the fermenters.
4:40 - There are definitely proteins in whey. That shit boiled over while I was taking care of the fish and made a mess everywhere.
5:52 - OG of plain whey measured 1.030. With honey 1.103. The whey plus honey tasted really good.
6:09 - All done. I asked E to get me a 7 pound bag of ice and I screwed that up. We ended up with I'm guessing 1.6667 gallons of whey. It's takes a lot to cool all that down. The whey has a very parmesan taste and smell to it as does the cheese. I made a small cheese wheel and sliced some off for E and Junny. I put a little salt on it and served it up. They seemed to really like it. It really tastes like a cross between the white string cheese and parmesan cheese. Another thing I didn't count on was that the whey was cooled to about 68F but then I put in warm honey. It was warm because it flows out of the container better. That warmed up the whey/honey blend. So it's going to take a bit for the fridge to cool it down. But since it's only 1 gallon it should happen quick.
Blaand is an old Viking drink from the days of yore. There's a reason it's not too popular anymore. It probably tastes like shit. And any normal man would avoid such hellish creations. But I am not your normal man. Lactose is the sugar in milk and brewers yeast can't digest it. So it will be a trick to break it down into something fermentable. We will use lactaid which is just the lactase enzyme for people to eat who are lactose intolerant.
How you may ask did our Viking brothers achieve fermentation then? Well I have done some homework and have some theories. One is they may have used a SCOBY which stands for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. The bacteria would carry the lactase enzyme to break down the lactose and then the yeast could ferment from that. It would taste fucking gross. Another is that there is an enzyme in the stomach of calves to break down the lactose which makes sense. They used cow stomachs as canteens to store liquids since it would be water proof. They may have figured out that if you store the milk in a calve's stomach for a few days it would then be fermentable. Lastly, there is a yeast that can metabolize lactose into ethanol. It lives in dairy (shocker!). So if you just put whey in a fermenter and wait long enough, I guess you can get drunk off of it. But, also all the bacteria that make lactic acid would be there too. You know, the stuff that makes yogurt and such. So it seems to me it would turn into this putrid acidic nasty liquid that I guess would get you drunk. If you didn't puke it up. Anyhow, we will use some modern science and get something that is safe. And probably tastes bad. And hopefully will get you drunk.
Which brings me to another point. Blaand apparently was like a wine. There's not enough sugar in milk to make wine. So they must have spiked it with something sweet. Probably honey since they were already familiar with mead. We will make two batches. One with just whey and one with whey and honey. Honestly, they probably added the honey so they wouldn't puke when trying to swallow it.
Step 1: Make cheese
Ingredients - 2 gallons of milk. Lemon juice
Equipment - 2 big ass pots. Cheese cloth. Strainer.
Procedure:
1. Put 2 gallons of milk in the first big ass pot. Bring it up to 175F. Stir often to keep from skin forming on top and scorching on the bottom.
2. Remove from heat and add lemon juice. I've seen 1/2 cup per gallon. So for 2 gallons I guess would be a cup. I also see folks say to just add little bits at a time. The curds and the whey should separate.
3. Let it to sit and finish the separation process for 15mins.
4. Get a small muslin bag and put it in a strainer and scoop out some of the curds. Squeeze out as much of the whey as we can. Put it to the side. This will become cheese and we will eat it as a family later.
5. The rest of the curds are unfortunately a by-product for us today. Which is ironic since most of the time when making cheese the whey is the by-product that gets tossed. Line the big cheese cloth over the second pot and pour the contents of the first pot over the cheese cloth. The cloth should catch the curds and the whey should filter out into the second pot.
6. Grab a small sample of whey at this point. We will want it for sampling.
Step 2: Make Blaand
Ingredients - Whey, honey, yeast
Equipment - Fermenters, air locks, flask to rehydrate, pot to boil re-hydrate water, funnel, chuck of styrofoam for temp control.
