Gravity Read

Just a quick update on The Schitze! Barleywine: I took a gravity measurement last night. It's specific gravity after a week and a half in the fermenter is 1.025. That's entirely not bad considering this brew started at a little over 1.100. Beersmith calculated that the target final gravity should be 1.022, so I am really close! There's still activity going on in the fermenter, so it's not done yet.

It really looks like making a starter helped a lot. Plus, the Imperial Blend from Wyeast seems to be getting the job done. Right now it's at 75% attenuation, but I'm betting that I can push this beer down to at least 1.020 and get 80% attenuation if it's in there for another week and a half.

Buffablow vs. Canes 4-8-09

Ah, it's nice to be sitting pretty as the slugs cling on for dear life with their 2.1% chance of making the playoffs. It truly is a thing of beauty that we may eliminate them tonight, assuming NY doesn't beat Philly first.

What will also be nice about tonight's game is that the team we play against will at least have something to play for. Unlike Tuesday's joke of a game against the Islanders the Slugs will at least have some fire. Tonight should be much closer of a match than the Islanders game.

Not much of a preview for today, but here's some pics of Buffalo that helps further explain why it sucks.

What is this freakin Communist Russia?

Good Luck Canes. Take away any hopes of Playoffs the Slug fans have. Give them one more season in which to whine about.

Fear the Sightless Eye!

10-1-2 in March. 11 straight home wins. An 8 game winning streak. Clinching a playoff spot for the first time since '06.

These are some of the accomplishments the Canes have put up in the last 5 weeks. After playing .500 hockey for the better part of the year, and being on the cusp of being in/out of the playoffs, the Canes have vaulted 4 spots in the Eastern Conference standings and now stand at 5th. So what happened?

So far it seems like the stars have aligned and everything has just fallen into place. The only different part of the team that has changed since February is the addition of Erik Cole. But by no means is he the only reason this team is playing better.

Erik Cole scored in 6 of his first 8 games with Carolina this season, but has only 1 point in his last 6. However, Carolina won all six of those games in which he didn't score. If we look at his arrival differently, you can see another trend.

Before Cole came back to Carolina, Sergei Samsonov played on Eric Staal's line. Now, he's been pushed to the third line along with Brind'Amour. This has increased Brind'Amour's production significantly. Roddy's put up 17 points in the last 14 games. It also seems that the Captain has finally recovered from his knee injury that happened last year, and plagued him for most of this season.

Another major contributor has been Cam Ward, who seems to have found his 2006 Playoff form. Ward has been spectacular in net for the Canes for the past month of two. As of Feb 24, Ward had a season save % of .908. Not horrible. As of today, his season save % is .917. To achieve that he's had to have numbers higher than .925 in just a month. What makes this even more astounding is that the defense hasn't been helping out Ward all that much. In the past 15 games, the Canes have allowed 30 or more shots in 12 of them. 3 of those had 40 shots or more. Ward has also played in 26 straight games. If Brodeur is his idol, then he is on the right path to emulate him.

So apart from luck and the Hockey Gods' intervention, one has to assume that coaching is to blame for the success as of late, considering so many pieces coming together. I was a critic of Paul Maurice when he first came back to Raleigh in December. However, it seems that he and Francis have really pulled the team together and have made huge strides.

Tonight, the Canes host the Islanders, the worst team in the league. This is one of those games where you're not sure if the Canes are going to take the night off, or just completely blow out the other team. I've been having bad feelings about the past few games, and each time the Canes have surprised me. We'll see how it goes tonight at 7.

Holy Crap am I Behind!

Wow. Have I ever been negligent. It's been 2 weeks since I've posted, and I still hadn't even covered the Toronto Trip. Lazy!

So here's how things went in Toronto. Tyler, here's your porn:

POW!

I like to call this one, "Get more bars in more places - AT&T"

Now, for other, non-Tyler porn pictures from the trip.

Here's the asshole of America, Buffalo, NY!

Back to better places.

Whew! All in all it was a legendary trip. Many memories were made, and I'm sure forgotten as soon as they happened!

