Well, I've installed myself as the president of a brew club in town. Not because I want to be president of something but because I want a brew club and I know what I want it to look like. So I started one and am doing me best to mold it into that image. My hope is that in a year or so, the club will be taken over by someone more eager and I will get to enjoy culture I established until I die. Anyhow I digress...One thing I wanted for the club was to have an internal homebrew competition and I planned to do it in the fall during a yearly festival. Covid struck and as such we can no longer meet at Flight Line Tap Room (our new home). One thing I thought might bring us together would be to brew together but separately. The AHA Big Brew was May 2nd and the thinking was that we were going to get together to brew until the pandemic arrived. So I thought we could combine these two events and brew the AHA recipe as a club and use that as our internal homebrew competition. We thought we could reach out to our local homebrew shop 100 miles away and throw him some business. The recipe was strange and the ingredients hard to get to Dylan did best to substitute and put together a big ass order and had it shipped to me. I kitted these up and had the guys come over the Friday before and we all sort of brewed together but separate that weekend. Except I have kids. And I need time when they are away to brew. So I picked this Friday since I thought that FedEx would deliver my MoreBeer order which contained a new burner since the old was leaking on Thursday, which they did not. So brew bother Jacob hooked me up with a burner. That's a lot of catching up of my brewing world right there. Ok, here's the recipe:
50.0 6.00 lbs. Maris Otter Great Britain 1.038 4
41.7 5.00 lbs. Pilsener Germany 1.038 2
8.3 1.00 lbs. Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt 1.033 2
1.00 oz. Chinook Pellet 13.00 49.7 60 min.
0.50 oz. El Dorado Pellet 15.00 14.2 15 min.
1.00 oz. Samba Pellet 11.60 0.0 0 min.
0.50 oz. El Dorado Pellet 15.00 0.0 0 min.
1.00 oz. Cashmere Pellet 9.60 0.0 Dry Hop
1.00 oz. El Dorado Pellet 15.00 0.0 Dry Hop
1.00 oz. Samba Pellet 11.60 0.0 Dry Hop
Lallemand Voss Kveik
We will be using distilled water with the following additions to the mash:
10g gypsum
1g epsom salt
1g NaCl
2g Calcium Chloride
We will try to measure the pH but I don't think any of the pH meters will be accurate right now. I have plans to add 1g of lactic to the mash to drop the pH to 5.4. I was going to measure and see then decide if I add it. It may just be a bust and I will have to add anyway.
Junny wants to have the spent grain for baking so I need to remember not to throw things away.
1:45 - It's late. I'm going to be still brewing by the time the kids get back and I feel bad about it. I'm going to have to find a way to make it up to the women. Anyhow, I've boiled the O2 stone, calibrated the thermometers, calibrated the refractometer, measured out my salts, assembled the mash tun, moved around the garage a bit, measured out the acid, calibrated the pH meter (it seems to be working great), and I'm sure other things. I need to heat up my strike water and grind the grain.
2:27 - I've just mashed in. I wanted a lower mash temp since I thought the Cara-Pils would be enough to give the brew body. Lowering the mash temp would also yield more ethanol. So that's nice. Initially the mash was too hot so I added some cool water. And I added too much and ended up about 147. Not tragic though. Next I measured the pH and got 5.0. That's a little low. I wanted 5.4 so this was off by quite a bit. I'm not sure if the brew calculator is off, if I used it wrong, or if I measured wrong. In any case, I am NOT adding additional acid. I did sprinkle a little 5.2 stabilizer in there hoping it would bring it up but that was a fail. I did nothing. So I guess we have what we have, don't we.
3:24 - Draining the last of the wort now. It doesn't taste as sweet as I was hoping. Pre-boil gravity is 1.040 and it should be 1.050. So this beer is a big big miss.
4:24 - Something that I did that maaaay disqualify me from the contest is that I held back on the early hop additions. Since I didn't hit my gravity I didn't have the malt backbone for so much hops. So added about 3/4. Almost done with the boil now.
5:23 - Ok I've cooled the wort and pitched the yeast. This yeast likes to be warm I guess so I'm putting it in my closet. Something I didn't pay attention to was that the yeast wants to be hydrated first before pitching. I noticed the direction on the packet as I was about to cut it open. So I go into the dishwasher and get the glass measuring cup and pour 100ml of water into it. The cup was warm from just having got out of the dishwasher and the water was warm because it was sitting in the garage. The packet indicated 30C so I think I got the temp covered. I forgot to sanitize the cup but it shouldn't be too bad it just came out of the dishwasher. The big screw up was the water. It was the water I was drinking. So all my mouth germs are now in the beer. Soooo, this beer is going to be awful. I guess I had a fun day though. I'm going to clean up now and I think I will clean the kegs while I am at it.
