Brewblog, Entry Nine

Good News, Everyone!

212, which will probably be bottled this weekend, is NOT SOUR. Hallelujah. I don't have to quit brewing (yet).

October 2, 2010 - Brewed Brewniversity #8 (126)

The plan for this brewday wasn't really to do a Brewniversity beer. Simon had awesomely taken it upon himself to build us a bigger mash cooler (66L vs 45L) to match our big 15 gallon pot, so I let Simon create a 38L recipe for the day based around the malts and hops we had in stock. After seeing that his recipe relied on staggered additions of only Amarillo hops for bittering, flavour, and aroma, I decided to slap on the Brewniversity brand.

Malt-wise, it was more complex than the average Brewniversity, having Victory, Crystal, and Munich malts. But 124 (and 224) had been similar, minus the Victory malt, and had also featured staggered hop additions, so 126 made sense for a label for this brew. To me.

The new cooler wasn't nearly pushed to its limits by this batch. That is excellent because it appears that we should be able to do a big batch of big beer in the future. (Right now I'd argue that we have too much big beer in stock.)

After brewday, we attended the Brewer's Dinner at Beer Bros, featuring Half Pints from Winnipeg. It was fucking awesome! I am relieved that my memory blackout for the day only covered a short period between finishing brewing and arriving at Beer Bros. I now believe in teleportation.

October 9, 2010 - Brewed Vanilla Porter 2 (VP2)

The first plan for this brewday was to attempt a Milk Stout. I failed at Friday afternoon shopping (where the fuck do you buy lactose?) and proposed a second attempt at making a delicious Vanilla Porter as plan B. We decided again to do a big 38L batch, which will give us the fun experimental opportunity to split the batch and do different things with the Robust Porter base. This recipe had only a slightly larger grain bill than the 126, so the new mash tun was again nowhere near capacity.

The original Vanilla Porter had been pretty good. The pure vanilla extract added to secondary had lent a very subtle vanilla-ness. For this batch, I purchased both vanilla extract and vanilla beans. I am not yet sure what quantities of vanilla I am going to add to my half of the batch, but I want it to be much more noticeable this time, without being extreme.

The recipe was slightly modified from the original Vanilla Porter. I adjusted the Black, Chocolate, and Crystal 80 malt quantities, and added Munich Malt, based on what I have learned from the various Scott's Stouts and Imperial Stouts and Honey Nut Brown in the meantime. For hops, I went with only Fuggles this time instead of the Fuggles and Goldings blend from the original.

We did make one interesting process change with this batch. Although my house has a water softener installed, it is not operational, so there theoretically shouldn't be a difference between the drinking water tap and the hot water tap. I am assuming that the water heater doesn't fuck up the water somehow. So, rather than heating cool drinking water on our propane burner, we started each step with 145F hot water from my house, letting the high efficiency natural gas water heater handle the brunt of the work. The savings on time is definitely significant. The savings on propane probably is as well. But it remains to be seen if there is an affect on taste.

Next time on Brewblog?

The tenth Brewblog will likely include the next edition of Tasting Notes, discussing the merits of 224, Honey Nut Brown, Matrimonial Ale 6, and the Wee Heavy at a minimum.

Not sure what we are brewing on Saturday. Or if. I'm a lot distracted right now by life. Not complaining. It's fantastic!

A Month in Review, Sep 7 to Oct 10

Oh, I just remembered I have a blog! Oops...

The month of October has been insanely good for me so far, and I haven't been sitting around doing nothing like I did for most of the past year. After the last Month in Review post, I had intended to get back into Week in Review posts, but that fell by the wayside pretty quickly. (Fuck blogging right now. Better things to do.)

The Month in Books

This month, I kept soldiering through the massive tomes that are Steven Erikson's awesome Malazan Book of the Fallen. I completed book five, Midnight Tides, and immediately jumped into book six, The Bonehunters. Midnight Tides was fantastic, dramatic but often hilarious, epic while focused (comparatively), and I read its last five hundred pages in a couple of marathon sessions. The Bonehunters has an early set-piece that is breathtaking in its scope and intensity, but since reading those incredible pages, I have been preoccupied with other things. (Fuck reading right now. Better things to do.)

The Month in Music

Two of my favourite bands released new albums in the past month. Anberlin's Dark is the Way, Light is a Place is okay, with the band taking a different somewhat disappointing approach with their sound, while Jimmy Eat World's Invented is fantastic, more than worthy of their impressive discography. The other new release for the month was Weezer's Hurley, a huge improvement over the immature Raditude, but otherwise not really worthy of my blogging effort. (Fuck blogging about Weezer right now. Better things to do.)

