Messages

2161

All Grain Brewing / Re: Christmas came early

« on: October 27, 2010, 02:12:22 AM »

1/4 bag, bah humbug

try this

27 lbs 8.0 oz    Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)    Grain    96.49 %
4.0 oz    Caramel Malt - 20L (Briess) (20.0 SRM)    Grain    0.88 %
4.0 oz    Caramel Malt - 40L (Briess) (40.0 SRM)    Grain    0.88 %
4.0 oz    Caramel Malt - 60L (Briess) (60.0 SRM)    Grain    0.88 %
4.0 oz    Special Roast (Briess) (50.0 SRM)    Grain    0.88 %
1.00 oz    Magnum [15.80 %] (90 min)    Hops    62.9 IBU
2.00 oz    Goldings, East Kent [4.10 %] (15 min)    Hops    8.7 IBU
1.00 oz    Goldings, East Kent [4.10 %] (0 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep)    Hops    -
1 Pkgs    American Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1272) [Starter 8 Cup slurry]    Yeast-Ale    

Would that be a double mash, or should I throw everything in to the mash tun at once?

2162

All Grain Brewing / Re: Christmas came early

« on: October 26, 2010, 12:49:30 PM »

The single malt IPA in the recent Zymurgy sounds pretty good...

Still waiting to get my copy sadly :-( seems that it takes forever to get here.

2163

All Things Food / Re: BBQ Style

« on: October 26, 2010, 12:45:17 PM »

I'm doing a batch of chili for Halloween; anybody ever tried smoking chili? I'm thinking about putting it into the Le Creuset and smoking for a few hours with some hickory chunks. Probably add some brown sugar to balance a bit. One thing though, my meat is half short ribs, 1/4 ostrich, and 1/8 pulled pork (applewood smoked) and 1/8 applewood smoked ribs. I don't expect the smoked food to contribute too terribly much in the way of smoke, but would smoking the chili outright lend too much smokiness?

2164

The Pub / Re: Grrrrr Fruit Fly Invasion

« on: October 26, 2010, 12:22:30 PM »

You beat me to it. I'll post anyway:

You know what they say - time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like Isoamyl Acetate.

http://instantrimshot.com/classic/?sound=rimshot

Thank you, thank you, I'm here all night, tip your waitresses, try the veal!

2165

All Grain Brewing / Christmas came early

« on: October 26, 2010, 12:18:09 PM »

25 kilos of maris otter; recipes are welcome! 1/4 of this is going into a winter warmer of course.

2166

Beer Recipes / Re: strong belgian christmas ale

« on: October 26, 2010, 12:47:19 AM »

Here's something that might work well in that beer....when the beer is about to go to secondary, take 1-2 lb. of figs.  Cut them in half.  In a super heated wok or saute pan (wok works best) caramelize them for a few minutes until you can smell the sugars in them.  Deglaze the pan with some of the beer.  Then put all that into the secondary and let it sit a couple weeks.

Hrm -- I think I might try this, except I'd deglaze with Calvados or maybe port. Toast some walnuts and throw 'em in for the full effect.

2167

All Things Food / Re: BBQ Style

« on: October 26, 2010, 12:45:39 AM »

Some Spatchcocked Chicken.

I've never tried the direct heat method for whole chicken like that before, how do you keep it from drying out/not cooking all the way through? Would love to try this on the Egg this weekend, the crusty pieces, they look delicious...

2168

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Pics of recent brews?

« on: October 25, 2010, 04:27:06 AM »

Volcanic landscape?  Looks like your beer is resting on a spatter rampart, and the peak in the background might be an erroded cinder cone or perhaps a large hornito...

Man, geology is so cool! Where'd you get yer lernin' from? I've wanted to get more into learning about formations and geologic history but the farthest I've come is a series of walking trails in my area that have guidebooks to point out interesting tidbits.

2169

The Pub / Re: Distilling

« on: October 21, 2010, 01:00:50 AM »

http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/10/scotch-and-chocolate-pairings.html

For the whisky tangent we went off on earlier ^^^

2170

Ingredients / Re: Post your water report

« on: October 18, 2010, 09:37:49 AM »

My tap water is GOD AWFUL and I still haven't gotten an official report back, so here's what I've been using since I moved here (Chamarande, France) - what do you think?

