Isn’t it funny that I have been drinking less often and finding myself with more motivation! I’ve got just over an hour to get two beers racked off to secondary and get the primaries cleaned up. The plan was to re-use the yeast from the pumpkin ale for my FrankenIPA, but I left it too long in primary and I’m not comfortable re-using it now.

It seems silly now that I type it out, but I just have to go by my gut. Why is it any different from pouring a quart off after a week and putting it into the fridge? It probably isn’t… Would it be more embarrassing to admit that I lost track of which beer is which? I don’t think an IPA would turn out using a cider yeast. Taking that a bit further, I’m sure the apple beer will smell significantly different than the pumpkin one, making the one racking right now the pumpkin.

I’ve thought myself into a corner. Send beer!

Cheers!
Tony

If you haven’t heard Kid Rock’s latest single, you don’t listen to music on the radio. I got a good laugh driving all day and flipping stations, hearing that song on Hip Hop, Country, Rock, Classic Rock, Metal and Variety stations. He’s made a name for himself by sampling other tunes and putting his own lyrics or rap to them. If you like the single, make sure you have listened to his other albums in the past, that “summer” song is atypical.

Moving along, it appears Mr. Rock is going to be putting out a beer in conjuction with Drinks America. From KBSRadio:

Kid Rock is launching his very own brand of beer next year. The “All Summer Long” singer will develop the brew with Drinks America, a beverage maker which promises a product appealing to “beer drinkers who appreciate value with an easy-to-drink, traditional, good tasting American manufactured beer.”

Here’s the funniest part about the whole thing:

Drinks America CEO J. Patrick Kenny explained in a statement why Rock was the go-to man for the project, “Kid Rock is a reflection of great American rock and roll music and the American spirit, and we think we can create a beer in that same image.”

Anyone want to place bets that Mr. Kenny has never listened to one of the original Kid Rock albums, the ones that weren’t radio edited? No one?

I might try it out when it comes next summer, but no promises on that. I have been known to put in a Kid Rock CD and crank it when the kids are out of the house… but I’ll never admit that in person.

Cheers!
Tony

I assisted in troubleshooting a friend’s keg system set up with double regulators. The kegs were not holding pressure, or replenishing it as it got absorbed or had a pint pulled off. Doing this in words across country is challenging to me, I like to be able to have it in my hands and work from there!

He would set his pressures and then come back the next day to have them reading down at 2-3psi. He was running three lines off of two regulators, the furthest from the cylinder having the wye split. Each of the outs had shut offs on them. The cylinder was still showing full and we were able to verify that by pushing in the QD and turning up the pressure on the first reg. HIISSSSS.

It finally came down to trying to leave both regulators at 10psi. The regulators can only restrict what comes through it, the reg closest to the cylinder needs to be higher than the next, otherwise it doesn’t work properly.

By switching around his lines to where he wanted stuff, it seemed to work over night. Then later both regs read upwards of 30psi! There is more going on there we still have to narrow down. Stuck gauges? Who knows. What a fun hobby!

Cheers!
Tony

A week and a half ago, I did a double batch of brewing. Filled up two carboys with some fruit beer, one an apple the other a pumpkin.

All I need now is some gumption to get them back to the racking station, get the 5 gallon carboys sanitized and get them into secondary. My racking station, by the way, is the washing machine. It just sounds more fancy calling it a racking station.

Somewhere along the line I’ve lost my drive to keep these beers moving along their path! i don’t know if I dropped it at the Renaissance Festival last Saturday or it drove home with our Sunday evening visitors.

If anyone sees it, please drop me a line or leave a comment where I can find it. I should deal with those beers soon. I know there is nothing saying I can’t just rack one and leave the other for the next day. It is easier to just keep going once I get started though. Then I can re-use the sanitizing solution, keep the auto siphon going and in general get it done.

But I haven’t.

I can’t even say “I need to make room for the IPA”. I have another six gallon carboy and three plastic buckets. Perhaps I should downsize, that would make it more of a priority, wouldn’t it?

Cheers?
Tony

Mercury News reported an interesting tidbit this weekend.

A PhD student in Santa Cruz was arrested for making a poppy beer on the charges that it was a controled substance.

Police raided a Westside house Friday morning where they suspected people were producing opiates and arrested a UC Santa Cruz PhD candidate who said he used dried poppy pods to flavor home-brewed beer a month ago.