Procedure:
1. Get the whey to around 100F. Hopefully by now it has cooled down. Add the lactaid to convert the lactose in the whey to fermentable sugars for the yeast. 2 gallons of milk is about 8000g. I'm guessing after we remove the curds we will have 5000ish grams of whey. Wikipedia claims every 100g of whey has 5g of lactose. So 2 gallons has 250g of lactose. So how much lactase do I need? Should be a simple question to answer. Nope. I spent 20mins on this and couldn't get a straight answer. My pills have 9000 FCC Lactase units. Sounds made up. Whatever. It says you can take two. I did read you can't really hurt yourself and take too many. I assume that means within reason. Like don't do the whole box every day. So I'm going to just take a SWAG here and go with 4 tablets for my 2 gallons of whey. We may not convert all the sugar but we will convert some. The instructions say to take more pills after 30 or so minutes so I take that to mean that they denature after that time (assume around 100F cause that's what people are). So we will wait 30mins for the proteins to do their thing. Take a sample and compare to the one we took before conversion and pray that science works.
2. Wait for enzymes to work. Take this time to boil up and cool some water for re-hydrating yeast.
3. Boil whey to kill germs. 15 mins should be fine.
4. Cool whey. Try to get it to 70F. Take this time to re-hydrate the yeast.
5. Transfer whey to two separate 1 gallon fermenters.
6. Add honey to one fermenter. I got 1.5 pounds. That should make a dry mead. 3 pounds per gallon is typically what you want for sweet meads.
7. Add yeast. I got 71B-1122 wine yeast from Cellar Science. Packet claims 1 gram per gallon. Ok. I'll use 1 gram in the honey fermeter and half a gram in the other. I have no idea the nutritional value of whey for yeasts, so I'll add 0.5g of DAP and 1g of FermaidK in each.
8. Move to fermenter. Add styrofoam chunk to fermenter for better temp control.
9. Ferment at 70F.
2:34pm - I needed 2 pots to warm up the milk. It seems 1/2 cup of lemon juice per gallons is perfect. They are sitting now. Minor screw up. I didn't stir one of the pots enough and now there is chunks of burnt milk in there. No problem. We will make cheese for the family from the other pot.
3:25pm - Forgot about ice. I called Ellie and she will bring some later. It looks like we yielded about 1.5 gallons of whey. I'm sure I spilled some along the way. Anyhow I've added the lactaid. So we will wait about 30mins to let it do it't thing. I might stretch it to 40mins. I cooled the whey in the sink and it got down to 95ish. So it may take a little more time to convert. Also they should denature slower. I guess I got time to make fish.
4:06 - The whey has converted to sugar. I'm not saying it all did. But some did. I can taste sugar. So can Ellie. I actually got a little gun shy adding the lactase. I was about to put it in and hesitated for just a second. And then I said out loud "science" and I put it in. I'm pretty proud I used my knowledge of biology and got this to work. Also, I eyeballed the DAP and FermaidK. I just couldn't figure out a sanitary way to get it measured and poured into the fermenters.
4:40 - There are definitely proteins in whey. That shit boiled over while I was taking care of the fish and made a mess everywhere.
5:52 - OG of plain whey measured 1.030. With honey 1.103. The whey plus honey tasted really good.
6:09 - All done. I asked E to get me a 7 pound bag of ice and I screwed that up. We ended up with I'm guessing 1.6667 gallons of whey. It's takes a lot to cool all that down. The whey has a very parmesan taste and smell to it as does the cheese. I made a small cheese wheel and sliced some off for E and Junny. I put a little salt on it and served it up. They seemed to really like it. It really tastes like a cross between the white string cheese and parmesan cheese. Another thing I didn't count on was that the whey was cooled to about 68F but then I put in warm honey. It was warm because it flows out of the container better. That warmed up the whey/honey blend. So it's going to take a bit for the fridge to cool it down. But since it's only 1 gallon it should happen quick.
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
HomebrewCon: Portland
Went to the Homebrew Convention in Portland this year with Jacob. He happened to get two beers into the first round. Portland is close enough that it seemed automatic that we should go. If he did medal, it would be super cool to see his name up there and get hardware. I couldn't let him go alone.
We got tickets out of Vegas and drove over Wednesday night and stayed at a "brewery." Not sure about that. Maybe a contract brewery. The beer wasn't great. Then we woke up in the morning and got on a plane to Portland. It was really cool seeing home and then Owens Valley. Then eventually you see things you aren't familiar with. Anyhow we got to the airport no problem and met Tim.
