We stripped the beer related stuff off the kegerator yesterday and hauled it out. Thankfully (at least for the beer) it was just below freezing last night so my keg should be nice and cold this afternoon. First time the beer is chilled! Since the thing didn’t work anyway, we brought it over to my brother in laws house, whose city removes appliances for free.

It is fascinating watching a freezer be stripped of its copper. With a couple of snips and a twist or two the exposed copper is off and in a bag. We also found out why it wasn’t cooling, there was no more coolant in the thing. No big loss since it was a hand me down from a hand me down from some one that didn’t want it anymore.

My string of free kegerator bases, either fridge or freezer, is at an end. Now I have to look for something that will be decent enough to leave in my office. Clean and cold instead of just cold.

Cheers!

Since I have this great IPA kegged and ready to go without any way to cool the keg r.i.p. kegerator I am reduced to filing a growler and sticking it in the kitchen fridge. For those who are unfamiliar, a growler is a half gallon jug usually made from glass. As a quick aside, I have an awesome Nalgene one from Fitgers Brew House in Duluth, MN that is my second most favorite…

There are a couple different ways to efficiently and effectively fill a growler without getting a flat beer out of it when you want to pour. Here we go!

• Start with a COLD growler, make sure it is as least as cold as the beer, colder is better but not frozen. Carbon Dioxide (CO2)  likes cold, cold liquids hold more gas. Cold beer on warm glass means lots of foam. Not good for re-serving, it pours flat!
• Turn the gas pressure down on the keg so the beer comes out at a mere dribble, 3-4psi tops.
• Variant one: tilt the growler and slowly fill allowing the beer to run down the side with as little as possible drop from the faucet. The idea is to avoid agitation and letting the CO2 come out.
• Variant two: buy a hose with an inner diameter that equals the outer diameter of the faucet. Attach to the faucet and let the end down to the bottom of the growler, fill up right.
• Let the beer fill up as far as possible to the top, a little foam in the drip tray or bar rag is worth it to get the beer liquid as close to the top as you can.
• QUICKLY CAP IT!

The idea is to get the thing filled with as little CO2 loss as possible. Cap it tight and stick it in the fridge. Variant one is fine if you plan on drinking it within a day or two, oxidation won’t be a factor that quickly (at least I’ve never noticed) and it is as hassle free as you can get.

Variant two is great if you are planning on keeping it around for a while before drinking. Properly sealed it should hold its carbonation for a week or more and since it was filled from the bottom instead of allowing it to cascade down the side there was much less air introduced to the beer.

A final note about growlers. They are basically a sealed pitcher of beer. Once you open it and start drinking from it, don’t expect the beer to stay carbonated very long. A couple hours in the fridge sure, but not over night. Once you increase the headspace in the growler the CO2 comes out of the beer to equalize pressures. Its the exact reverse process carbonating a keg by cranking up the pressure. The more headspace, the more CO2 lost in the remaining beer.

Its not perfect, but it beats drinking warm IPA.

Cheers!

What an absolute utter failure to get a seal. One would think size five tippet material was thin enough to suspend through the seal of the keg and maintain a pressure but nope. Since I was lacking in time and didn’t have the energy (or remaining nap time) to fiddle with it any more I just cut the string and dropped it into the keg.

What I think would have helped greatly was re-lubing the O-ring with a liberal coat of Keg Lube. Unfortunately I don’t know where my tub of that is and like I mentioned I just didn’t have the time left to do it right. Its supposed to work the first time!

To top off the woes of the kegging experience this time around, something is bunk with my regulator and I can’t get pressure out of one side of the wye. I haven’t used it in a long time since I’ve had that stout on tap with the beer gas mix, and again I didn’t have the time to investigate fully.

The last straw of course was the dead kegerator.

For sale: Complete Homebrewing Kit, kegs, carboys, plastic buckets, cylinders, tower, faucets including stout faucet, brew kettles…

No, no, just kidding!

Cheers!

I am now officially in the market for another beer fridge or freezer. Yup, I kegged my IPA, plugged the kegerator in and salivated for an hour or two waiting for it to cool down.

