It's Been so long...

So, it has been a while since my husband has updated his blog, so I have taken it upon myself to update this crazy thing...

Since the last time he updated we have had the insanely fortunate experience to watch our daughter grown from a tiny infant to a rambunctious toddler.

As you can see, she is beautiful and amazing! Nothing short of a miracle, really.

To cover our "pucks" portion of this blog, I will say, that we have been to many a-game... and as apt as it may be, the child waited until we went to the last game of the season in 2010 to be born... nice.

The blogger of the family has been rather lazy in his obligations, but I suspect it might be because he has been embarrassed to say that he hit the big 3-0 in November. Well, in perfect harmony of his favorite interests, he celebrated with the Canes, rockstar style, in a suite. He had lots of beer, got a puck, and we took some pics.

So in terms of the beer.. he has not mentioned that his super awesome SWMBO and parents contributed to getting him his awesome all grain system and the start of his "keezer". He has yet to start building that thing, and this SWMBO is a little anxious to see how it comes together. He has about all he needs, but you know, time and energy. Neither of those two things come easy with a toddler in the house, who is fantastically fun to play with and has yet to really sleep consistently through the night.

However, he has made this SWMBO an awesome brown ale that tastes delicious! He also has an IPA that is getting it's fermentation on. He also has failed to mention that he made an award winning stout back in the summer. Yeah, it was at a family party, but it still won a medal. Actually both he and his daughter won a medal that day. She got hers for her physical activity and her awesome forward rolls and donkey kicks, daddy got his for a stellar stout.

Well, now it is about Christmas time, and he has allowed his SWMBO to go overboard, once again for the princess they share. And I think I have covered most everything. He needs to get on here and do this himself. He is much more interesting than this SWMBO....

Have a good holiday season!!

Baby, Brews, and Brewery Tours

Since the Future Brewer has arrived, I obviously haven't had a ton of time or energy (thanks, sleep deprivation!) to do much writing in the Blog lately. However, there has been plenty to write about.

First off, the Future Brewer(FB) is doing great! Apart from a few nights where she doesn't want to sleep very much, it's been a dream having her around. We're here at just about 6 weeks, and she is really starting to enjoy being around us as well. She smiles at us all the time now. Especially when she hasn't seen one of us in a while. Coming home from work is even a bigger joy now.

Since the FB is out and about now, the SWMBO can drink my beer again! A few weeks ago we cracked open the first of Jennifer's Cherry Wheat. Unfortunately, it's underwhelming. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this beer, apart from a bit of over-carbing, it just didn't get that cherry flavor that I was going for. I used 2 pounds of Cherries in the recipe, but I probably should have used something closer to four or five pounds. Apart from that, it's a very easy drinking beer. Very light on the palate, just slightly bready, and with a bit of fruity esters.

This weekend I intend on getting around to brewing the Wedding Weizen. This is going to be brewed for my sister's wedding rehearsal dinner in a couple of months. I plan on making this beer with a pretty simple recipe. It will just be Wheat DME, a touch of hops, and Wyeast Weiheinstephan Yeast. This should bring out quite a bit of clove flavor for this Hefeweizen. Since this will be a group function, I don't really want to use a bunch of bottles for strangers. I plan on making the first, although pretty small, step into kegging: Party Kegs! These are small 5L kegs that will carb naturally, and can use a small tap with small CO2 canisters attached to pour with. I figured this would be much easier to deal with than 40 bottles scattered about the place.

In the final bit of news; I got to get out this past weekend and check out Triangle Brewing Company, in Durham. The tour of the brewery is well worth your money (it's free!) and the beer (also free!) isn't too shabby. The tour itself is pretty basic. You find out about the very basics in brewing beer, but details and specifics are left out for the most part. This is a tour more focused on the uninitiated and "new to craft beer" types. The beers themselves were hit or miss. Being the hop-head that I am, I started off with their IPA. This was an excellent offering. Finally, an American-style IPA that this area can be proud of and isn't just bitter beer. Maybe someone got the message? I also tried their Extra Pale Ale. Meh. An overly easy drinking beer that really has no character (especially hop character) and isn't worth writing home about. I had a sip of their experimental Habanero Ale, which tastes similar to the Pale Ale, just with some pepper flavor, and heat in the mix. An interesting beer to try, but there's no reason to have more than half of one. The other beers they had available, I did not try. I was hooked on the IPA and kept with that.