Anberlin has now released two less than spectacular albums since their peak with 2007's Cities, so it may be that they don't have another Cities in them. New Surrender was at least Cities-like in its structure and sound, but it felt rushed and was very inconsistent. Dark is the Way... is much more consistent, but in a poppy, boring-ish way. To go from re-recording the rocking "Feel Good Drag" for New Surrender's first single to this is particularly jarring. First single "Impossible" is a pretty good indication of what you are in for with Dark is the Way.... It's a good, light, catchy tune, but it's not great. "To the Wolves" is arguably the best track, but album closer "Depraved" continues Anberlin's trend of interesting album endings.

Jimmy Eat World slumped a little with 2007's Chase This Light, but with Invented they have found a way to successfully fuse the diverse sounds of Clarity, Futures, and Bleed American into a cohesive and interesting whole. Songs like "Heart is Hard to Find," "Coffee and Cigarettes," and the divisive "Higher Devotion" find the band experimenting with new sounds and new energy, while songs like "Movielike" and title-track "Invented" knock me over with their classic Jimmy Eat World brilliance every time. And the increased orchestral presence throughout is very welcome. I am relieved that my faith in Jimmy Eat World (as illustrated by a comment in The Albums That Always Bring Me Back For More that they are my favourite band that is still together and at the top of their game) was not at all misplaced.

The Month in Movies

I'm not going to review the first movie I saw this month, romantic comedy Going the Distance with Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, because you'll never believe me when I tell you that it is actually quite respectable for its genre. This is not a movie that I would ever see by myself, but I wasn't by myself... and it served its purpose wonderfully.

I would have seen The Social Network by myself--because David Fincher! Aaron Sorkin! Facebook!--but I didn't have to. It's a terrific movie, well acted, funny, moving, frustrating, compelling, fascinating, and brilliantly structured. The bookends are perfect.

The Month in Television

Loved: Dexter (5x1/3), Fringe (3x1-3), Glee (2x3), Mad Men (4x7/9-12), Merlin (3x1/2), Modern Family (2x1-3)
Liked: 30 Rock (5x1-3), The Amazing Race (17x1-3), The Big Bang Theory (4x1-3), Bored to Death (2x3), Chuck (4x1-3), Dexter (5x2), Eureka (4x9), Glee (2x1/2), How I Met Your Mother (6x1-3), Hung (2x10), It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (6x1-4), Mad Men (4x8), Merlin (3x3/4), The Office (7x1-3), So You Think You Can Dance Canada (3x12-20), South Park (14x8), Stargate Universe (2x1/2), True Blood (3x12), Warehouse 13 (2x10-12)
Meh: Bored to Death (2x1/2), Entourage (7x10), House (7x1-3)

That's a lot of fucking TV shows. Goddamn. I'm obviously only going to address the highlights and/or lowlights.

The following statement is definitely something that I never thought I would say: the best thing on TV in the past month was the two-part season three premiere of (fucking) Merlin. "The Tears of Uther Pendragon" was dramatic, game-changing (or was it?), epic, and unquestionably the best thing Merlin has ever done. Bravo! Sadly, the next couple of episodes were firmly back in the series' predictable ball-park. And I forgot to download Saturday's episode. (Fuck Merlin right now. Better things to do.)

In other good news, Fringe has been having a fantastic third season so far, awesomely alternating between universes to keep things interesting, Dexter's fifth season is off to an interesting and compelling start, Modern Family seems funnier than ever, Glee is still awesomely stupid, How I Met Your Mother is redeeming itself from a terrible fifth season, and Mad Men finally found its dramatic thrust halfway through its season and won me back in a big way.

In less good (and now old) news, True Blood's third season finale was only okay, which puts it firmly in the disappointing category. Entourage and Hung ended how they started, lame and pretty good respectively. Bored to Death's premiere episode was dumb, dumb, dumb, but episode three was borderline fantastic, so they've earned my time for the rest of the season.

30 Rock, The Office, The Big Bang Theory, and Always Sunny have been fine but otherwise unremarkable. Not the strongest seasons for these shows, but it is not unusual for comedies of this nature to run out of steam after so many seasons. I still enjoy them even if they aren't what they used to be.

Eureka went on hiatus with a strong mid-season finale, but Warehouse 13 very nearly went off the rails with its finale. Yet it was still enjoyable in that ridiculous cheeseball way. Sadly, my favourite cheeseball dramedy, Chuck, has had a disappointing fourth season so far. If it doesn't get better soon, I may have to pretend that the series was actually canceled after its fantastic third season.

I haven't watched Caprica's first couple of episodes yet. (Fuck Caprica... okay, I'm sure you get the point!)

Why do I even fucking watch House?

Brewblog, Entry Eight

FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

Son of a bitch!