Now onto the beer! The Schitze! Barleywine is now brewed and fermenting! Holy cow what a task. Here's the final recipe for The Schitze!

That's a ton of ingredients!

11 pounds of Dry Malt extract. 3 lbs were added at the beginning and 8 for a late extract addition for higher hop utilization.

2 pounds of Melanoiden Malt.

1 pound of Crystal 60L Malt.

1 pound of CaraMunich Malt.

1 pound of Dextrine.

8 oz of Hops.

Here's the hop schedule.

90 minutes: 2 oz of Cluster

30 minutes: .5 oz Cascade

20 minutes: .5 oz Cascade

15 minutes: .5 oz Cascade

10 minutes: .5 oz Cascade 1 oz Centennial

5 minutes: .5 oz Cascade

1 minute: .5 oz Cascade

The original gravity was around 1.100.

I've gotta say, I'm not a big fan of Dry Extract during the brewing process. I hadn't used it before yesterday, and I was not impressed. It clumps up and takes forever to dissolve into the water. That being said, I was brewing an extremely high gravity beer, and only using about 3.75 gallons of water to boil in, so it may have just reached its limit on how much extract it could hold. I'll try a few more lower-gravity brews with Dry extract before I give up on it.

Another addition I used yesterday was FermCaps. FermCaps is used to prevent boilovers in your boil, and blowoffs when you ferment. It worked great in the boil, and as far as I can tell it did its job in fermentation. However, this is what I came home to this afternoon.

There was actually beer coming out of the airlock. This is it cleaned up a bit. Since this was such a monster brew with a high gravity, and since I used a yeast starter, the Krausen almost caused a blowout. The high amount of activity in the fermenter also raised the temperature of the cooler I had it in. It fermented at about 70 degrees during the day today. About 5 degrees warmer than I wanted it to. However, I've got the temperature back down, so hopefully there won't be too many esters or perhaps off-flavors getting in there.

Tomorrow, if I have time, I'll try to post about the Canes' awesome success as of late.

Till then, Cheers eh!

Ottawa vs. Canes 3-25

Look out! Who are these two teams playing in Raleigh tonight? Just two of the hottest teams in the NHL right now.

Malts:

The Canes find themselves as the 5 seed in the Eastern Conference with 87 points. What a difference a week can make. For most of this season the Canes have looked like a bubble team. No one was sure if they would even make the playoffs, if they did, an eighth seed at best. But, March happened. The Canes are 7-1-2 in their last 10 and have won 8 straight at home. March Madness indeed.

Meanwhile, the Senators have had an off year until lately. They're still very far out of the playoff race, but are making a great push here, as of late. They've won 5 straight, and are 9-1-0 in the past ten. They'll pretty much have to match that record again in order to make the playoffs.

Hops:

Crap, who isn't hot for these two teams?

Carolina: Cam Ward has been playing phenomenally lately. He's been playing Brodeur-esque minutes, and putting up pretty decent numbers lately. There's been many less "Ward Shutouts" lately (1 softy a game). Staal has 16 points in the last 10 games, Brindy even has 6 points in 4 games, and even the defense is chipping in.

Ottawa: Still just about everyone. Alfredsson has 7 in the past 4 games, Spezza with 9 in the past 6, and defenseman Brendan Bell has 6 in the last 4 games.

Trub:

Carolina: Eh, I guess Scott Walker since he can't seem to get over his concussion symptoms. He's only been able to play 1 game in the past 2 months or so.

Ottawa: Chris Kelly hasn't put up a point in 6 games. Like I've said before, we're good a breaking bad streaks.


So with all of this, something's gotta give. Will it be Carolina's 4 game winning streak? How about the Sens' 5 game winning streak? Or perhaps the Canes' 8 game home-winning streak? We find out tonight.

I haven't really been able to watch the Canes lately due to the Toronto trip (pics to come!) but based on my gut feeling, I'll go with a Canes win 4-1 to keep on rolling.

T'ronta Ho!

