These two blogs are my current inspiration. The first is a guy from Chicago and can be found here. He has an incredible, in-depth knowledge of the technical side of brewing. He also seems really friendly and open to sharing that knowledge with others. I like that about brewers, we’re sort of all in this together, not really cut throat or competitive. I wish I lived in Chicago so I could go brew with him, or at least sample some of his beer. Also, he seems to trend toward traditional British ales, which is where I’m headed.
Second, Monday Night Brewing. These are my entrepreneurial inspiration. They are out of Atlanta and friends with a good friend of mine, Matthew, who was just kind enough to donate 2 kegs to my effort if you’ll recall. Anyway, they’re three guys who have started brewing and are working their way toward opening a commercial brewery. They’re funny as hell and really seem to have the non-technical side of brewing down. I say that not to impugn their technical savvy. I’m reading their blog from the beginning forward, so I’m 2 or 3 years behind and they’re sort of still figuring stuff at the point of their-lives-as-a-novel that I’m at. While they don’t make me wish I lived in Atlanta, they do make me wish I passed through there every once in a while.
So, mark those guys down in your google reader or RSS feeder machine of choice.
Cheers!

Today the final bits of my draft system arrived. A new milestone in my brewing career has been reached. My friend Matthew was kind enough to donate two 5 gallon kegs(the standard homebrew batch size) to the cause. In addition to those, I’m using:

• A 7.0 cu. ft. chest freezer (returned item at Lowes)
• A 5lb. CO2 tank
• A dual gauge regulator
• Pin-lock disconnects and hosing
• A temperature controller for the freezer

Until I get it modified, the freezer will hold 2 kegs, which is fine because that is as many as I have now. Eventually, I will raise the lid on it slightly which will let me hold 3. Currently, my latest Mac & Jack’s clone is in the first keg. From what I”m reading, it should be carbonated and ready to go in a day or two, which will be awesome. We have always had trouble getting carbonation right in bottles, so this will be a welcome step.
Right now I have a Strong Ale in secondary (dry hopping.) When I transferred it, I got some off flavors, my untrained pallet said buttery which means I have an excess of diacetyl. I’m hoping that the yeast that got transferred with it will be enough to take care of that, but we’ll see. If it turns out, I will put that in the second keg. By then, the first keg may have run out which means I need to get to brewing again soon.
I’m getting fairly serious about wanting to open a brewery, so look for this blog to take a giant turn beerward (if it hasn’t already) and for me to be brewing with increased frequency. My goal would be to have something similar to Mac & Jacks as well as a English Brown Ale (probably Northern), an ESB, an IPA, a malty lager of some sort, perhaps a bock or doppelbock and maybe a wheat beer. Thats a hypothetical lineup, so it will take some refining. At any rate, I will need to refine a recipe for each, which would take several batches a piece.
So, for you Central Texas drinkers, get ready for me to constantly be offering you fresh homebrew. I’m not sure this is the place to open a brewery as Austin has roughly 3,987 opening this year (ok, maybe not that many, but at least 5 more set to open this year.)
Sometimes I do something and I just have to laugh uncontrollably at myself for several minutes. This happened a few days ago when I realized I have a giant chest freezer in my not giant apartment. So, I will conclude with some pictures of said kegerator.

I’m sorry I said I was over you, I lied.

This past Saturday I brewed the latest chapter in my search for a Mac and Jack’s substitute. The recipe came from an old BYO article, but with the addition of the “missing ingredient”, sweet orange peel.
The brew went well. It was the first test of my new mash tun modification, a CPVC manifold. Here is what that whole setup looks like:




The recipe was:

Grain:
9 lbs. Maris Otter
1 lb. Munich Malt
.5 lb. Crystal 80 (actually a blend as AHS does not sell Crystal 80)
.5 lb. Carapils
Hops:
9.3 AAU Centennial – 60 min.
6.2 AAU Cascade – 2 min.
4.2 AAU Cascade – 2 min.
Misc:
1 ounce Sweet Dried Orange Peel
1 tsp Irish Moss
White Labs British Ale yeast (WLP005)

I mashed at about 153 F for an hour.

I broke my brand new thermometer in the middle of the mash, but my old one seemed to be working just fine. As I seem to do every time I brew all-grain, I added too much water and got a surplus of wort. This time, my solution was to have two boils going, one in my normal brew kettle and another in a smaller pot. I also did a 90 minute boil instead of 60. This reduced the volume and boosted the gravity.
All in all, I think it went very well. My new system (along with the addition of a pH stabilizer) seems to have much better efficiency (which means I get more sugar from the grain, which means stronger and more true to style beer.) Normally, I have asked the AHS guys to crush the grain a little finer to get more efficiency, but that was not done on this batch and yet I still got to 1.056, for an estimated efficiency of 68%. The target was 1.060.
My yeast, the WLP005, is acting funky, but from what I’ve read on line, its a funky yeast. The fermentation took a while to take off, and didn’t produce much krausen (the gross looking foam on top of the beer.) I tasted it yesterday when I took a gravity reading and its tasting absolutely fabulous. I can’t wait to get this sucker bottled. I was still at around 1.022 I believe, so I have a little fermenting yet to do.
I’m sorry if this was all boring to you non-brewers, its mostly a notebook type of post so I can refer back to it next time I do this brew, which will likely be soon.
This weekend I harvested the yeast and tried to make a barleywine, more on that later.
Until next time, Cheers!

For Christmas I asked for and received this book, which I had checked out of the library a while ago. I was a little skeptical at first, but decided to give it a try and start with their baguette recipe. It was the easiest bread I’ve ever made, required no kneading and very little in the way of ingredients. The idea behind the book is that you make a main dough that can be stored in the fridge, then you grab a chunk of it during the week, shape it, let it rise again and bake it. I was highly skeptical but this is how it turned out:

This is an eggplant sandwich, also in the book, and it was delicious. I baked it on my stone, also using my new pizza peel. Makes me feel like a real baker!
So, check your local library and grab this book. If you enjoy good bread and convenience, you’ll enjoy it.

This is what happens when I decide to “explore” the neighborhood on a run, I end up kind of all over the place.

View Track 5 in a larger map
Luckily, I was able to make it 5 miles for only the second time since the marathon. My knee was feeling fairly good at the end. Its definitely still hurting, but I can tell I”m making progress. I guess the rest of the muscles have gotten lazy because I’m actually a little bit sore today, which was rare during the marathon training. I’m trying to mix up the surfaces I run on, which I definitely did not do during training. As it was around the time we hit concrete that my knee started hurting, I’m hoping to work plenty of that in to get the knee used to it.
Not sure when my next race will be, right now I’m just enjoying being able to get out and run again, I really missed it.
In other running news, I think my toenail might be coming back in! I was worried that it would be gone forever!

Imperial IPA and smokestack lightning (porter)