I'll try to keep the PPP updated with bits on the Wedding Weizen, and how the new "kegs" go in the future.

The Future Brewer is Here!

She's finally here! My little Assistant Brewer has finally come out from hiding. A week ago today, Ella was born weighing in at 7lbs and 15 ounces, and stretching out to 20.25 inches!

It may be the sleep deprivation speaking now, but I can't wait to have her help me with some brewing. It'll still be a few years before she can actually help out, but sitting and watching your ol Dad is helping. Right?

The Cherry Wheat Transfer

Earlier today I transferred Jennifer's Cherry Wheat over to the secondary. The final gravity of the beer was measured at 1.014. This means the beer is at about 6% abv.

However, when I racked to secondary, I added another pound of cherries to help further sweeten and add more cherry flavor to the beer. This time, I didn't add all of the juices from the can, just the cherries. I did slice the cherries up a bit, but not too much. I wanted to let more flavor come out of the cherries, but not have a bunch of pieces of cherry floating around in the beer.

I'll let it sit for a good 2 weeks before I bottle it and get it ready for drinking. The SWMBO will be ready for it by that point. The baby should be all born and made by that point!

Meanwhile, in Hurricanes news: We're almost mathematically eliminated from the playoffs! Even if we win out, there's still a slim chance we could not make the playoffs. Even with the teasing that we've gotten in the past two months, we were that much worse back in October and November that it didn't matter in the long run.

Perhaps next season, we won't get off to this horrible slow start that will haunt us later on in the the season. But, perhaps that's too much to ask...

The Schitz! Barleywine Tasting

Tuesday was the one year anniversary of our cat, Schitzie's, death.

A little less than a year ago, I posted that I would brew up a big Barleywine in her memory. Well, it was brewed up quite a while ago, and has aged for almost a full year. Tuesday night, it was time to try it out.

I had tried The Schitz! Barleywine before Tuesday night though. However back then, the beer had only bulk aged for about a month in the secondary. It was extremely hot flavored, with a very prominent alcohol flavor. Thankfully, after almost a year the beer has really mellowed out.

The Schitz! turned out to be a pretty strange color. A medium brown color that has some strong red and orange highlights. This bottle, which was a large 16 ouncer, didn't have much head retention or carbonation in it. I'll need further research to see if this is just from this bottle, or for the entire batch of beer (oh no!).

The smell of The Schitz! was very malty and caramelly sweet with some fruity esters fairly prominent. The hop aroma and flavor have either aged out of the beer, or just were never present. There's no real way to know since I hadn't tried one till now. The flavor is very similar to the nose. Very malty with lots of caramel flavor and a bit of fruity esters. Overly not bad, but there should be more hop flavor for this to truly be considered an American Barleywine. It can still pretty much pass for an English Barleywine though.

This is still a very strong ale. At somewhere between 10-11% abv, this beer will kick in with just a quarter of it in you. I'll have to make sure to be careful around The Schitz!, she's definitely going to sneak up on me!

Finally! Jennifer's Cherry Wheat!

For anyone who's been following what's been in the Pipeline for the 9 months or so, you'll know that I've had "Jennifer's Cherry Wheat" in the "On Deck" position for quite some time now. Well, it's finally come to pass that this beer has been brewed!

I brewed it up on Saturday in between the USA demolishing Finland in the Semi-Finals of Olympic Hockey, and the USA losing a heartbreaker to Canada on Sunday.

The SWMBO has long loved Sam Adams' Cherry Wheat beer. It's been one of her favorites for quite sometime now and I told her that I'd do my best to brew her a clone, but with the incubation of the future brewer in her belly the beer had to be put on hold. But, since we're getting so close to the due date, I went ahead and brewed it up so it'd be ready by the time she'd be ready to partake again.