Tim was probably the most entertaining part of the trip. This guy was high off his mind. He was the Lyft driver that Jacob picked up. He drove a white Prius. He was a little chatty and mentioned he was a chef so we started asking him where the best places to eat where. And bless Tim's heart, he had a real hard time trying to remember the names of anything. Because he was high AF. He started to have a hard time driving since he would forget that what he was doing. He would recognize that he needed to get off the freeway, turn on his turn indicator, and while waiting for traffic to make it safe to switch lanes would start talking to us and forget that he was supposed to change lanes. Then the guy suddenly realizes he needs to move over and does so unsafely in a rush. And this repeated the whole drive. He got us there but I wanted out of the car so badly I forgot my backpack. I ran back to the car as he was leaving to retrieve it.
At the hotel Jacob and I tried an early check-in with no luck. They let us check in the luggage which was nice. Then we made our way to the convention center which was about two blocks away. Once there, we got checked in real smoothly and had some time to kill before things started. I think we found our way to the crappy burger joint near the convention center and had a burger and then hit up the expo.
The expo is where the various vendors are to peddle their wares. There were some companies that are automatic to be there and seeing them was no surprise (i.e. White Labs, MoreBeer, etc.). Jacob really scored getting a crap ton of grain, hops, dry yeast, and a giant Blichman metal sign. I can't recall if he left it behind. It was a little big and unwieldy. Some of the coolest stuff are the little guys or guys you don't expect. There was a company there selling a canning system. It was one of the first ones I've seen that looked easy and was reasonably priced. Expensive as hell but that's just what those things cost. There were some yeast companies I had not yet heard of. One from the mid west was super cool. They claimed to have found brewer's yeast in some Nordic country while traveling the Earth like Kane in those Kung-Fu movies and brought it back. It is apparently super hardy and ferments clean in crazy high temperatures. I'll be buying that for sure. I saw the Brewing Network guys. Beverly was not as fat as I thought she would be. Justin is taller than I thought he would be. I shook Justin's hand and told him I enjoy the show. He said thanks for listening. I asked if it was growing old for him yet. He said no. So that's nice that the show will continue on for a bit. I also stalked Mike "Tasty" McDole and said hi. That exchange was awkward. I just wanted to say I was a fan and move on. He asked about the location of Ridgecrest and I asked how well he knows California. I asked because it makes it easy to reference Ridgecrest to other things people know. Anyhow he seemed irritated by the question. In the end I excused myself and he gave me a sticker of him. I thought it was cool. But then later it felt like I was a little kid who bothers the adults so the adults give them meaningless trinkets to get them to piss off. So not sure how I feel about it now.
At some point I bought a shirt and the water book. I wanted to meet John Palmer and get him to sign the book so I creeped around where he was supposed to be and he appeared to be a no-show so I started talking to other authors. There was the lager guy who agreed with me that lagering really doesn't add all that much to the beer. I shared with him that White Labs fermented Mexi Lager at ale temps and I sampled it in their tasting room during a beer trip and it came out clean. Then I moseyed on over to Jamil Z. and talked with him for a bit. I asked how Heretic was and if he had any regrets. He didn't answer it directly and mentioned that he is running a business now. And that if I like brewing beer, then to keep on doing what I'm doing now. I asked a little about my ester problem and he didn't immediately seem to know what it could be. He threw some things out there but nothing really resonated with me. He didn't feel like a high pH would be the reason which my most recent pH experiment sort of backs up. But one thing he did say that was super cool was the best way for him to know what it was would be for him to taste it and that he was willing to do that. So someday I plan to brew shitty beer and find Jamil wherever on the Earth he may be, and take him up on that offer. I gave up on Palmer and went to the expo for a bit and when I came back Palmer was there. But first I stopped to say hi to Chris White. He also didn't have an immediate thought to my ester problem. And he also didn't think that a high pH would be suspect. I would think of anyone, he would know. Lastly I made my way to Palmer and got him to sign the book. All the authors were chill and receptive. Palmer was the most chill. He knew about China Lake. I guess his wife worked there. He also didn't think a high pH would cause fermentation issues and didn't have any immediate thoughts on the cause. So there you go. I got three guys who are well respected all telling me not to look at pH for ester issues. Back to the drawing board I guess.
