Bikerscum - Patrick St. Jean

Well, it's done and in the chiller to ferment. I made a brown ale and pretty much had to re-do the entire recipe because the extra volume messes with hop utilization, steeping, etc. So it's a pretty much new beer. 7.25 pounds light extract, 1 pound 90L crystal, .2 pounds chocolate malt. Hops are an ounce of 8.9% Amarillo and an ounce of 3.4% Willamette.

I also tried out a new method of cooling the wort. I've got an immersion chiller, basically a big copper coil, already, so I picked up a pond pump, some tubing and adapters to connect it to the chiller, and filled a large cooler with ice and water and then used the pump to recirculate that ice water through the coils. It worked remarkably well, bringing the six plus gallons of wort from boiling to below 80 in about 15 minutes.

Some observations, in no particular order.

1. Trying to maintain a boil on a windy back patio is tougher than it sounds.

2. Having a kettle with a spigot is VERY handy for filling a carboy.

3. Having a kettle with a built-in thermometer is also VERY handy.

4. Maintaining steeping temperature is not easy. Good thing I'm going to all-grain soon...

5. Cleanup is a lot easier outside.

I think the next one will be done in the garage, but I'm going to have to make a support structure for all of the components so that I'm not doing so much lifting and bending over.

After a couple weeks of missed connections and clashing schedules I finally met the seller of a 9 gallon stainless kettle. I'm finally going to be able to do full volume boils, or at least I will be able to once I get a good propane burner. I've also got to pick up a thermometer for the extra port on the kettle. Maybe a trip to the brew store is in order?

I ran up to Homebrew HQ to pick up some kegging supplies, specifically a third CO₂ supply line since I have a third port on the check valve. Unfortunately, that third port isn't flowing gas so I'm still stuck at two lines. I'll expand later.

After that I kegged the wheat beer I started a couple weeks ago. Final gravity was a little higher than I expected at 1.013 but it's very tasty even straight out of the carboy. A week or two in the fridge and it's going to be yummy! Too bad Lent's starting. I guess it'll be a weekend treat until Pascha.

Finally I took three pounds of honey that one of my godbrothers brought back from Holy Archangels Monastery. The monks there keep bees and have some honey to spare. It's really good stuff, almost untouched. I dissolved three pounds into a final volume of a gallon and pitched a packet of Lalvin D-47. It'll be a nice treat for him once it's done...

After a slow start it looks like the wheat's going to be ok. It's currently foaming out the top of the airlock rather vigorously. Not bad for 9 month old yeast which didn't get properly activated!

I did up an extract batch of wheat today. Really simple batch, just 6.6 pounds of extract, 1.5 oz. Tettnang, 1.5 oz. Hallertauer, and Wyeast 1010 yeast. I had a bit of trouble with the yeast not swelling up like it should, which I initially attributed to it being an older pack. When I finally pitched it turned out that the nutrient pack didn't open so I ended up pitching unactivated yeast. I did have one major positive though. I found an adapter for a sink to garden hose so I did my chilling in the master bath instead of having to lock up cats and run a garden hose in from outdoors. Much better!

The kegs are running low and that's a very bad thing, so I kicked off another batch of beer today. It's my 50 wt. wheat, but I did some changes to the procedure. First, the hops were 6.3% AA instead of 6.9% so I boosted it from 2.5 oz. to 3. And then second, instead of adding the honey at the beginning of the boil I added it with about 2 minutes left. A taste test after bringing the total volume up to 5.25 gallons shows that there's still a little honey taste in there, so I have high hopes that this one will turn out well. I'll know in a couple weeks...

Well, with Linens N Things going out of business and had some decent deals, I decided to start replacing my kitchen knives, replacing the cheaper, serrated knives with better quality ones. I've decided to go with Henckels Pro S series knives, and true to my expensive tastes, I can't replace all of them at once. So I picked up a 7" Santoku, since it's the one I'll use the most. I'm just going to replace them one at a time from here on out in order of what I'm most likely to use.

Today was busy. After church I got started making the spaghetti sauce. 10 pounds of fresh tomatoes, some canned ones, a bunch of herbs and spices, some fresh from the garden onions, and a bunch of time later and I've got six quarts of spaghetti sauce. Three are without onions for a friend who is allergic and three are "normal". The house smells like an Italian restaurant and the mason jars are cooling from their stay in the boiling water bath. Yay for homemade sauces!

I went down to the Dallas Farmers Market this morning to pick up some tomatoes for another batch of spaghetti sauce. I also found some grass fed beef, stew meat to be specific, for a good price. And finally, I picked up 16 pounds of honey for a batch of mead...

A bunch of friends came over today to help me bottle the mead batches. It was hard work but with all the help it went well.

The good: The batch of the sweet made with the Wyeast Sweet. It's really yummy already! The second batch is a little rough and a lot sweeter but I'm thinking a little aging will help.

The bad: The batch of the medium/dry. It's not sweet at all, the yeast ate every last bit of sugar.

The ugly: Removing labels from wine bottles.

I've got a good bunch of friends and I really appreciate all of the help getting the bottles filled.