Rock! Death! America!
Littering our noise on the Earth
July 2, 2009 at 7:45 pm · Filed under Beer
Welcome to the final installment of How I Brew. If you missed the previous installments, feel free to read this and this before continuing. Take your time…I’ll wait.
Now that the wort has been put into the fermenter and yeast has been added, it is time for fermentation. Fermenation is the process of the yeast converting the sugars that were previously extracted from the grain into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The first thing to do is to create the right environment for the yeast. The ideal temperature will vary by type of yeast being used, but it is usually within the mid-60s F for an ale yeast.
Keeping a consistent temperature is very important for a clean tasting beer. Changes in temperatures (such as having it in the main part of your house where it is 70F during the day and 60F at night) can cause off-flavors. To combat this, I ferment my beer in the basement, which is pretty steady in the low 60s F. In addition, I use the combination of:
The Fermwrap heater is a thin, flexible heater that wraps around the carboy. It plugs into the digital temperature controller which can turn the heater on and off to maintain the configured temperature. The thermowell is a homemade, water-tight stainless steel tube that goes into the beer and is held in place by a cap on top of the carboy. The temperature probe on the digital temperature controller is lowered into the thermowell. This allows extremely accurate temperature readings without ruining the temperature probe (which can’t get wet). So, when the temperature of the beer drops a couple of degrees, the temperature controller will sense that and turn on the Fermwrap heater. When the desired temperature is reached once again, the temperature controller turns off the heater.
I use the “carboy parka” for two reasons — to maintain the temperatures without losing as much heat from the carboy, and for safety. 6.5 gallons of liquid in a glass container is very heavy — if dropped, it could be extremely dangerous and there have been many accidents among homebrewers. The parka has handles to make it easier to carry and, if it does break, most of the broken glass will be contained within the parka and not in my flesh.
The fermentation process takes about a week. During this time, a large layer of foam, krausen (pronounced “kroyzin”), is produced on top of the beer. Particularly vigorous fermentations require what’s called a “blowoff tube” in order to carry the excess krausen out of the fermenter. It’s pretty amazing watching the amount of carbon dioxide that is produced by the yeast at this stage. If you’ve ever toured a microbrewery, you may have seen a blowoff in action on a large scale — this is pretty impressive.
Some people transfer their beer into a “secondary” fermenter after primary fermentation has ended. The reason for this is to get the beer off of the yeast and trub (pronounced “troob” — stuff that has settled out of the solution and sunk to the bottom). It is/was thought that leaving it on the yeast and trub can cause off flavors. I used to do this, but recent trends are indicating that this is not necessary. So, I usually leave it in the primary fermenter for an extra week to clean up a bit.
One thing I failed to mention in the previous post is the measuring of “specific gravity”. Specific gravity a measure of the density of the liquid at a particular temperature. By taking a gravity reading after the boil (called original gravity) and after fermentation (called final gravity) the amount of alcohol in the beer can be calculated. Most people use a hydrometer to take these measurements. The process of using one is to take out some of the liquid, put it into a cylinder, and float the glass hydrometer in the liquid. The gravity is read by looking at the number on the hydrometer that is just at the level of the liquid.
My lovely wife, however, purchased me a refractometer for my birthday. This is a fancy instrument that can take a gravity reading with only a few drops of the liquid. Benefits of this device are:
- it wastes less beer
- it is easier to take frequent gravity readings (which helps during the mashing process but that is too detailed to get into here)
- the few drops cool down quickly to the temperature needed to produce an accurate reading
- I get the fun of feeling like scientist when I use it.
That’s about it for fermentation. Just set it and forget it.
Once fermentation is complete, the beer is ready for packaging. Long ago, I used to bottle beer. Bottling beer is a pain in the ass. It means scrubbing off labels, trying to get them completely clean and sanitized, making a sugar/water concoction that the leftover yeast can use to carbonate the beer, and individually filling approximately 40 bottles from a 5 gallon batch. Kegging is much easier. Plus, nothing is better than pouring your own beer from a tap.
Moving from the fermenter to the keg is pretty simple — just siphon the liquid into a clean and sanitized keg. To carbonate the beer, hook up a carbon dioxide tank to the keg, turn it on to about 10psi (depending on beer style), and wait a week. Alternatively, you can set the CO2 to something like 40psi and it will be carbonated in a couple of days. Alternatively to the alternative, turn on the CO2 and shake the keg to quickly dissolve it into the beer. I’ve never tried this, but it is supposed to give you carbonated beer in a matter of minutes.
I’ve got a kegerator that I built that allows me to have a nice looking draft tower from which to dispense my beer. Since I have pretty much everything I want for my brewing, I think my next brewing expense will be to upgrade my kegerator to allow two or three kegs on tap at once instead of just one.
Well, that’s about it. Pretend I’ve written something clever here summing up the entire process. I’m tired and need a beer.