Tomorrow I'll be embarking on the trip up to Toronto, Ontario, Canada for my friend Tyler's Bachelor Party. It promises to be a very tiring trip if nothing else, with a 12-13 hour drive both ways. I should have plenty of time for good pictures of the skyline of Toronto, as well as famous places like the Hockey Hall of Fame. Plus we should have some time for Tyler's Bachelor Party Ale. We'll see how it tastes!

Also, the Canes play tonight against New Jersey. Thankfully they played last night and won, so Brodeur got number 552 out of the way last night. He's got the night off, so hopefully we can pull together for a win tonight. The Canes haven't been terrible lately, but they haven't won in a bit. They've gotten consolation points from 2 out of the last 3 games, but with as tight as the East playoff race is right now, there's no room for missed points. Just about every game from here on out is a "must-point" game. We need 1 or 2 points from each game, or at least need the other teams we're competing against to lose when we do, plus a couple.


Go Canes!

Schitz Maritz!

Just a bit over three years ago, Schitzie (skit-zy) came into our lives as a very hungry and very skinny stray cat. We had seen her for about a week howling for anyone to give her some food. So we would put out food at night to help her gain some trust in us and give her some strength. Eventually, she adventured into the house, and decided she didn't ever want to leave.

Unfortunately, we lost her this past Monday due to a tumor on her large intestine. For about a month, she had been losing weight from not eating enough, so we took her to the Vet and found a pretty sizeable tumor in her abdomen. Two days later she was in surgery to remove the tumor and make sure it hadn't spread. When they opened her up everything looked like it should be easy; the tumor hadn't spread and was localized in one region, although it was pretty big. They successfully removed the tumor, however, Schitzie was too weak to keep up her fight, and her heart soon stopped.

The Schitz got her name because she loved people, but couldn't stand other cats. Unfortunately for her we have two others, and they loved to be around her. One would annoy the crap out of her just to make her mad, the other just liked being close. She also seemed to grow into her name and showed some neurotic behaviors.

This picture (Spacegirl Schitz!) was taken after she licked a few holes in her own thigh due to us being away for 4 days. She's also doing one of her favorite things, laying in a box.

When she first came to us, this is how she looked:

Not exactly the prettiest cat. She looked pretty rough around the edges and had some weird markings. Within six months she looked like this:

So she had gained a little weight (just a little). She loved to eat. She'd graze all day, try to eat any people food she could, and sleep as much as possible. That's just a recipe for a happy cat. Here's a few more from her time.

So to celebrate Schitzie's life I plan to put off the Citrus IPA, and brew a monster. I plan on brewing an American Barleywine. These beers are not easy undertakings. They are gigantic brews. Tons of Malt are required for these as they are very high in alcohol. They also have a ton of hops. Very strong bitterness and pretty strong on the aroma and flavor. Here's the recipe I've been throwing around now.

Malts:

15 lbs of Pale LME.

1 lb of Crystal 40L Malt.

1lb of Melanoiden Malt.

8 oz. of Crystal 60L Malt.

4 oz. of Carapils Malt.

4 oz. of Special Roast Malt.

I'll add 1 oz of Cluster and Centennial hops at 60 min. Then add .75 oz Cluster hops at 30, 1.25 oz Cluster at 20 min, 1 oz Cluster at 10 min, and 1 oz Centennial at 1 min.

I plan on using 2 packs of Wyeast Imperial Blend. I don't have the equipment to make a yeast starter yet, but it's on my shopping list.

When it's all said and done, this brew will cost over a hundred bucks, but will be worth it. If all goes to plan, it should be over 11% ABV and have over 80 IBU's. It will be aged for a long time. Almost a year. Yep. This brew is not going to be opened until March 9th 2010. It normally take barleywines at least that long to mellow out and get to their best in terms of taste. I plan on maybe sampling some here and there to see how it ages, but The Schitz! won't be tasted by anyone else until March 9th of next year.

Here's to you Schitzie! You're my girl. You're a good Schitz; you're the best Schitz in the world! Schitz Maritz!