5:45 - O.G will be 1.050. Way off. I wanted 1.060 which I usually get. Was it because I mashed too cool. I don't know. I tasted the sample of wort that I took for the gravity measurement and it was awful. Tasted like burnt rubber.
Friday, May 8, 2020
Friday, November 29, 2019
MoreBeer Dunkleweizen
I'd hoped to squeeze in one more brewing day before the family gets back. I got a Dunkleweizen kit from MoreBeer so let's do this.
Ingredients:
6lbs White Wheat
4lbs 2-row
8oz Caramunich
4oz Pale Chocolate
4oz Carafa Special II
1oz Perle at 60min
GigaYeast Gold Pitch: GY022: British Ale #1 October 10, 2019
We will use the same water as we did on our last dunkle. These salts are added to 10 gallons of distilled:
2g Chalk (CaCO3)
2g Gypsum (CaSO4)
4g Calcium Chloride (CaCl2)
2g Epsom Salt (MgSO4)
1g Salt (NaCl)
Wyeast beer nutrient and Whirlfloc
11:00 - I've just configured my new temp controller, the ITC-308-WiFi. It has most of the functionality of the brewpi and was $40. So, it seemed like a win. Anyhow, it's configured and seems to be working. I'm going to get some food and supplies for the day.
12:24 - I've measured out the salts and boiled the O2 stone. I've calibrated the thermometers. So far all is well. I'm moving to the garage to start setting up there.
1:02 - We have doughed in. The mash temp was initially quite high at 158F but I just added some cool water and it quickly came down to 152F. I had a little leak in the ball valve but just tightened it down real quick and then no problems. The pH measured 5.1 and I couldn't be happier with that. The wind is blowing a little bit and its chilly in here.
1:50 - Running off now. I started mash out at 50mins instead of the usual 60. The sprage water was up to temperature and so I said let's go and didn't bother to look a the stop watch. Another screw up was that I thought I was so clever getting ahead of everything. I got a pitcher full of starsan going for the fermenter parts. I filled the other pitcher with starsan for the therminator. Soooo, I have no pitcher to transfer sparge water or to vorlof. So I grabbed a bowl from the kitchen for those things. Adapt and improvise I guess. One other thing, I think I may be detecting propane gas. Not sure if its in my mind. If not, not sure if it's because the tank itself is leaking or my gear is leaking. Either way, the garage is open so I should live.
2:09 - Run off complete. Pre-boil gravity is 1.040 which is what I would expect from 10lbs of grain.
3:15 - I've got about 15mins to go in the boil and I'm way more ahead then last brew. Things are going ok. The current propane tank kicked so I hooked up the next one and I think I can still detect propane that narrows it down to my equipment. It might be time to get a new burner. If this one is leaking propane then it needs to go. I've got kids to think about. They don't need to be inhaling propane.
3:51 - I was a little too awesome on the cooling. The beer is now 55F and I was shooting for 70ish. Sooo, I might has overdone that. It might be worth investing in an inline thermometer so I know what the temp of the wort is coming out as in real time. Another screw up was the I spilled a bunch of the Giga yeast. So I lost about 1/5 or 1/4 of the yeast on the floor. Life goes on I guess. Cleaning up now.
4:24 - The OG will be 1.048 which is about what I would expect. Note for next time I brew, I need ph4 solution, a new hose, and a new propane burner. I've still got some cleaning up to do but will be done in about 15 mins so this will be the last entry for the brew day.
Ingredients:
6lbs White Wheat
4lbs 2-row
8oz Caramunich
4oz Pale Chocolate
4oz Carafa Special II
1oz Perle at 60min
GigaYeast Gold Pitch: GY022: British Ale #1 October 10, 2019
We will use the same water as we did on our last dunkle. These salts are added to 10 gallons of distilled:
2g Chalk (CaCO3)
2g Gypsum (CaSO4)
4g Calcium Chloride (CaCl2)
2g Epsom Salt (MgSO4)
1g Salt (NaCl)
Wyeast beer nutrient and Whirlfloc
11:00 - I've just configured my new temp controller, the ITC-308-WiFi. It has most of the functionality of the brewpi and was $40. So, it seemed like a win. Anyhow, it's configured and seems to be working. I'm going to get some food and supplies for the day.
12:24 - I've measured out the salts and boiled the O2 stone. I've calibrated the thermometers. So far all is well. I'm moving to the garage to start setting up there.
