Sure thing, Boss!

Sign of the (Behind the) Times

Just a shitty pun, folks. Letting you know that after a month in primary, I'll be bottling that ESB this weekend. Wish I had a keg, bottling is getting to be a pain in my ass.

Now hold on while Billy Joel writes a song about it.

Three Way

New recipe. I'ma call it: Dale's Ale Pail.

8.00# Maris Otter
3.00# Light Munich
0.75# Crystal 60L

Mash, sparge, boil, throw in a buncha hops.

Let you know in a month.

The Grain In Spain

Stays mostly in Spain.

But this homegrown shit? Watch out.

That's right, it's all-grain time. Make the jump. Piss standing. Disregard females, acquire currency and all that Ducreux shit.

So anyhow. I pieced together a mash/lauter tun (aka MLT). The truncated idea, if you needed to ask somebody, is that you've got to get your grain wet and keep it hot for a long time. About an hour. Which is a long-ass time for me to do anything.

Luckily, enzymes do most of the work while the "brewer" can go dick off. They make short work of long-chain carbohydrates, breaking them down into digestible pieces. In a way, I like to think of the enzymes as butchers, and the yeast as refined members of society. More on that later (probably not).

Here's the deal, chipmunk. Bought a bunch of fittings and braids and tees and supply lines and all that happy-pappy poo-poo.



With a hacksaw, some teflon tape, the concentration of a coked-up chihuahua and a little luck, this is what happened.



And BY-FRACKIN'-JOVE, it works.



Doesn't leak a damn drop, unless I tell it to.

Anyhow. Next step? Acquire grain, heat water, add water to grain, steep, drain, rinse, drain, add hops & boil, rack, ferment, bottle and drink.

How you like me now?

Let's Get Mashed!

Until this point I've been dwelling in the realm of extract brewing. There are plenty of pros to brewing this way. First, it's easy. Just throw a bunch of goop in a pot, boil it with some hops and other grains, add yeast and voila! Beer!

To me, the biggest downside is that you have less control over the malt profile of your final product. And have you SEEN what they're trying to get for a pound of LME these days?! So, being a cheapskate control freak, I've decided to move to all-grain brewing.

To that end, I now have a 45 quart cooler that's about to be retrofitted with some stainless steel braid (a water heater supply line should do well) and a valve. Once everything is put together, I'll try my hand at mashing and batch sparging some new beer. Can't wait.

Bottled Up

Serves as a metaphor for plenty of things these days.

Without getting too personal, let us suffice it to say that the Kirin Lager clone is bottled and on its way to greatness.

Resurrecting Some Old Favorites

Well, I gave up beer for lent, so tonight has been nice. Taking a stroll down memory lane, having one of (almost) each of the ales I've brewed so far.

So far: the Holiday Cheer is the real surpriser. It has only gotten better these past four months. Orange peel has copulated with ginger, the cinnamon made friends with the hops. I'm ready to brew another batch just to have it around this Christmas.

Otherwise, the Old Speckled Hen clone is still tasty, probably second best. The Vanilla Porter, while still good and which has improved with age, ranks last of these three. But I still maintain that I'd buy any of them at the store. So, woo.

Racked the Kirin Lager clone to secondary today. The tiny sample I had showed some promise. I'm hoping that carbonation will add something to the wateriness. If it does, this will be a successful lighter-bodied beer experiment, and I'll have to give the WLP060 blend another shot.

Now, soon enough I'll crack a bottle of the 60-Minute IPA clone...don't wait up.

Happy Easter, everyone.