Here's the recipe:

5.5 lbs of Dry Wheat Malt Extract.

4 oz of Crystal 20L

.5 oz. of Magnum 11.2% at 60 min.

.25 oz of Cascade 5.2% at 10 min.

With 5 minutes left in the boil I added 1 pound of cherries that I pureed in the blender.

The Original gravity came out to 1.060. Beersmith had guessed 1.048 without considering the added sugars of the cherries. The true Original Gravity, and first Final gravity is anyone's guess though. That's because once the beer is finished in the primary, I'm going to throw in another pound of cherries in with the beer in the secondary. That will probably restart some fermentation with the additional sugars. So it'll be really hard to tell how much alcohol will be in this beer, and how sweet it will be. It could range anywhere from 5-7% ABV. Just don't tell the SWMBO, something like that might knock her socks off!

The only glitch in the recipe is that I had to use Wyeast American Ale I instead of the American Wheat Ale yeast I had originally planned for. The local homebrew store had run out the yeast I needed.

This will be the first beer I've made with real fruit made with it, and I'm hoping for a final product that doesn't taste like cherry cough syrup!

The Hop-Shot

Last night I bottled the Belgian IPA. For a few of the bottles, however, I tried something a little different.

I've been reading around about hop tea, and the added hop flavor that it can add to your beer. There's not a ton of information out there on the subject, but it's basically how it sounds. You steep hops in hot water to extract some flavor from the hops. Supposedly, this adds quite a bit of flavor and aroma, but since there is no boiling involved, no alpha acids are isomerized. So, no bitterness should be added to the tea.

Well, I decided to take this a wee step further. Instead of simply steeping the hops, or put them in a coffee maker, I threw some in my espresso maker. I figured, with the heat, and added pressure, there may be a bit more flavor drawn out. This created some fairly potent hop tea. I added about 4 'shots' of 'hop-spresso' to the secondary along with my hops for dry-hopping. This sat for a little over a week, and was bottled last night.

To take it one step further, a few bottles were set aside, and into them, I added just a bit of hop-spresso. Maybe half an ounce. These eight bottles will be a test to see if my 'hop-shot' idea works. Hopefully, they will just burst with hop flavor and aroma.

We'll see in about three weeks!

If anyone has any experience with hop tea, or putting it into beers, let me know. I'd love to hear how it went.

Finally!

Welp, this has taken a bit too long to get back to writing an entry here. However, not too terribly much has happened since then!

As a review:

1. I did get a new laptop for Christmas, so I don't have the excuse of not being able to write a blog entry just about anywhere, anymore.
   
   
2. I haven't done much brewing since the last entry. I've brewed once. I ended up trying out a "Belgian-style" IPA. I made it with tons of Saaz hops, and used Belgian Abbey II yeast from Wyeast labs. It's bound to be fruity, hoppy, and a bit banana-y. It's currently in the Primary, awaiting me to stop being lazy and put it in the secondary and dry-hop it some.
   
   
3. The Canes are still hovering around last place in the NHL, however, there has bit a bit of excitement lately. A few weeks ago JR made the decision to take away the Captaincy from Rod Brind'Amour and give it to Eric Staal. This caused a minor rift in Caniac Nation of those who agreed with JR, and those who thought Roddy should have remain captain until his eventual retirement.
   
   Honestly, I agreed with the move. Brindy had become a shadow of himself for the past 2 seasons and has always been a "lead by example" captain. Well, he can still lead by example in the weight room, but his on ice performance inspired no one. The team next season will be comprised of youngsters and it will need a younger captain to lead it.
   
   Since the change, the Canes went on a tear. They won 5 of 6 games, including a 4 game win streak. Eric Staal has especially responded to being given the captaincy. He's been a scoring machine since, including a hat trick his first game as captain.
   
