I was thumping away on the treadmill this afternoon while the kids sleep. I had to keep chuckling to myself, because even though I was jogging, reading a book, and otherwise exerting myself in an attempt to stay or get fit depending on which angle you look at me… I kept thinking about beer!

I wondered when I should check my IPA’s gravity. I wondered if it will work to put the second infusion of dry hop in the keg with a mesh bag tied to a line of monofiliment as I’ve read about on brewing forums.  When would I be able to brew the pumpkin beer kit thats been sitting in my garage for a few months. How horrible those beers brewed by Huber treated me this weekend.

What ever gets me through the workout right?

Cheers!

When I’m getting ready to serve a stout through the stout faucet and beer gas (70 nitrogen, 30 CO2… or is it 75/25? something like that) the first thing I do is rack the beer into a clean keg. Then using my CO2 cylinder I hook up the gas line to a beer out quick disconnect, seal the keg and attach the QD.

I like to crank the CO2 to 10 or 15psi and let it rumble through the beer out tube, swirling the keg for five minutes or so. This gets a decent charge of CO2 in the stout. Take the CO2 off and attach the beer gas to the keg and the keg to the faucet. Usually with my other beers I am ready to drink within an hour of force carbonating. The stout and beer gas needs more time to balance out.

One of the major differences is serving stouts with beer gas is the restriction of the tubing isn’t an issue, unless you are dealing with long runs, 20ft or more. My regular set up with 5 foot beer line has little impact on the pour since the serving pressure is somewhere in the 25-30psi range. The faucet controls the flow, there is a little restrictor plate with some holes as well as a flow director. These little innards is what helps strip the gas out of the beer and provides that great cascade effect in the glass.

Cheers!

A thought occurred to me as I was contemplating kegging my latest batch. Yes, sometimes thoughts occur to me out of the blue, but most of the time it is more like a tangential thing, I’m thinking about something and out of the blue comes another idea. What makes this one mentionable is, well, I remember it and I’m sitting at my desk when I had it. Sad? Perhaps, but I digress.

Don’t forget to check the O-rings on your kegs! Especially if the kegs inexplicably lose pressure or have been in use for a couple of years. For around four bucks they can be replaced with new ones and thats one less thing to worry about. It doesn’t hurt to put a thin coat of keg lube on there as well to help with the seals.

Treat your kegs well and they’ll treat your beer well too!

Cheers!

Yesterday I wrote about an assistant coach that brought a case of beer to a hotel room with his wrestling team. The local paper reports today that it was the students/wrestlers who turned the ass. coach in.

Lazenberry, who is vice president of the Woodbury wrestling booster club, said he didn’t know why the coach came to the room with beer — and with two high school girls — but said the boys didn’t drink any. He said the boys left the room, hoping the coach would leave, but when they came back he was still there. The boys reported the incident to school authorities the next morning, he said.

Now that right there deserves some great kudos for the boys on the wrestling team. Nicely done.

Cheers!

From a local news site, it seems that an assistant wrestling coach doled out a case of beer to the high school team at a wrestling conference.

The Woodbury High School assistant wrestling coach allegedly showed up at a downtown St. Paul hotel room on Feb. 29 with two high school girls and a case of beer.

Since he was the only person there of legal drinking age, I am amazed that he has not been charged. Now, I am assuming the coach is a “he” but I suppose that isn’t safe either. Regardless, showing up with two minor girls to a hotel room with a wrestling team just smacks of hooliganism.

Very poor decisions like this make a bad name for beer the world over. At least from the story nothing untoward happened besides providing beer.

Sad.

Cheers.

I was waiting a couple of days for responses to my cry for help because of a fermentation taking a bit longer than the instructions said it should. As a recapitulation, I want to regain my great beer quality that I was getting before my move. This is going to be an ongoing thing until I can eliminate the cause of poor flavor.

So, on Sunday it was still active and there was an inch or two of cap. Two days later, and the cap has fallen and the activity has dwindled. The original gravity of the beer was 1.080 and on Sunday it was 1.020, if it had been even a point or two lower I would have racked. I was just thrown by the activity of the ferment and didn’t want to stall it out, but also wanted to try and be true to my attempt at going back to basics.

Today, the cap is gone and the gravity is 1.018 so I will proceed in racking onto an ounce of leaf cascade, mmmmm. I’m going to hold on to the last ounce of leaf and put that in the muslin bag when I keg just to try something different. See, there I go trying to tweak again. For shame.

I’ll post when its ready to drink. Maybe the local readers want a pint when its ready?

Cheers!

I wrote about the stolen Guinness costume a couple of days ago. It turned up anonymously on Sunday…

Michael Nowak tells The Detroit News someone anonymously dropped off the promotional costume on his friend’s porch on Sunday.

Am I the only one to think someone ought to ask about this friend? Friend probably wanted something cool to go to the local party as, buddy says “hey, take this costume” then the owner says “hey, where’s my costume”

Um….  “stolen?”

I’m such a cynic. Glad the costume was returned to its rightful owner though! That, and I’m glad I never had the opportuntiy to be put in such a position, either. I’d probably be wearing it!

Cheers

As I’ve written before, I’m trying this whole new approach to brewing to hopefully improve my beers. Ever since the move, I’ve been having less than stellar luck getting the quality and flavor that I want. So with excellent support from those close to me, I am attempting to go back to the basics and follow the instructions.

It may be that my beer has been suffering from me thinking I know the process fairly well and just brewing and fermenting the way I have always done with the methods that have, in the past, worked for me.

On to the issue.

I wrote last week how I brewed a particularly hoppy huge double IPA following the instructions that came with the kit. I didn’t even adjust the hopping schedule! The only thing I did different was to add WhirlFloc in the last fifteen minutes. The original gravity dinged in at 1.080 before temp correcting. (Since it was room temp when I took the reading and my hydrometer is calibrated to 68degF I wasn’t too worried about a couple 0.001’s.) I pitched an XL pack of American Ale yeast that puffed up quite nicely before adding it to the wort.

A week later, I took a gravity and it is riding just under 1.020 again, at 69degF. The airlock is still gurgling at a fairly good clip, every couple of seconds. My gut tells me to let it ride for a while longer until the airlock slows and fermentation eases up, but the instructions say to rack after a week.

My conundrum is this: Do I follow the instructions against my gut feelings?

Cheers.

I read on one of the few forums that I frequent about some recipes posted over at Chow.com. I am a great fan of cooking with beer, and perhaps I’ll share a few of our families most favorite recipes, but until that time, check out this posting for ten recipes using Guinness!

The cupcake recipe bears very close scrutiny. We’ve found stouts and porters to be a great addition to chocolate desserts because the slight bitterness adds a counter the the sometimes overly sweet cake. The added moisture sure helps too! I’ll see about the feasibility of posting my wifes chocolate porter cake recipe next week. There is no promises that it will be posted though.

Enjoy your weekend everyone, stay safe, brew! drink! bake! add beer to your life.

Cheers!

The Associated Press is reporting about a six foot green bottle of Guinness costume stolen in Michigan.

Authorities say a Detroit beer distribution company loaned out the costume for Halloween. The owner of the home where the costume had been stored found out it had been stolen after the company asked for it back.

I hate to be a skeptic here, but if I were lucky enough to have a distribution company lend me something valued at $3,000 I would be pretty darn careful about where I kept it and be equally quick to return it once I was done with it. How do you up and find out you’ve been robbed only when looking for something?

Anyway, the article goes on to mention there are likely only two such costumes in the US, so if you are out partying and notice one you might be doing a favor to the lawful owner to report it.

Cheers!