June 12, 2009 at 12:37 pm · Filed under Family
My dad Frank Blackford passed away on May 22nd, at the age of 75. He had stage IV melanoma that had spread to his brain and lungs, and he slipped away quietly at a beautiful little hospice in Paradise, California.
I’ve been meaning to blog about it since it happened, but it took me a while to be ready to scan the pictures I’d stolen from my mom’s photo albums. I keep trying to settle on some phrase or idea that I could say about my dad, how he was when I was growing up, but I only get flashes of things. I think one thing that I remember most is that he trusted in my abilities to help him. I was the one to help him pack up the trailer before our long summer trips, and I got to help guide him while he backed the car up to the hitch and checked to make sure the lights were working. It is the little things like that, they make childhood memorable. I know now how hard it is to let your kids help with stuff, but man, that made me so proud. Here he is, letting O help him baby proof:
He taught me how to fish, how to skewer a worm on a hook. He taught me how to look for satellites sliding through night sky, though he always called them sputniks. I remember sitting on the shore of Jackson Lake in Grand Teton National Park when lighting struck a little too close to home and following him as best I could as we both made a run for it back to the trailer.
I remember watching him play raquetball with his buddies. I remember him bringing home donut holes on Saturday mornings. Churning ice cream on the back porch with our cool old hand crank ice cream maker. Trying to make the plum tree bear fruit by grafting on all sorts of crazy branches. Mowing the lawn every Sunday while I had to go to Sunday School - I always hoped I’d be home in time to sit in the wheelbarrow and hold the trashcan as he went around and swept up the clippings.
He had all these little sayings he’d always throw out, like the one in the title of this post. If you were heading to the restroom he’d say “hope everything comes out okay”. Chilly today, but hot tamale. Bingo bango bongo, I don’t want to leave the Congo, oh me oh my oh. I find myself saying them too.
My dad was a super guy. He had some ideals that weren’t in line with my own, but he never held that against me or anyone, really. He had his opinion, you had yours, and that was okay. He was always there to help anyone. He was just a genuine, happy guy. I miss him something fierce.
Today is our 16th wedding anniversary, and this picture from our wedding day is one of my favorites.
Here is dad on his wedding day. Isn’t he cute?
Here is dad with me when I was about 11 months old. Love the sideburns…
We went down to my mom’s house after he died and I went through a bunch of boxes of my old stuff. I found a program from Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament and nearly wet my pants laughing when I saw this picture in the front. We went for my birthday, why was there a picture of my dad?
O was the ring bearer in his aunt and uncle’s wedding, and I love this picture of the two of them looking dapper before the big event.
This was taken last year. We are going back down to my mom’s house over Father’s Day weekend. My brother and his family will be there, as will my aunt. We are throwing a barbeque for their neighbors, who were a huge help to my mom the last few weeks that dad was with us.
May 18, 2009 at 10:51 am · Filed under Food
Tonight we had one of my favorite dinners: matzah ball soup and Humboldt bagels. What makes them Humboldt? Not what you might think. One of our favorite places in Arcata is Los Bagels, a spot so great it has its own Facebook group: Los Bagels Aficianados. Our supply of the delicious North Coast delicacy that is Larrupin Swedish Style Mustard Dill Sauce was recently replenished (thanks Pam and Kevin!), so we were able to recreate a Los Bagels classic: the Tom Onion with Larrupin.
Yep, that is a bagel with a thick helping of cream cheese, topped with slices of tomato and red onion and slathered in Larrupin sauce. I was so full and all I wanted was another bagel all to myself. Divine.
May 9, 2009 at 12:06 pm · Filed under Beer
Welcome to part 2 of the “How I Brew” series. If you missed part 1, head over here to read the introduction and about yeast starters.
Today’s the big day — brew day. I typically start the day pretty early — at about 7 or 8 am — so that I can be done by about 1 or 2pm. Since my kids like to wake me up at 6am every day of the week, this isn’t much of a problem.
Here is a picture of my brewery. You can brew with less equipment and you can certainly brew with much more. I try to find a happy medium where I am balancing ease-of-use with cost. It is possible to brew with an enamel canning pot in the kitchen or to have a fully automated system with pumps to move the liquid around. In fact, for those with an automated system, there is an iPhone app that lets you control the temperature of your equipment, move liquid around, and check on your fermenting beer — brew from anywhere! But what fun is that?
My day starts (or I do this the day before) by crushing grains in my “Barley Crusher” grain mill. Just hook a drill up to it, pour the grains into the hopper, and tell the kids to get to work!
The kinds and amount of grains varies by recipe. I am making a Milk Stout that has the following “grain bill”:
10 lb Maris Otter Pale Malt
1 lb Black Patent Malt
0.75 lb Crystal 80L Malt
0.50 lb Pale Chocolate Malt
Most of the grains used in brewing are just different types of malted barley. There are other grains used, such as wheat and rye, but the bulk of it is barley that has been kilned or roasted to some degree. (Compare this to your big breweries where they use lots of stuff like corn in order to keep it cheap.) The Maris Otter is an English variety of 2-row barley with a rich, slightly nutty flavor.