“All I did was make a poppy beer,” said Chad Renzelman, 28, who was arrested at his Bay Street home Friday. “I spent all morning in jail for brewing beer. I had no idea what I was doing was illegal.”

Now, I don’t mean to be a cynic here, but a PhD student who “studies chemistry” and doesn’t know where opiates are derived from is a bit far fetched. Its possible the press is over exagerating or under researching since its been known to happen before, but I’ll lean on their side on this one.

It should be interesting to see how this plays out. I have to admit to laughing, imagining some poor schlubs in hazmat suits scooping up the spent grains from a few batches worth of brewing!

Cheers!
Tony

I’ll have to rack my two beers out of primary tonight or tomorrow. They both fermented really well, big krauesen, a lot of airlock activity and now things have settled down. If I think of it, I’ll take a gravity to get an idea of where they are and how long I should leave them in secondary.

I used to be much more on top of my batches, but I have found as I get lax with the timing, the quality of beer doesn’t suffer. Notice I am careful to say lax with timing. I am still very careful with my sanitization of the equipment!

These two should be good beer for folks who “don’t like beer” and the folks who like fruit beers. Once they are out of the primary I can get on with my IPA using the hops from my back yard. Cascades here we come!

Cheers,
Tony

There is something wrong with my blog when I can write up one tiny little excerpt with a popular actress and her beer and garner more links and pingbacks than any other of my posts! Wow, I mean really WOW! Just using that actress/performer’s name gets tons of pingbacks.

I had two more today from blog hacks or bots or whatever they are linking to my blog just because of her name. Sheesh, I finally dissalowed pingbacks because it all seems just too spammy.

What is this grammer comming to where spammy is an acceptable word?!?

Sheesh, I say. I’m pouring a pint and seriously contemplating deleting that post.

Cheers!
Tony

Since I brewed on Sunday the beers have been bubbling away on overdrive. It is really fun to walk into the laundry room and listen to the rapid ticking and gurgling of the airlocks. They seem to be talking to each other, comparing notes on how rapidly the ferment is going or what odors are escaping.

Suppose they are extolling the virtues of pumkin spices in a beer verses apple, which one would win? I have been putting off brewing those two beers because of their light nature and likely sweet finish. I’m hoping they will be dry enough for me, but we will see.

To counter the fruit fall beers I picked up an imperial pale kit. The exact title escapes me at the moment, but inside the box is two cans of LME and two or three pounds of DME. With three ounces of hops, one with 14%AA for bittering. I figure with the Cascades in the back yard I will have a minor hop monster! My plan is to follow the kit’s hopping schedule and supplement with the homegrown hops along the way. A crossbreed 90 minute IPA perhaps.

That is on schedule for this weekend, and I’ll be re-using the American Ale yeast from the pumpkin beer, so I am slightly restricted by how long primary lasts on that one.

Cheers!
Tony

My father in law and I did back to back batches yesterday. We started around three or four and ended … some time before the kids went to bed. The first batch we did was an apple ale that has a bottle of apple extract to add to the end product. There was the option of using pure apple juice to add the flavor, too. That is the route I went with, a gallon of apple cider I think it was, went into the fermenter as a top up. I figured it was pasteurized before packaging it probably has less contaminants than my wort. The apple beer also called to be fermented with cider yeast. It should be interesting, I’m hoping the yeast will ferment it cleanly dry and be a nice fall beer instead of some of the apple beers on the market that end up tasting like syrup.

The second batch we did was a pumpkin spiced beer. That one used a can of pumpkin steeped at the boil, likely to impart color and not much else. I used American Ale yeast for that one, and its fermenting vigorously.

It feels a little like back to normal having beer on tap, beer in the fermenters and ideas for what is coming next. IPA with my homegrown hops and a stout should be in order.

Cheers!
Tony

This morning I printed off all the comments from the Brew Dad contest page, cut them apart and spread them over the floor for my daughter to pick one from. Believe it or not, I used some judgement in leaving out the ping back comments and just for integrity I also left out my comment.

The stunning result was chosen by an almost four year old girl who was at the time watching “Charlie and Lola” on TV. Yes, just to add to the randomness of the picking, not only did I drop strips of paper on the floor and stir them up, I did it while she was distracted!

It only took me a couple tries to get her attention, and when she did she chose…
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