To everyone reading this, I wish you all a happy and safe Fourth of July! For those of you in the United States, stay safe, watch the fireworks from a distance and don’t forget to count your fingers if you are lighting off your own.
We are heading over to our friends’ house for the evening. They are situated right to view two cities worth of fireworks. I am planning on bringing over a sampler pack of Summit Summer beers since my kegged IPA is already spoken for.
The Summit mix is great, there are three pale ales and three pilsners for me and three Scandia ales and three wheats (or wits, I forget) for my wife. Something for each of us!
Stay safe folks and if you’ve served, thank you for keeping our country free!
Rumor has it that one of the two makers of 6.5 gallon glass carboys has switched its production to Corona bottles. The two producers, one from Italy and one from Mexico apparently provide the lions share of carboys to the world.
Of course there is more to the glassware than just home brewers, but if Corona is going to pay better than the production of 6.5 gallon carboys, why not switch? If I had a crystal ball to look into, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the price of all carboys going up in response to this. If you have a LHBS that still sells the 6.5 around $20-25, grab one now.
I do have a 6.5, and it is very handy for big beer primaries that I want to leave for more than a week or so, it also works well for 6 gallon wine secondaries. I have left wine in there for a month or so before racking over to a 5 gallon and filling it to the top. What happens with the rest? Well, its already fairly clear by then, you see, and we couldn’t have it go to waste, now could we?
I’ll try and do some substantive research on this and get back with citable info.
I decided today would be a good day to rack the Kolsch I brewed last weekend. Eight days didn’t seem too far out of the realm of “standard brewing procedure” so I took a gravity. 1.018 or so, not bad for primary, certainly not bad to put over to secondary.
After sanitizing my Autosiphon and my carboy I being the rack. Spit sputter glurg comes from the racking tube and the siphon is broken! What the heck? There are also yeast colonies floating on the surface of the beer and the tube was very cloudy. The cloudiness I expected but not the yeast on the top nor the ineffective siphon.
I lifted the autosiphon off the bottom of the carboy and was able to transfer three gallons or so that way, but as the top and bottom became closer it stopped again.
Now, rather than sit and force it through by pumping the autosiphon over and over I just pulled out, airlocked both carboys covered them up and walked away. So clearly it wasn’t ready for racking!
So THATS what is meant by “top cropping, low flocculation”!
Learn something new every day.
Any guesses how long I should leave it alone? I’ll wait until Friday and try again, but I’m concerned about leaving it too long!
SABMiller plc (SAB.L) and Molson Coors Brewing Company (NYSE: TAP; TSX: TPX) today announced the closing of the transaction to combine their U.S. and Puerto Rico operations to create MillerCoors.
MillerCoors, which will begin operating as a combined entity on July 1, 2008, will be a dynamic, brand-led U.S. brewer with the scale, resources and distribution platform to succeed in the highly competitive marketplace.
I hate to be a spoil sport about this one… I guess we’ll just see how it turns out.
While most ethanol comes from corn, Molson Coors’ ethanol is produced from waste beer.
The beer is lost during packaging or is considered substandard for public consumption.
Company representative Al Timothy says Coors is the country’s first major brewer to convert waste beer to ethanol.
So while the Democratic National Convention will be driving around on spent Coors I wonder what beers will be served over lunch and dinner? I’m sure other Denver brewers agree with me in thinking Coors is a waste beer.
Oh, wait…
“Lost during packaging. Substandard.”
Well good for them anyway. That is pretty cool that even a macro brewery can step up and deliver one for … oh who am I kidding? The cynic in me is screaming “Look at the publicity!”
When I get kits from the brew store and I won’t be able to brew them right away I like to separate out the ingredients. My hope is to prolong the freshness as best I can. Obviously if my kit came with liquid yeast that goes in the refrigerator. I also like to put my hops in the fridge.
Since I don’t have a grain mill quite yet, I usually like to get my grains crushed at the store. I’m told that keeping them in a dry cool place will help keep them fresh. So the remainder of the box ends up in the entryway closet, eagerly awaiting brew day.
Nothing too fancy, but I like to hope that will keep the ingredients as fresh as I can.
Fermentation Friday is tomorrow and the topic this month is:
“What is the craziest concoction you ever came up with, on the fly or prepped, to brew with”
My absolute craziest beer brewed was my root beer float stout. The idea behind it was to make a milk stout with tones of root beer in it, sarsaparilla, licorice root, a little bit of winter green leaves and some lactose.
So, that was the craziest beer I brewed, and it sticks out in my mind so incredibly well because it was a complete disaster. The root beer tones I was trying for ended up having tones of nastiness only enhanced by the vomitous contributions of the lactose.
This was the only beer that I dumped almost all of it. Yes, I had to give it a few tries, but after a first sip my wife wouldn’t touch it. That was such a bummer beer, and I had it on the stout faucet too. Come to think of it, besides my Tony Tripel, that was the last beer I free brewed with out a recipe or kit.
Time to break out of the rut again and shoot for something more. Since I’ve committed myself to going all grain after the last three kits are brewed I should also start coming up with new recipes too. Well, I should let my wife know that I want to go all grain as well. Heh.
Albrecht was charged last week by the St. Paul city attorney’s office with furnishing alcohol to a minor.
…
The complaint said Albrecht, the only one of legal drinking age, drank several beers and repeatedly offered it to the students.
I hope the judge or jury nails this fellow to the wall for a LONG time. Once again I have to say how impressed I am with the wrestling team that none of them participated. I’m not a big team sports guy, but seeing this makes me proud of those students!
Beer is for those over 21, but age doesn’t make an adult, does it.
As I’ve indicated for the past year I am building up the nerve to go all grain with my brewing. In my searches this afternoon I found a video on batch sparging by Don Osborn. He presents the topic very straight forward without bogging me down with a ton of details. Give it a view!
Thats it, once three more extract kits are brewed up I’ll make the jump. That should put me into August. That ought to be plenty of time to get my MLT rigged up and ready to go. I’ve read posts by Don over at Northern Brewer but haven’t been active there in a couple of years.
Since I’ve always been told “a picture is worth a thousand words”
I put the kids down for their nap yesterday afternoon and gathered up the goods. It was a beautiful afternoon and I spent it in my garage steeping stirring drinking and sadly, tidying up a little. This time around I remembered the whirlfloc at the 15 minute mark.
The kit was Midwest’s Kolsch with the Activator smack pack.