The sour infection that refuses to die came back to taunt me with our Saison. When I racked it, I was sure it was completely fine, but after a few days in the carboy, there was some unusual fermentation activity (a haze) and I took a sample. Yep, sour! Fuck. Suspecting the source of infection to be the plastic Better Bottle carboy, I isolated the batch and crossed my fingers that this was the end, for reals this time. I had already stopped using the pail that gave us the horrible 112 and slightly less disgusting Sour Strawberry Wheat.

Belgian IPA 2 was most likely fermented in the same pail as the Saison. (I should have been keeping better track of these things.) After primary fermentation, it seemed fine, again, but after racking the ten gallon batch into two carboys, unusual secondary fermentation was again witnessed after a few days. In my Better Bottle, there was strange surface bubbling. In Simon's glass carboy, the surface actually hardened into a crust. Cue panic.

Because BIPA2 had initially seemed fine, Extra Special Bitter 2 was also fermented in the same damn pail. Once again, when I racked it, it seemed completely fine, but after a few days there was suspicious secondary fermentation activity in its two carboys. And a weird smell.

Ridiculously, after racking the ESB2, I then threw a friend's kit beer into that same fucking pail.

It was shortly after this that I decided to buy a new fermentation bucket and start using glass carboys and containers more consistently. I was going to put an end to this infection once and for all.

Oh, wait!

Last weekend, I did another tasting of all of the supposedly infected beers. And they are not sour! Well, no, the Saison is still sour, but everything else seems kinda fine. Good, even. ESB2 has a Belgiany aroma that it shouldn't have, but that's way better than sour, and it may actually be due to stressed yeast rather than infection. Belgian IPA 2 tastes and smells like it probably should. Even that stupid kit beer tasted and smelled like a kit beer, even though I would have sworn it was sour when I racked it. Holy confirmation bias! What the fuck?

I guess this is good news, but it's super confusing. Stay tuned for more details as they are available.

September 11, 2010 - Brewed Bushwakker Imperial Stout Clone (WAK2)

This was an interesting experiment (with results still pending). We had all greatly enjoyed the ALES club Big Brew Day Russian Imperial Stout (WAK) where our only contribution to our bottles was the Wyeast Denny's Favorite 50 yeast and the priming sugar. With the recipe for that big batch freely available, it made sense that we would eventually attempt to replicate that beer with our ingredients and our mash equipment.

I had to scale the recipe down and make some substitutions. We did not have Crystal 120, so I used Crystal 80. We did not have Carafa Malt, so I did a lot of research and determined that our Chocolate Malt would work. We did not have Munich 120, so I devised a combo-substitution of Munich 90 and Black Malt. For hops we had what we needed, namely Columbus and Willamette, but I had to guess at quantities without knowing alpha acid details.

I had originally planned to use an old ranched London Ale yeast for this batch. I created a starter and everything. But our second sour scare was now underway and the starter smelled funny, so I backed away from reusing the yeast and threw in two packets of dry ale yeast instead.

When we racked this beer one week later, the sample definitely showed a lot of promise. The beer hasn't been touched since then. Nothing wrong with bulk aging this batch since we still have a fair bit of WAK left to drink.

September 18, 2010 - Brewed Harvest Ale (HA)

One of the first awesome beers I had as an ALES member was a Pale Ale made with locally grown fresh Cascade hops. Inspired by that, Simon and I both planted rhizomes from that hop plant in our yards. Both of our plants did quite well this year after not doing much last year.

Actually, my plant is fucking ridiculous. SO MUCH HOPS. So it was time to try using them. I had no idea how effective the hops would be, but the standard recommendation is five times as much wet hops as you would usually use of dry pellet hops. With no other evidence, I took that as gospel.

For a recipe, we went with an all Pale Malt grain bill to keep things simple. I picked a pound of hop flowers on Saturday morning, devised a staggered hop addition schedule, and hoped we'd end up with something that tastes like an American Pale Ale in the end.

Um. No. It does not. Based on the sample from racking, it needs way more hops. Dammit. I still intend to dry hop it with more of the fresh hops before bottling. Hopefully a nice pleasant citrus aroma will distract from the bready taste.

September 25, 2010 - Brewed Brewniversity #7 (212)

Oh, sour 112, you are the absolute worst. How can we learn anything about Goldings hops from your ketchup chips-ness? Trevor had a fantastic idea about using the 112 to marinate meat for a BBQ party. We certainly don't want to drink that shit.

Lucky number seven? 212 was pretty much the exact same recipe as 112, with minor adjustments to Goldings hop quantities. I haven't touched it yet. It had better not be fucking sour. If it is, I quit.

Next time on Brewblog?

Dunno. Hopefully some good news about WAK2's awesomeness. And confirmation that 212 is not sour.