Sometime in here Jacob and I went back to the hotel to check in. They lost his luggage that we checked in earlier in the morning. I mean really. Come on. They eventually found it. Anyhow, we check out the room and empty out the swag bag a little and make it to the hotel restaurant. I had salad.
Thursday afternoon I found myself attending a session on having a bio lab in the house. It didn't seem that hard. Not sure if I would get a huge benefit with it in my beer since I just plan to buy fresh yeast every time but you never know. Maybe I could use it to check the health of my starters or something. The other session was on next level homebrewing. These were two guys that won the Ninkasi the year before. This was very satisfying to see that they weren't doing much more than I am now.
After that we went to a pizza place. I'm pretty sure stoner Tim eventually told us about it. It was good. Jacob and I split a pie. Then off to the Kickoff party. This party brought commercial breweries to us and lots of them were local. Jacob and I bounced around a little and after a while it starts to all look the same. And that's when we found them. Rosenstadt! If you're not well versed into the west coast beer scene let me educate you on what you will find. IPAs. That's really all you need to know. Oh one brewery may have a stout. One may have sour beer. I can almost guarantee they will be hopped to all hell cause that's how we do here. And I'm not hating on IPAs. I like them fine. I also like vanilla ice cream. And if every time I had dessert, I had vanilla ice cream I eventually be rolling me eyes about it. Especially if everywhere I went someone was trying to shove some of it on me. I mean how interesting can you make the same thing over and over. Rosenstadt makes traditional German beer. They brought a kolsch, a helles, and a dunkel. We tried them all. A couple of times. The tough part was figuring out where they were. They didn't have a tap room. We had to ask multiple times for some damn reason.
Anyhow Jacob and I thought it would be best to cut out early and not get after it too hard. There were still a few days left. So we got back to the room and got to bed. Next morning we found ourselves at the biscuit place for breakfast. That was awesome. We got there just in time. The other Homebrew Con folks were rolling in as we were leaving. We got back to the Convention Center for the morning sessions.
The first session of the morning that I attended was the low O2 session. I honestly thought this was going to be how to brew good beer without infusing the wort with O2. Instead it was about how to keep O2 out of beer during the brewing process. I guess hot side aeration is a thing. And these guys claim it changes the malt profile of your finished beer. It was educational. I didn't feel compelled to adopt anything there. Second thing was boiling science. The big take away on that was that you didn't need a big, open, aggressive boil to drive off DMS. DMS could get driven off by just 20-30 mins of open boil. It was more about a turbulent boil which can be achieved in other ways. Cool. Ok then we sat in the mead talk for a few minutes until Brent called. There wasn't a whole lot to this. Folks who made mead gave us mead to drink and talked about it a bit. Mead is about to be a thing. Mark my words. I'm putting that out there right now. Wanna make a shit ton of money? Start a meadery. I'm serious. It's about to explode. If I wasn't so risk adverse I'd do it tomorrow. On a more practical note, I'll make more mead and enter into competitions.
Then Brent called. He is still driving the same Subaru as when I saw him last. It is on its last leg. Brent drove us to a parking lot downtown and we went to sushi. Here's a pic of us at sushi:
We had a great time catching up. I miss him. This guy hasn't changed. Not a bit. I got worried at some point that Jacob was not involved and maybe felt left out and I felt bad about that since the next hour was just me and Brent chatting it up. He later told me it was cool and he had fun. He may have just been nice. Who knows. After this we went to Ground Kontrol. It's an old school arcade with a bar. If I was in Portland all alone and nothing else to do and no one else to hang with, this is where I would spend my entire day. It was so fun! After that, I made the decision to hit up the location of the Rosensadt beer. I didn't even really bounce this off of Jacob. I just decided that we were doing it! If Jacob is reading this now or ever, hope you didn't mind bro. I got Brent to drive us there and wasn't sure if he was going to hang with us or drop us off and was happy to hear that was going to hang for a bit. We walked on over to said establishment and drank German beer all afternoon chatting the day away. It was seriously one of the best afternoons I've ever had. Drinking good beer with a couple of bros on a beautiful day chatting about whatever came to mind. I had a sampler:
We found our way to another place for food about a block away. I think the guys may have had more beer but I was getting a little drunk and decided to abstain. I did eat meat pie. Then Brent drove us back to the Convention Center and we said our goodbyes. It honestly hurt a little. I know I may never see him again. Not that he's dead or anything. It's just that life happens and I'm probably never making it to Portland again. He's not making to Ridgecrest even though he said he might. Why would he? Although if this is the last time I ever see Brent this was the best memory I'll ever have of us. And that gives me a kind of joy that makes me all teary eyed as I type this now. I hope it's the same for him.