1:02 - We have doughed in. The mash temp was initially quite high at 158F but I just added some cool water and it quickly came down to 152F. I had a little leak in the ball valve but just tightened it down real quick and then no problems. The pH measured 5.1 and I couldn't be happier with that. The wind is blowing a little bit and its chilly in here.
1:50 - Running off now. I started mash out at 50mins instead of the usual 60. The sprage water was up to temperature and so I said let's go and didn't bother to look a the stop watch. Another screw up was that I thought I was so clever getting ahead of everything. I got a pitcher full of starsan going for the fermenter parts. I filled the other pitcher with starsan for the therminator. Soooo, I have no pitcher to transfer sparge water or to vorlof. So I grabbed a bowl from the kitchen for those things. Adapt and improvise I guess. One other thing, I think I may be detecting propane gas. Not sure if its in my mind. If not, not sure if it's because the tank itself is leaking or my gear is leaking. Either way, the garage is open so I should live.
2:09 - Run off complete. Pre-boil gravity is 1.040 which is what I would expect from 10lbs of grain.
3:15 - I've got about 15mins to go in the boil and I'm way more ahead then last brew. Things are going ok. The current propane tank kicked so I hooked up the next one and I think I can still detect propane that narrows it down to my equipment. It might be time to get a new burner. If this one is leaking propane then it needs to go. I've got kids to think about. They don't need to be inhaling propane.
3:51 - I was a little too awesome on the cooling. The beer is now 55F and I was shooting for 70ish. Sooo, I might has overdone that. It might be worth investing in an inline thermometer so I know what the temp of the wort is coming out as in real time. Another screw up was the I spilled a bunch of the Giga yeast. So I lost about 1/5 or 1/4 of the yeast on the floor. Life goes on I guess. Cleaning up now.
4:24 - The OG will be 1.048 which is about what I would expect. Note for next time I brew, I need ph4 solution, a new hose, and a new propane burner. I've still got some cleaning up to do but will be done in about 15 mins so this will be the last entry for the brew day.
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Cali Mountain Pale Ale
It's been over a year since I've brewed beer. The family is out of town for the week so I took this time to build a nice collar for the keezer. I'll post more about that in a couple of days. For now, I've got a couple of beers that need to get brewed so here we go. First up is a pale ale ingredient kit from More Beer.
11lbs 2-row
12oz Crystal 60L
0.5oz Magnum @60
1oz Perle @30
2oz Cascade @1
1oz Cascase @0
!0 gallons of distilled with the following salts:
4g gypsum
6g calcium chloride
1g epsom
2g nacl
Wyeast beer nutrient. Whirlfloc.
Newyeast. Voss Kveik from Omega Yeast. OYL-061. Date = 26 Sept 2019. LC1C28
1:24pm - I was considering a double brew today. We'll just see how it goes. I'm already getting a really late start on this one. I'm boiling the O2 stone now and measuring out the salts.
1:56pm - Done measuring salts and boiling. Note to self, the scale is in a container. You have to take it out for it to work. I've also calibrated the new pH meter. I'm hungry. Gonna get some food.
3:43 - Doughed in. I had some problems with the ball valve. It was leaking. I needed to tighten it down real good. First time I've had to do that. I overshot the mash temp a little initially. I wanted 152 and got it up to 156. Then I added some cool water and got it down to 152ish. The new pH meter indicates that the mash is 4.9. That's a lot lower than the 5.3 that brewers friend tells me I should be getting. It's possible I measure everything out wrong. It also possible the probe has issues. I have no idea how long the probe sat unused. For fun I measured the distilled water which should be around 5.8 and it was. I re-measured the calibration solution to get 3.9, so it was reading a little low (it should read 4 with the calibration solution). If it is that low, then there's nothing I'm going to so about it. I could add some brewing salts but I think I'll just hang out and see how things turn out.
5:11 - I am boiling now. Pre-boil gravity is 1.040 which seems really low for 11lbs of grain. But I didn't pay very much attention during the sparge because three Mormon boys stopped by and chatted with me for an hour. I told them about how to make beer. They were nice. They tried to get me to come to church for Christmas. I politely declined.
7:57 - I'm cold. I'll update in a bit. But I'm done OG will be 1.048.