   The news as of late in the impending Trade Deadline and Winter Olympics Roster Freeze. Both could mean big time trades for the Canes. Whitney, Cullen, Corvo, Wallin, and Walker are just a few of the players the Canes hope they can get a return for. Hopefully, they can at least get something.
   
   
4. The SWMBO's finally in the third trimester. The Home Stretch! Just another two months and some change left! We're in the home stretch, and believe me, the SWMBO can feel it. Unfortunately, we've still got plenty of work to do before we're ready for the little assistant brewer to pop out.

That's it for now, I'll try to keep a bit more updated. Especially with how the Canes' trading goes here in the coming weeks.

Sunset/Sunrise

Is this a sunrise on a new start or a sunset on the season? In a way it's both for me.

This will more than likely be a lost season with the Canes. No one can possibly come up with all the right reasons for how and why the Carolina Hurricanes have performed so poorly since the start of the season. Nothing can go right for this team, when the sky was the limit at the end of last season and the beginning of this season. Records have been broken this season, but none of them good. The only bright side to this season, will be the 1st round (possibly the 1st overall!) pick in the upcoming entry draft this summer. If only this season had been last...

And here's my beautiful sunrise! My assistant brewer in the making is a Girl! The mini-Caniac gear has already been looked at and appropriated for. The only problem is that she's not due until the middle of April. Well after the Canes' season will be done. So she won't be able to really fit into the really small stuff. We'll have to wait to get some bigger stuff once next season begins.

No matter how this season ends, at least I know that I'll have the prettiest mini-Caniac in the stands next season!

Habs Slight Preview!

This past Sunday, the 'Canes actually won a game. Granted, it took them to the shootout, blew a 4-1 lead, and basically gave the Wild the game after the 2nd period. But they won. It's 2 points. I guess.

But they really, really tried to lose. They really did. They were this close! We almost could've had a record losing streak. But no. Minnesota just had to suck just slightly less. Just slightly.

Tonight, we roll into Montreal to take on a slightly better Habs team than last year. That's still miles ahead of us. Check out Four Habs Fans for the complete breakdown on how the Canes will be raped by the Habs, and the strippers in Montreal.

The Birth of the Pint-o-Lantern and Dobleve Te Effe Canes?

Not all Jack-o-Lanterns are born at the same level of awesome-ness.

This was my attempt at creating the world's first (I'm assuming so, because I never found any on google) Pint-o-Lantern. Through hours of hard work, I tried to recreate the illusion of a pint glass on a lit up pumpkin. Not the easiest of accomplishments. I did have lots of fun with it. Here's the work in progress:

I started out with a fairly tall pumpkin, and drew (to the best of my limited ability) a pint glass with a heavy head upon it.

Next, I "chipped" out the beer colored part by cutting out about .5-1 inch of the pumpkin shell. This was to ensure that the beer was lit up, but not super bright like an open hole.

Then, I put a full hole in where the head of the beer would be to make sure it was as bright, or as white as possible. I also dug the outline of the glass a bit deeper than the beer, so that it would shine a bit brighter than the beer. So I ended with this.

Now for the big downer. What is up with the Canes? No seriously, what is up with the Canes? They've lost 10 games in a row. They have not won a single game in a month. A MONTH! Plus, it looks like there's no end in sight, at least if they keep up with the way they are playing.

Yeah, they're playing the Maple Leafs on Friday, but honestly, the Canes are the absolute worst team in Hockey right now. And who would have thought that after last season?

So the question of everyone's mind is: Who's to blame? Well, that can pretty much be placed on everyone.