Everyone I talked to I asked what is the one thing I shouldn't miss. They all said the same thing. Club Night. Brent dropped us off just in time. We make our way in and start checking it out. Right outside of the entrance we stopped at the restroom and ran into Palmer again. I shouted at him (as drunk me might do). I think Jacob found it a little endearing. We chatted him up a bit. Anyway, Club Night! It's just a bunch of homebrew clubs pouring their beer. This was valuable in that I tasted the best beer these clubs had to offer and felt a little vindication. My beer is just as good as all this beer. Maybe I will make a run at this competition some year. I retired early. I guess I just went after it a little too hard with Brent and Jacob. I thought sleep was probably the best thing for me. I went back to the room and went to be bed. Oh, I hit up that burger joint on the way. Jacob stayed. I asked if I missed anything and he said no. But he did drink more at the hotel bar and talk to some people.
Saturday morning! Jacob doesn't look good. He's hung over. But he woke up and ran! WTF! We get some breakfast at the hotel downstairs. I thought he might puke. We get to the Convention Center and he hit up the expo to hopefully find beer and drink his way back to life. Which he did. We got there a little late and so missed the first round of sessions. I made it to the second of the morning which was the water talk by Palmer. He really simplified water in brewing. This was the one talk I actually feel like I'm going to incorporate some of into my current brewing process. So from that perspective, it was the best. From another perspective, that of being the most enjoyable, the next session was the best. Ken Grossman is the Sierra Nevada brewing guy. He recounted his tale of becoming a pro brewer. It seemed like it sucked really, really bad. I was extremely impressed by the guts and grit this man had to overcome all the obstacles he came up against. His drive and passion was infectious. He had no money. I never heard him bitch or moan about his situation. Just factually what the situation was and what he had to do. Something he touched on in the Q&A was that he must have had no time for friends or family. His wife and kids would have been strangers to him. I'm surprised she stayed married to him. He told a story about him and his adult son riding a bike race together a few years back. So clearly his son doesn't hate him. He has become "successful" but what did it cost him? I think this is the other barrier I have in life concerning starting a business. Not only am I risk adverse but I want balance in my life.
Then I found my way to some food downstairs and went to the expo for a bit. I linked up with Jacob at some point and we killed time until we got to the awards ceremony. That's what we're here for! Here's us waiting for the results:
He didn't medal in anything. I could tell he was bummed out. He really wanted some hardware. The event wasn't even half done before he wanted to bail. I said sure and we found our way to the knockout party. What's the beer at the knockout party? All the homebrew beer from the competition. That was cool. We drank a little. We ate a little (they had salmon). Then I went back to the room. He stayed for a bit. Once he got back to the room, we went out for some ramen. It was good. Then we went to sleep.
Next morning we get some breakfast at the hotel, get packed, and take the light rail to the airport. Tim was enough. TSA took Jacob's malt extract. Come one TSA enough already. Go away. Are you really keeping me safe. Or are you just an allusion of safety to appease to masses? We got through security and I had some craft spirits at the terminal. And some Dramamine so life was real good. I think we even got sandwiches. Then we got on the plane and sat together in the emergency isle.
Once in Vegas we got to the truck no problem and elected to drive home via Death Valley. This was a first for me. Happy I did it. Maybe never again.
Once I got home I hopped on the scale and found that I was 12lbs heavier than when I left. If you don't know me, I eat pretty clean and workout a lot. So it doesn't take much for the scale to move up. Most of that was water weight from the salty food and salty Pedialyte packets I was jamming down. 8lbs of that that was back off in two days. Anyhow, that's my first Homebrew Conference. I'm glad I went. Not sure if I'd go again. Thanks to Jacob!
We got tickets out of Vegas and drove over Wednesday night and stayed at a "brewery." Not sure about that. Maybe a contract brewery. The beer wasn't great. Then we woke up in the morning and got on a plane to Portland. It was really cool seeing home and then Owens Valley. Then eventually you see things you aren't familiar with. Anyhow we got to the airport no problem and met Tim.