Eau de source, La Montille, 63360 Saint-Beauzire, Auvergne, France:
(mg/l except where otherwise noted)

Cations:
----------
Calcium: 4.0
Magnesium: 1.0
Sodium: 3.0
Potassium: 0.8

Anions:
---------
Chlorides: 0.8
Nitrates: 2.1
Nitrites: 0.05
Sulfates: 0.4
Bicarbonates: 23.4

Silica: 19.12
ph: 6.7
Dry residue at 180 deg C: 43.58 mg/l

2171

All Grain Brewing / Re: Quick recirc question for the weekend

« on: October 18, 2010, 09:31:45 AM »

I am afraid if CaCO3 is an issue in your house, the whole house filter will make the water taste better, but not do anything for the residue (unless by filter you are going to go Reverse Osmosis).  Instead, you will need a water softner to remove some of the CaCO3... however, the salt it adds to the water will make it less suitable for brewing.   

Yup, it's a dual filter, water softener cartridge followed by a ~5 μm filter for "purification." Maybe I should start another thread because we're moving more into water territory, but one of the things that I've noticed is a very distinct chlorine smell (seriously, fill up my mash tun with tap water and come back the next day to smell a municipal pool in my basement), I'm hoping that the filter will mitigate some of that, otherwise I guess I'll need to keep going with the bottled stuff. I'll post my "water report" in the "Post your water report" thread for more on that.

I've always been afraid of decoction mashing because it sounds really labor intensive and easy to screw up, but your description lays it out pretty well - I know have a lagering fridge so maybe I could try a Vienna Lager with tap water and do some decoction.

2172

All Grain Brewing / Re: Quick recirc question for the weekend

« on: October 18, 2010, 07:44:17 AM »

Ah, sorry, I'll clarify (har har!): yup, I was referring to post-fermentation clarity. I've heard of "drop bright" but have yet to experience it in person. The first two steps have pretty much always been clear according to your definition, so it sounds like it's either calcium in the water (you should see our shower doors - I pretty much only use "eau du source," like Evian, at least until the plumber can install the whole-house filter.

I DO however do all of my CLEANING with tap water - I've noticed that a lot of my SS tubing gets crystalline deposits on it when I soak it in no-rinse oxidizer, and I try to shake it off, but maybe there's enough lingering CaCO3 to have an effect?

For your other idea, is that a rest at 130 f BEFORE mashing at 150-155 or after? If I'm doing a 90-minute mash would I include the time used for the protein rest in the time for the overall mash?

2173

All Grain Brewing / Re: Quick recirc question for the weekend

« on: October 18, 2010, 07:01:34 AM »

I ended up keeping the sparge arm just for sparge water and running the recirc through the march 809. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it mashed out, the grainbed held quite nicely!

This was my first time using whole leaf hops, and the real trouble came last night at about 1am after flameout when I started up the CFC and immersion chillers. The immersion chiller worked fine, of course, but - silly me - I didn't install my hop blocker tube thing and the outlet for my boiler got stuck toot sweet. Too bad, because I really wanted to see if using both the CFC and the immersion chillers combined would reduce my time to chill. As it was, the immersion chiller (combined with 15 deg C groundwater) got it from 100 c to 22 c in about 15 minutes. Almost seems like overkill to try the immersion chiller too, but hey, why not?

One last question for you guys: I've heard a lot about cold break and how a whirlpool is supposed to help get all that material into the center of the boiler so you get nice clear wort coming up. However I've -never- had clear wort, nor have I -ever- had clear beer - it's always had some haze to it. What might I be doing wrong? Should I have the recirc running longer than the time required to drop to yeast pitching temp?

2174

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Beer in the Bible

« on: October 15, 2010, 02:49:41 PM »

The wife just mentioned that the ancient Egyptians were known to have brewed beer, and the Israelites, having been their slaves, would probably have made their own version according to a similar recipe. Anybody know any Egyptian beer recipes?

2175

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Beer in the Bible

« on: October 15, 2010, 02:28:38 PM »

A good portion of my day job is dealing with linguistics and understanding how to use and develop rules of language to deal with our company's challenges. To that end, I spend a fair amount of time working with an actual full blooded and degreed up individual with knowledge of how this actually works.

When talking about the hobby, she pointed out something very interesting. There's a whole branch of linguistics that studies the evolution of language and how things have transformed over time. One of the techniques they use to trace language relationships is key words that pretty much appear everywhere and change relatively slowly. Beer is one of those words. Think of it this way.. beer = bier = bierre = biru = pivo, etc.

Hey, my wife has a Masters in Linguistics! And I've got a doctor in linguini, but that's another story, wokka wokka.

---

Alton Brown or someone equally intelligent said something along the lines of: civilization started because people started cultivating crops, and supposedly those crops were being cultivated specifically for beer-making. I would not be surprised if it turned up somewhere in the Bible.

The casting bread upon the waters thing (and the grain cake thing) is really cool! My wife and I are reading the entire Bible in one year, I'll keep a lookout for further references. Maybe I can even eek out a recipe!

Michael, do you have an Internets link to that article?