1. Jim Rutherford. He's now the manager of the oldest team in the NHL. He decided he wanted his younger stars to stay in the AHL one more year, even after a very good training camp, and instead signed older more obscure "veterans." He's still paying Peter Laviolette to not coach this team. He signed Mo to a three year deal after catching lightning in a bottle last "half-season." So of course there is no way Mo is going anywhere. JR is not going to pay 2 coaches not to coach, and then have to pay a 3rd coach to do a job. And therein lies the problem with JR being a "co-owner" of the Canes. He pretty much can never be fired or held accountable for his decisions.
2. Mo. You can shuffle lines all day long but it doesn't mean you can force chemistry. Plus, how about you play the younger guys that are called up. They're actually giving an effort and trying to win games. Stop playing your little favorites to the people who are under-achieving. Let the players earn their top spots.
3. Eric Staal. You needed to recover from your pseudo-injury you've had all season, instead of playing at 75%. You're no good to anyone if you aren't up to your normal level. You're taking up a roster spot that someone useful can take. Don't try to be an ironman just to hold that record, if you are hurt, take the game off.
4. The Carolina Hurricanes. Step up and play hockey. Get your crap together, and give a 60 minute effort. You're better than last place in the NHL. You're better than the Leafs. Much better.

Now show it.

Sorry for the Delay

It's been a while since I've been able to write up a new post on the ol blog. Part of that has been due to the fact that my computer at home has crashed and I have to share SWMBO's laptop. It also hasn't happened just due to being very busy at work, home and everything in between.

But the main reason for the lapse in posting is due to the fact that I've got a new assistant brewer growing inside SWMBO's belly! In just six short months I'll have the great responsibility of showing the next generation how to take pictures, how to properly berate the 'Canes (and they've deserved it lately), and how to brew awesome beer (but not partake until legally of age!). Just getting prepared for it's arrival has kept me from posting on here as regularly.

Without SWMBO's help drinking my beer, my pipeline is a lot longer, therefor, I can't brew as often either.

Thankfully, she can still go with me to the Canes games and do some hefty cheering. Although, lately, there hasn't been much to really cheer for. As of right now, the Canes are 2-4-2 and the only wins have come in the Shootout against Tampa, and against a Florida team who had just gotten back from playing in Europe. We even gave the Islanders their first win of the season just last night.

If there is a picture that can sum up how the Canes are taking this season, it's this one right here:

On the beer front, the IPA has finished fermenting and gone through the secondary, been dry hopped with and ounce of Cascade and Centennial each. It's even already been bottled; last weekend! I did get a chance to sample a bit that wouldn't fit into the last bottle, and it was pure hoppy goodness. I'm excited for two weeks from now.

C-Ward-O Defies the Economy and Other News

Today, Cam Ward signed a six-year contract extension worth an average of 6.3 million a year. And then he promptly laughed in the economy's face.

"Who says it's hard to get a good paying job these days?" he asks. Certainly it's not for the now 3rd highest paid goalie in the league. Personally, I believe that's about half a mil too much per year, but in terms of superstars, not too big of a deal.

What this really says, as Bubba over on Canes Country puts it, is that the Canes are here to stay and here to be competitive. It's a message to other players that may not want to play so close to the Tropic of Cancer, that this team is willing to pay for its superstars, and it's not planning on putting its fans through limbo, a la Phoenix Coyotes.

In other, only slightly related news: HOCKEY SEASON STARTS TOMORROW! It's aboot time eh! Although the Canes don't start play until Friday (in which there will be loads of tailgaiting. 70F weather here we come!) I still can't wait to be able to watch some hockey tomorrow night. It's been a long off-season, although not nearly as long as most, but it's very exciting to see how the '09-'10 Canes will stack up against the rest of the NHL.

In terms of brews, I was able to get a bit done this weekend. I ended up making a new IPA that I believe will kick the crap out of my last attempt.

First, a bit of some background. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to make my hop purchasing a lot cheaper. Previously, I had been buying hops in the price range of 2-4 dollars per ounce. That can get pretty expensive when your favorite beer styles are IPA's that require several ounces of hops.

So I decided to buy in bulk. Hops Direct has a good reputation for fresh hops and very competitive prices. So I took the plunge and bought 1 pound of Centennial Leaf (it's the main hop for Bell's Two Hearted, so obviously my favorite hop), 1 pound of Cascade Lead, 1 pound of Czech Saaz, and 1 pound of Magnum pellets. For a whopping total of 50 bucks (including shipping), I've got enough hops to last for quite a bit. Now, I have hops that only cost roughly 80 cents an ounce. So, obviously it was time to throw some serious hops into this IPA.