Tim was probably the most entertaining part of the trip. This guy was high off his mind. He was the Lyft driver that Jacob picked up. He drove a white Prius. He was a little chatty and mentioned he was a chef so we started asking him where the best places to eat where. And bless Tim's heart, he had a real hard time trying to remember the names of anything. Because he was high AF. He started to have a hard time driving since he would forget that what he was doing. He would recognize that he needed to get off the freeway, turn on his turn indicator, and while waiting for traffic to make it safe to switch lanes would start talking to us and forget that he was supposed to change lanes. Then the guy suddenly realizes he needs to move over and does so unsafely in a rush. And this repeated the whole drive. He got us there but I wanted out of the car so badly I forgot my backpack. I ran back to the car as he was leaving to retrieve it.
At the hotel Jacob and I tried an early check-in with no luck. They let us check in the luggage which was nice. Then we made our way to the convention center which was about two blocks away. Once there, we got checked in real smoothly and had some time to kill before things started. I think we found our way to the crappy burger joint near the convention center and had a burger and then hit up the expo.
The expo is where the various vendors are to peddle their wares. There were some companies that are automatic to be there and seeing them was no surprise (i.e. White Labs, MoreBeer, etc.). Jacob really scored getting a crap ton of grain, hops, dry yeast, and a giant Blichman metal sign. I can't recall if he left it behind. It was a little big and unwieldy. Some of the coolest stuff are the little guys or guys you don't expect. There was a company there selling a canning system. It was one of the first ones I've seen that looked easy and was reasonably priced. Expensive as hell but that's just what those things cost. There were some yeast companies I had not yet heard of. One from the mid west was super cool. They claimed to have found brewer's yeast in some Nordic country while traveling the Earth like Kane in those Kung-Fu movies and brought it back. It is apparently super hardy and ferments clean in crazy high temperatures. I'll be buying that for sure. I saw the Brewing Network guys. Beverly was not as fat as I thought she would be. Justin is taller than I thought he would be. I shook Justin's hand and told him I enjoy the show. He said thanks for listening. I asked if it was growing old for him yet. He said no. So that's nice that the show will continue on for a bit. I also stalked Mike "Tasty" McDole and said hi. That exchange was awkward. I just wanted to say I was a fan and move on. He asked about the location of Ridgecrest and I asked how well he knows California. I asked because it makes it easy to reference Ridgecrest to other things people know. Anyhow he seemed irritated by the question. In the end I excused myself and he gave me a sticker of him. I thought it was cool. But then later it felt like I was a little kid who bothers the adults so the adults give them meaningless trinkets to get them to piss off. So not sure how I feel about it now.
At some point I bought a shirt and the water book. I wanted to meet John Palmer and get him to sign the book so I creeped around where he was supposed to be and he appeared to be a no-show so I started talking to other authors. There was the lager guy who agreed with me that lagering really doesn't add all that much to the beer. I shared with him that White Labs fermented Mexi Lager at ale temps and I sampled it in their tasting room during a beer trip and it came out clean. Then I moseyed on over to Jamil Z. and talked with him for a bit. I asked how Heretic was and if he had any regrets. He didn't answer it directly and mentioned that he is running a business now. And that if I like brewing beer, then to keep on doing what I'm doing now. I asked a little about my ester problem and he didn't immediately seem to know what it could be. He threw some things out there but nothing really resonated with me. He didn't feel like a high pH would be the reason which my most recent pH experiment sort of backs up. But one thing he did say that was super cool was the best way for him to know what it was would be for him to taste it and that he was willing to do that. So someday I plan to brew shitty beer and find Jamil wherever on the Earth he may be, and take him up on that offer. I gave up on Palmer and went to the expo for a bit and when I came back Palmer was there. But first I stopped to say hi to Chris White. He also didn't have an immediate thought to my ester problem. And he also didn't think that a high pH would be suspect. I would think of anyone, he would know. Lastly I made my way to Palmer and got him to sign the book. All the authors were chill and receptive. Palmer was the most chill. He knew about China Lake. I guess his wife worked there. He also didn't think a high pH would cause fermentation issues and didn't have any immediate thoughts on the cause. So there you go. I got three guys who are well respected all telling me not to look at pH for ester issues. Back to the drawing board I guess.