8:39 - Took a shower and am eating some chicken now. I'm feeling a little better. Ok. After the Mormons left I scrambled to get the therminator configured. I got real busy cleaning the lines and when I was done with that the brewing was done. It was then that I realized that I hadn't sanitized the therminator itself and so I set to doing that. It's been a year since I brewed and needed time to remember how to connect up the darn thing. So bad time management on my end. Once I got down to actually cooling the wort I ran into an issue in that the pump kept getting filled with air and then would refuse to pump. I have no idea why. But I would constantly need to stop and reconfigure the damn pump to get it to pump. And it's stressful because if the pump stops pumping and I don't notice, then hot wort goes into the fermenter. In the end I over did it since the wort got cooled to 64F. Way lower that what I needed. That's ok. Better than too hot.
The brew day took longer than usual today because it was difficult to get moving since it was so cold in the garage. A winter storm is coming. It's supposed to snow tomorrow morning and will be the first snow in a decade or so here in Ridgecrest. It will also be Thanksgiving so it should be real memorable. Since I made the keezer collar the polyurethane has been off gassing as it cures and leave vapors in the garage that are irritating my lungs so made sure as many doors in the garage were open today and that's what made it so cold. Couple that with the usual splashing of water on me during clean and man I was glad to get the day over. I couldn't imagine performing another brew today.
I must be really rusty. It seemed to take me so long to figure out what to do and how. I missed my mash temp, mash pH, gravity, and mismanaged time. I'm going to try and let it slide of off my back about how badly it seemed to go. Let's just wait and sample the beer. Maybe it will be great. It now lives in Ellie's closet in the large glass fermenter. I hope it doesn't explode yeast/beer all over her clothes. She doesn't deserve that. She left for the week with the kids. It was the nicest thing she could do for me. She's suffering right now with her family in Tracy. She reads these so...love you babe. Thanks!
11lbs 2-row
12oz Crystal 60L
0.5oz Magnum @60
1oz Perle @30
2oz Cascade @1
1oz Cascase @0
!0 gallons of distilled with the following salts:
4g gypsum
6g calcium chloride
1g epsom
2g nacl
Wyeast beer nutrient. Whirlfloc.
Newyeast. Voss Kveik from Omega Yeast. OYL-061. Date = 26 Sept 2019. LC1C28
1:24pm - I was considering a double brew today. We'll just see how it goes. I'm already getting a really late start on this one. I'm boiling the O2 stone now and measuring out the salts.
1:56pm - Done measuring salts and boiling. Note to self, the scale is in a container. You have to take it out for it to work. I've also calibrated the new pH meter. I'm hungry. Gonna get some food.
3:43 - Doughed in. I had some problems with the ball valve. It was leaking. I needed to tighten it down real good. First time I've had to do that. I overshot the mash temp a little initially. I wanted 152 and got it up to 156. Then I added some cool water and got it down to 152ish. The new pH meter indicates that the mash is 4.9. That's a lot lower than the 5.3 that brewers friend tells me I should be getting. It's possible I measure everything out wrong. It also possible the probe has issues. I have no idea how long the probe sat unused. For fun I measured the distilled water which should be around 5.8 and it was. I re-measured the calibration solution to get 3.9, so it was reading a little low (it should read 4 with the calibration solution). If it is that low, then there's nothing I'm going to so about it. I could add some brewing salts but I think I'll just hang out and see how things turn out.
5:11 - I am boiling now. Pre-boil gravity is 1.040 which seems really low for 11lbs of grain. But I didn't pay very much attention during the sparge because three Mormon boys stopped by and chatted with me for an hour. I told them about how to make beer. They were nice. They tried to get me to come to church for Christmas. I politely declined.
7:57 - I'm cold. I'll update in a bit. But I'm done OG will be 1.048.
8:39 - Took a shower and am eating some chicken now. I'm feeling a little better. Ok. After the Mormons left I scrambled to get the therminator configured. I got real busy cleaning the lines and when I was done with that the brewing was done. It was then that I realized that I hadn't sanitized the therminator itself and so I set to doing that. It's been a year since I brewed and needed time to remember how to connect up the darn thing. So bad time management on my end. Once I got down to actually cooling the wort I ran into an issue in that the pump kept getting filled with air and then would refuse to pump. I have no idea why. But I would constantly need to stop and reconfigure the damn pump to get it to pump. And it's stressful because if the pump stops pumping and I don't notice, then hot wort goes into the fermenter. In the end I over did it since the wort got cooled to 64F. Way lower that what I needed. That's ok. Better than too hot.
The brew day took longer than usual today because it was difficult to get moving since it was so cold in the garage. A winter storm is coming. It's supposed to snow tomorrow morning and will be the first snow in a decade or so here in Ridgecrest. It will also be Thanksgiving so it should be real memorable. Since I made the keezer collar the polyurethane has been off gassing as it cures and leave vapors in the garage that are irritating my lungs so made sure as many doors in the garage were open today and that's what made it so cold. Couple that with the usual splashing of water on me during clean and man I was glad to get the day over. I couldn't imagine performing another brew today.