The compressor was running and running…

An hour later I opened it up to check progress and nothing. If anything it was warmer than when I left it. So, Now I’ve got a HUGE paperweight taking up room in my office. Warm green IPA just doesn’t appeal to me, so its surin’ of Craigslist I go.

Bow your heads, grab a pint and say a toast to the behemoth that graced the family room and office for a year or so.

Cheers.

I was flipping through my brew log to see if there were any good recipes I might repeat after I brew up the Pumpkin Ale in the garage and stumbled upon this one for a Scwarzbier. The original brew date was in ‘03 but I recall this one being very enjoyable.  This was one from my first jug of bulk LME I got for a steal at the local liquor store that also sold brewing stuff in Duluth.

Scwarzbier 

~8.2 lbs Muntons Dark LME
0.5 lbs Crystal 60L
0.25 lb Chocolate malt
0.125lb Black Patent
1 oz Norther Brewer 7.1% AA  60 mins
2oz Hallertau 4.0AA 15mins
London Ale yeast

Steep the grains at least fifteen minutes, add the LME and bring to a boil. Add hops at appropriate times, cool and pitch. Enjoy.

Cheers!

I’m going to dry hop my IPA in the keg this week and here’s how its going to be done. I’ll sanitize the cheese cloth bag and some marbles in One Step. While that is soaking I’ll rack my beer into the keg and search for some fishing line.  After the keg is full I’ll rinse out the bag (I’m just apprehensive about “no rinse needed” and so water from my filter should be fine), add the once of Cascade whole leaf and marbles. Then I’ll tie it closed with the fishing line and drop it into my keg leaving some of the line out the lid seal.

This way I should be able to suspend it and then retrieve it when I think its been time enough without having to slosh around the keg. Hopefully this will also let me carbonate it while its sitting on dryhop.

That is the plan, anyway. I am still twitching in the back of my mind about a Randall. I’ll have to look for that BYO issue again and re-read it!

Cheers.

We’re under a winter storm warning until Saturday morning. The pundits are talking something along the lines of 5-10 inches of snow before its over. Where is this global warming stuff everyone keeps talking about? Its the second week of April for crying out loud! To think it was in the 60’s a week ago.

Since we’ll probably be stuck at home tomorrow afternoon, I might just have to light the fire under the brew kettle and get that pumpkin ale a perking. How much fun will that be brewing in my garage while there is a snow storm raging outside. Here’s hoping the doom and gloom predictions are overrated and the storm passes over quickly.

It would be nice to see the sun again in a couple of days, and to hear the gurgle of my airlock once again. I’ll be pitching the yeast from my IPA, so it’ll likely fire right up. Perhaps I’ll keg that IPA tonight! We’ll see if it needs that extra ounce of Cascade dry hop.

Cheers!

This time Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin is the scene of the dastardly deed. It has been a busy week or two for beer news and they just keep coming. It turns out the three men made off with $24,000 yeah, twenty-four THOUSAND dollars worth of beer!

The thieves pulled up about 2 a.m. Monday in semi tractors stolen from a business southwest of Chicago in Will County, Ill., Mount Pleasant police said.

Is there a lot of money in stolen beer? I guess so, though one would think it would be pretty easy to trace since all those cans and bottles have “best by” and run codes on them, right?

Cheers.

The ban on beer from prohibition was lifted 75 years ago. Raise a pint this evening in celebration of the suds! Even if it was only 3.2% allowed…

 Breweries and beer lovers around the country are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the return of beer on April 7, 1933, as the Prohibition era was drawing to a close.

Its a good thing those governing us can sometimes come to their senses.

The first mention of this program came to my on my homepage from the Sun Journal. It seems that my favorite micro-macro or macro-micro, whatever, is showing more of its coolness.

About six weeks ago Boston Beer sent out letters to small brewers that it wanted to help them by making available some of its hops at cost. The company said it received 352 requests totaling about 100,000 pounds.

I already really dig Sam Adams beers, and this just adds to the respect I have for it as a brewery. A quote from founder Jim Koch “We view each other as colleagues not as competitors.”

The original sharing program appears on Sam Adams website.

Way to go, Sam Adams*.

Cheers!

*Maybe I’ll even forgive the age verification thing on the website. Silly, as I’ve written before.