Sometime in here Jacob and I went back to the hotel to check in. They lost his luggage that we checked in earlier in the morning. I mean really. Come on. They eventually found it. Anyhow, we check out the room and empty out the swag bag a little and make it to the hotel restaurant. I had salad.
Thursday afternoon I found myself attending a session on having a bio lab in the house. It didn't seem that hard. Not sure if I would get a huge benefit with it in my beer since I just plan to buy fresh yeast every time but you never know. Maybe I could use it to check the health of my starters or something. The other session was on next level homebrewing. These were two guys that won the Ninkasi the year before. This was very satisfying to see that they weren't doing much more than I am now.
After that we went to a pizza place. I'm pretty sure stoner Tim eventually told us about it. It was good. Jacob and I split a pie. Then off to the Kickoff party. This party brought commercial breweries to us and lots of them were local. Jacob and I bounced around a little and after a while it starts to all look the same. And that's when we found them. Rosenstadt! If you're not well versed into the west coast beer scene let me educate you on what you will find. IPAs. That's really all you need to know. Oh one brewery may have a stout. One may have sour beer. I can almost guarantee they will be hopped to all hell cause that's how we do here. And I'm not hating on IPAs. I like them fine. I also like vanilla ice cream. And if every time I had dessert, I had vanilla ice cream I eventually be rolling me eyes about it. Especially if everywhere I went someone was trying to shove some of it on me. I mean how interesting can you make the same thing over and over. Rosenstadt makes traditional German beer. They brought a kolsch, a helles, and a dunkel. We tried them all. A couple of times. The tough part was figuring out where they were. They didn't have a tap room. We had to ask multiple times for some damn reason.
Anyhow Jacob and I thought it would be best to cut out early and not get after it too hard. There were still a few days left. So we got back to the room and got to bed. Next morning we found ourselves at the biscuit place for breakfast. That was awesome. We got there just in time. The other Homebrew Con folks were rolling in as we were leaving. We got back to the Convention Center for the morning sessions.
The first session of the morning that I attended was the low O2 session. I honestly thought this was going to be how to brew good beer without infusing the wort with O2. Instead it was about how to keep O2 out of beer during the brewing process. I guess hot side aeration is a thing. And these guys claim it changes the malt profile of your finished beer. It was educational. I didn't feel compelled to adopt anything there. Second thing was boiling science. The big take away on that was that you didn't need a big, open, aggressive boil to drive off DMS. DMS could get driven off by just 20-30 mins of open boil. It was more about a turbulent boil which can be achieved in other ways. Cool. Ok then we sat in the mead talk for a few minutes until Brent called. There wasn't a whole lot to this. Folks who made mead gave us mead to drink and talked about it a bit. Mead is about to be a thing. Mark my words. I'm putting that out there right now. Wanna make a shit ton of money? Start a meadery. I'm serious. It's about to explode. If I wasn't so risk adverse I'd do it tomorrow. On a more practical note, I'll make more mead and enter into competitions.
Then Brent called. He is still driving the same Subaru as when I saw him last. It is on its last leg. Brent drove us to a parking lot downtown and we went to sushi. Here's a pic of us at sushi:
We had a great time catching up. I miss him. This guy hasn't changed. Not a bit. I got worried at some point that Jacob was not involved and maybe felt left out and I felt bad about that since the next hour was just me and Brent chatting it up. He later told me it was cool and he had fun. He may have just been nice. Who knows. After this we went to Ground Kontrol. It's an old school arcade with a bar. If I was in Portland all alone and nothing else to do and no one else to hang with, this is where I would spend my entire day. It was so fun! After that, I made the decision to hit up the location of the Rosensadt beer. I didn't even really bounce this off of Jacob. I just decided that we were doing it! If Jacob is reading this now or ever, hope you didn't mind bro. I got Brent to drive us there and wasn't sure if he was going to hang with us or drop us off and was happy to hear that was going to hang for a bit. We walked on over to said establishment and drank German beer all afternoon chatting the day away. It was seriously one of the best afternoons I've ever had. Drinking good beer with a couple of bros on a beautiful day chatting about whatever came to mind. I had a sampler:
We found our way to another place for food about a block away. I think the guys may have had more beer but I was getting a little drunk and decided to abstain. I did eat meat pie. Then Brent drove us back to the Convention Center and we said our goodbyes. It honestly hurt a little. I know I may never see him again. Not that he's dead or anything. It's just that life happens and I'm probably never making it to Portland again. He's not making to Ridgecrest even though he said he might. Why would he? Although if this is the last time I ever see Brent this was the best memory I'll ever have of us. And that gives me a kind of joy that makes me all teary eyed as I type this now. I hope it's the same for him.