I must be really rusty. It seemed to take me so long to figure out what to do and how. I missed my mash temp, mash pH, gravity, and mismanaged time. I'm going to try and let it slide of off my back about how badly it seemed to go. Let's just wait and sample the beer. Maybe it will be great. It now lives in Ellie's closet in the large glass fermenter. I hope it doesn't explode yeast/beer all over her clothes. She doesn't deserve that. She left for the week with the kids. It was the nicest thing she could do for me. She's suffering right now with her family in Tracy. She reads these so...love you babe. Thanks!
Friday, October 12, 2018
Blonde Beer with Extra Special Malt
Bugsy got kicked out of school today for beating up other children and then being uncontrollable. My mom wanted to hang with him today anyway so Ellie scooped him up and took him there. He's only been in school a month and has been suspended!
Also, Ellie and I adopted another little. Lucas Maximo. He's about 5 weeks now. We got to spend lots of time with the bios in the hospital. They are good people.
We will use the same water profile as the last brew with Nate. I thought the beer came out good. The new malt should drop the pH a little more than the 5.4 it was when I brewed with Nate. Also we will try some dry yeast from Fermentis since I got a bunch of that for free at the Homebrew Con. Those guys claim that I should pitch directly and not rehydrate. So I'll try that. Also, I'm giving Saaz hops another go. It was a variable in the pH experiment. If we make apple ester beer then we know hops is a non factor.
9lbs 2 row
1lb C15
3oz Extra Special Malt
1oz Saaz 4.4%AA
Safale US-05 - Expires 07/2020 - Serial # 33159 201 1642
We will use 10 gallons of distilled and will add the following brewing salts.
3g Gypsum
6g CaCl
2g Epsom Salt
1g NaCl
3g Gypsum
6g CaCl
2g Epsom Salt
1g NaCl
Wyeast beer nutrient blend. 2 grams. Dissolved in warm water.
4:28 - Done boiling O2 stone. Also calibrated the thermometers.
5:34 - Well I've done a bunch more stuff. Measured out the brewing salts. Milled the grain. Made dinner. I think I'll eat dinner with E and then begin heating the water.
6:43 - Mash temp was a little high. We started at 156F. I worked it down to 150F. Better to be high than low. Took about 5 minutes to get it down. I'm using the mash calculator on brewer's friend for the first time. Usually I use beer smith and it works great for me but it lives on the mac and I didn't want to have to lug that thing out just for that one piece of info. Also, I mistakenly took a sample for a pH measurement before adding the salts. So I added them and took another sample. The distilled water sample came in with a pH of 5.7. The one with salts was 5.43. Of note was that I didn't calibrate the pH meter this time. I poured some pH 7 and 4 solutions in a cup and they measured pretty close so I just left it.
7:49 - Just opened my first beer. Firestone Lager. It's really good. We are starting the boil now. Pre-boil gravity was 1.035. That means we should get to 1.045 when done. Should be a nice easy drinking session beer.
9:51 - Cleaning up now.
10:38 - Decided to use the plate chiller. Went a little better this time than last time. It's the last thing to clean up and then we are done. Something to remember is that the water flow needs to faster than I think and the wort flow needs to be slower. If the water is really hot, then it's too slow.
I did have an issue with the pi. It doesn't appear on the list of connected devices on the router when it powers up. I think if I ping the address 192.168.1.102 it might find its way there. Instead I thought something broke and I took it apart to troubleshoot. When I got it apart and took it to the bedroom (sorry pumpkin) it was working great so that sucks. I just put it back together and then no problems. There is obviously something screwy with that new router. Never had these problems with the old router. Anyhow, I need to finish cleaning up and then get to bed.
I did have an issue with the pi. It doesn't appear on the list of connected devices on the router when it powers up. I think if I ping the address 192.168.1.102 it might find its way there. Instead I thought something broke and I took it apart to troubleshoot. When I got it apart and took it to the bedroom (sorry pumpkin) it was working great so that sucks. I just put it back together and then no problems. There is obviously something screwy with that new router. Never had these problems with the old router. Anyhow, I need to finish cleaning up and then get to bed.
From now on I'm going to add things to buy for the next brew at the end of the blog. This will be a handy way for me to remember for the next batch. I don't have to remember what to get. I just have to remember to check the last blog post.
Needed:
pH calibration solution
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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