Here's the recipe. So a total of 8 oz. of hops. I honestly can't wait to see how this one turns out. I did find out that leaf hops are pretty hard to mess with. They don't like to sink down to the bottom of the kettle and tend to hang out on the top, and need to be stirred in quite a bit.

You may notice that I'm trying something new out with the recipe. It's a bit of a gamble on my part. I tried some First-Wort Hopping for this brew. It's a technique that is usually only used when Mashing is done, but I've somewhat forced it upon my brew. It's a process where you steep some of your late hop additions in your kettle after collecting your first runnings. For some reason that appears to be unknown, the flavor and aroma of these hops are retained during the boil, and not driven off. In blind taste tests, 11 of 12 people apparently prefer the first-wort hopped beer over the other.

Since my brewing does not use any mashing, I added the first-wort hops while the brew was at about 150F after I had steeped the grains, and after I added my extract. Then with the hops in the wort, I slowly brought the brew to a boil. This technique may, or may not work, because when mashing is performed with grain, it lowers the pH of the wort and is able to use the hops better. I haven't really read anywhere that said that adding extract does or doesn't do this, but everywhere I've read about first-wort hopping doesn't know about using it with extract. If nothing else, I will have just increased the bitterness of the beer. Not a horrible thing to happen to an IPA.

As I'm writing this, I'm testing out the Milk Chocolate Porter (formerly Stout). The flavor of the beer actually came out pretty balanced and smooth. Very surprising. It's got a nice light malty and roasty smell to it, and a pretty sweet and lightly chocolatey flavor. It's very easy to drink. So I'm disappointed that it's not a Stout like I had aimed for, but I'm pleasantly surprised on how the beer came out itself. Easily one of my better tasting beers, even if I missed the mark on the style.

It's Almost Here!

Well, lookie there! It's no longer the Offseason. It is now officially the PRE-Season. And it couldn't have come fast enough.

Canes fans have very good reason to be excited about the upcoming season. In the '08-'09 season, we sat through half of a mediocre season and watched as a coaching change mid-way through the season turned the team into a dominant force that carried into the Eastern Conference Finals.

With the summer came a few changes, mainly filling the glaring hole exposed in the playoffs of team toughness. The Canes were pushed around quite a bit in the playoffs by bigger teams, but still managed to find a way to win the series.

Tomorrow night the Canes take on the Nashville Predators in a Pre-Season exhibition game. Finally, hockey is back, just as the weather starts to cool back down from scorching to warm. Unfortunately, I'll be away up to the Cape Cod area of Massachusetts for a conference this weekend and will miss the first chance to see the Canes in action. The jitters will be unbearable.

This past weekend, I bottled the Milk Chocolate Stout (Porter). It shall be known from henceforth as the Milk Chocolate Porter. It is simply to light to be called a Stout, and will more than likely have a roasted character that is closer to a Brown Porter style, rather than a Stout(which means less roasty). Overall, I'm pretty disappointed in how this has turned out. I haven't tasted it yet, but the coloring of the beer makes me wonder if there is a way I can improve my technique.

Since the coloring and most of the flavors come from my steeping grains, this is the area I will focus on. I am beginning to think that my grain bags may be too big to allow proper "steeping." I normally put about a pound in each bag, and they get pretty big and round. This may prevent the grains deep on the inside of the bag from getting their sugars rinsed by the water. So they may not be contributing to the wort at all. The next beer that I brew that requires a large amount of steeping grains, I will probably put less grains in each bag. If it means I use 10 bags, so be it.

I want my beers to come out the way I expect them to.

The Beauty of the Beach and HDR

For the past week and change I've been vacationing down at the beach again. For the most part, we had cloudy weather, so the fantabulous pictures didn't flow as freely as they would have if it were sunny.

But, I do have a few to share.
Since the weather wasn't great we decided to go down to the Fort Fisher Aquarium and check out the fishies as well as the old Civil War Fort.