Everyone I talked to I asked what is the one thing I shouldn't miss. They all said the same thing. Club Night. Brent dropped us off just in time. We make our way in and start checking it out. Right outside of the entrance we stopped at the restroom and ran into Palmer again. I shouted at him (as drunk me might do). I think Jacob found it a little endearing. We chatted him up a bit. Anyway, Club Night! It's just a bunch of homebrew clubs pouring their beer. This was valuable in that I tasted the best beer these clubs had to offer and felt a little vindication. My beer is just as good as all this beer. Maybe I will make a run at this competition some year. I retired early. I guess I just went after it a little too hard with Brent and Jacob. I thought sleep was probably the best thing for me. I went back to the room and went to be bed. Oh, I hit up that burger joint on the way. Jacob stayed. I asked if I missed anything and he said no. But he did drink more at the hotel bar and talk to some people.
Saturday morning! Jacob doesn't look good. He's hung over. But he woke up and ran! WTF! We get some breakfast at the hotel downstairs. I thought he might puke. We get to the Convention Center and he hit up the expo to hopefully find beer and drink his way back to life. Which he did. We got there a little late and so missed the first round of sessions. I made it to the second of the morning which was the water talk by Palmer. He really simplified water in brewing. This was the one talk I actually feel like I'm going to incorporate some of into my current brewing process. So from that perspective, it was the best. From another perspective, that of being the most enjoyable, the next session was the best. Ken Grossman is the Sierra Nevada brewing guy. He recounted his tale of becoming a pro brewer. It seemed like it sucked really, really bad. I was extremely impressed by the guts and grit this man had to overcome all the obstacles he came up against. His drive and passion was infectious. He had no money. I never heard him bitch or moan about his situation. Just factually what the situation was and what he had to do. Something he touched on in the Q&A was that he must have had no time for friends or family. His wife and kids would have been strangers to him. I'm surprised she stayed married to him. He told a story about him and his adult son riding a bike race together a few years back. So clearly his son doesn't hate him. He has become "successful" but what did it cost him? I think this is the other barrier I have in life concerning starting a business. Not only am I risk adverse but I want balance in my life.
Then I found my way to some food downstairs and went to the expo for a bit. I linked up with Jacob at some point and we killed time until we got to the awards ceremony. That's what we're here for! Here's us waiting for the results:
He didn't medal in anything. I could tell he was bummed out. He really wanted some hardware. The event wasn't even half done before he wanted to bail. I said sure and we found our way to the knockout party. What's the beer at the knockout party? All the homebrew beer from the competition. That was cool. We drank a little. We ate a little (they had salmon). Then I went back to the room. He stayed for a bit. Once he got back to the room, we went out for some ramen. It was good. Then we went to sleep.
Next morning we get some breakfast at the hotel, get packed, and take the light rail to the airport. Tim was enough. TSA took Jacob's malt extract. Come one TSA enough already. Go away. Are you really keeping me safe. Or are you just an allusion of safety to appease to masses? We got through security and I had some craft spirits at the terminal. And some Dramamine so life was real good. I think we even got sandwiches. Then we got on the plane and sat together in the emergency isle.
Once in Vegas we got to the truck no problem and elected to drive home via Death Valley. This was a first for me. Happy I did it. Maybe never again.
Once I got home I hopped on the scale and found that I was 12lbs heavier than when I left. If you don't know me, I eat pretty clean and workout a lot. So it doesn't take much for the scale to move up. Most of that was water weight from the salty food and salty Pedialyte packets I was jamming down. 8lbs of that that was back off in two days. Anyhow, that's my first Homebrew Conference. I'm glad I went. Not sure if I'd go again. Thanks to Jacob!
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