We did have one night where we were able to get some good sunset shots. Here's some regular shots along with some HDR sunset shots.

For the brews update, the Milk Chocolate Stout (Porter) is currently being cold-crashed for the next week to try to clear it up as much as possible and get as much sediment out.

Update

This past weekend I bottled the apfelwine and also transferred the Milk Chocolate Stout into the Secondary.

Observations:

1. Apfelwine tastes exactly like white wine, just with apple flavor. It's really dry and pretty smooth, you barely even notice that it's 9% alcohol. This will do nicely to give out and have on hand when someone doesn't want a beer. Since it's being carbed, it'll be more like a champagne almost, rather than a flat wine. But it's pretty good, especially for not even being aged at all.
2. I might experiment with putting cocoa in more beers in the future, depending on how this one comes out. It smells good, and is really easy to mix with water and pour the beer on top of.
3. The Milk Chocolate Stout is looking like it's going to be more of a Milk Chocolate Porter. I can already tell that it's just not going to be dark enough, and quite possibly roasted enough for it to be a Stout. I think it may have something to do with my grain bags that hold my steeping grains. I think they may be too big to allow for all the sugars to be properly extracted from the grains they hold. I'll have to experiment around with smaller bags.
4. I've found out that my pipeline is built up a bit too much. I need to clear out some bottles for the stout in a few weeks. I need about 48 bottles in 3 weeks and I don't want to get extras from outside. I want the beer I have drunk. So come on over and help me make some empties.

The Milk Chocolate Stout

This past Saturday was a big one in terms of brewing for me.

First, a week before I got a new toy.




A brand new Turkey Fryer! This thing will be great. No longer will SWMBO's nose curl from boiling wort in the kitchen. Boiling outside will cut that out. Plus, with a 30 quart pot, I can do full boils now.

With full boils, I will get better hop utilization, which means I need less hops for more bitterness and flavor. Plus, there will be less off-flavors from the extract I use.


Win/Win/Win.


So, this past Saturday, I kicked the outdoor brewing off by starting up my Milk Chocolate Stout.


Here's the recipe.

• 4.5 lbs of Extra Pale Dry Malt Extract.
• 1 lb of Chocolate Malt
• 12 oz. of Crystal 60L Malt
• 4 oz of Roasted Barley
• 1 oz of Black Patent Malt
• 1 lb of Dextrose
• 1 lb of Lactose (Milk Sugar, which is unfermentable, and will leave the beer sweeter)
• 1 oz of Cluster hops at 60 min.
• I used a starter of Wyeast 1028 London Ale Yeast.
  

The whole process started with making the starter a few days before:

Then steep the grains for 30 minutes at 150 degrees. Here's how we looked after steeping.

Here's the hot break after the boil started. Fortunately, I use Fermcaps so I won't be having any boilovers.

The one and only hop addition at 60 minutes:

My starting gravity was actually a bit high at 1.061. I, along with Beersmith, had expected it to be closer to 1.055, but we shall see where the final gravity ends up. Hopefully, somewhere in the 1.014-1.019 range. It wouldn't be bad for this beer to have a bit of body to it.

In another week or so I'll transfer the Stout to the secondary and add in some baker's cocoa. Probably about 3 or 4 ounces. Hopefully, this should be a pretty sweet, chocolaty and roasted tasting beer.

Cheers!

Ruuuu!'s Gonna be Hangin Around a Bit Longer

Our core nucleus of Finns won't be getting any smaller anytime soon.

Tuomo Ruutu inked a 3-year deal today that will pay him handsomely.

I for one am very glad, and look forward to more of this:

Boone Goons!

The SWMBO and I recently took a trip up to the North Carolina mountains this past weekend for a bit of camping in Julian Price Park. Since both of us went to Appalachian State University, we both know the area around Boone fairly well, and know quite a bit about the Northern NC Mountains.

The weather was absolutely amazing, cool days, chilly nights, and big puffy clouds that made for dramatic views! We visited Linville Falls and Howard's Knob, the mountain overlooking Boone.

Here's some pics from the weekend.