The black patent malt will impart a dark color and roasty flavor to the beer. The Crystal 80L is kilned to give a caramel/roasty flavor and helps in head retention. I could go on-and-on about the different varieties of malted barley, but I need to get some water boiling!
This is your typical turkey fryer from Lowes. Since I am a brewer, I call it a “hot liquor tank” or HLT. What is this delicious hot liquor I speak of? Water. I heat the appropriate amount of water which, when to the precise temperature, will be poured into the “mash tun” (pictured below) in order to “mash”. Sure looks a lot like a cooler, eh?
That’s part of the fun of brewing is getting to make little gadgets. I made the mash tun by sticking a hose through the drain hole, attaching a valve to one side and a stainless-steel braid to the other. The braid is the toilet water supply line (new, of course) which was cut open and the plastic tube inside the line was removed. The braid acts as a fine mesh screen that will allow the liquid to exit the cooler, but not the grain.
Alright, the water is now in the mash tun. The grain gets poured into the cooler and is stirred really well so that the “grain bed” is all at a consistent temperature. Many calculations were made (luckily there is software for that) in order to come up with a specific temperature. If the temperature comes out too high I add cold water; too low and boiling water is added. Once the temperature is correct, the lid is closed and it is left to “mash” for 60 minutes. This is a good time to go into the house to have breakfast and take a shower.
Warning! Science Content Follows!
The “mash” is where the starches in the grain is converted to fermentable sugar. Remember how I said that the barley used in brewing is malted? This means that it is kept in a moist, warm environment by a maltster until the barley just begins to sprout. It is quickly dried and then perhaps kilned or roasted. Without the process the starches in the grain would not be in a state that could be turned into sugars. It’s biology, baby!
After 60 minutes, the valve on the mash tun is slowly opened and the liquid is collected until there are no more floaties. Basically, you are settling the grain bed. This process has a fancy name too — vorlauf. I just like to say vorlauf. Once the liquid is clear, it is carefully poured over the top of the grain bed as to not disturb it. The valve is opened a bit wider and the hot, sweet liquid is allowed to drain out into the brew kettle. It is astonishing how sweet the liquid is at this point — it’s amazing to me that you can get that from just hot water and grains. I had Owen try it last time and he said, “It’s a little yummy and a little yucky”. (Note to Child Protection Services: notice that no yeast has yet been added. Hence, the alchohol content of the aforementioned liquid is 0%). He did like it much more than the finished product, though (whoops! It was just a sip!).
All of the available starches have been converted to sugar at this point (hopefully), and the “first runnings” have been collected. However, there are still sugars in that mash tun! So, we rinse the grain to get these sugars by what is called “sparging.” There are a couple of different methods of sparging - fly sparging and batch sparging. Fly sparging uses a neat gizmo that showers your grain in hot water, but I use batch sparging because it is easier and faster. For batch sparging, more water is heated up in the HLT and poured into the mash tun. It is stirred then immediately drained, starting with the vorlauf technique described above and then completely drained into the brew kettle.
Mashing is complete and we now have about 7.5 gallons of liquid in the kettle ready to be boiled. The liquid is now called wort (pronounced wert). As a side note, there is another method of brewing called “extract” brewing where you buy a concentrated version of the liquid I just created, add water, and boil. Basically, it cuts out everything I have done previously on my brew day. I started as an extract brewer, as most do, but move to “all grain” because (1) I was interested in the science of how the entire process works and (2) I can have much more control over the beer. With extracts, you don’t really know what is in there — you just buy them for different beer styles depending on the darkness of the extract.
As you can see, my brew kettle is an old stainless steel keg that has been cut open and had a spigot, temperature gauge, and handles welded onto it. If you have welding skills or a friend with welding skills, you can make one pretty cheap. I don’t, so I had to pay the big bucks.
The wort is brought to a boil via the powerful propane burner underneath. A large layer of foam (called the hot break) forms and then dissipates. This hot break is just coagulating proteins. Once the foam subsides, it is time to add the first hop addition. Hops are added at various stages of the boil in order to impart different characteristics. The longer the hop cone boils, the more bitterness is extracted. The less time they are in the boil, the more aroma you get from the hops.
Adding different types of hops at different times contributes to a more complex flavor profile. In fact, it is common for homebrewers and craft brewers to add hops during secondary fermentation (which I’ll talk about later) in order to get the maximum hop aroma. I won’t do this for this recipe because I don’t want hop aroma from this beer, but I usually do and it is fantastic.
For this beer, we don’t want a lot of hop characteristics, but enough to balance the sweetness of the beer. So, I am just adding 2 oz. of Yakima Goldings hops at the beginning of the boil.
In addition to the hops, since I am making a milk stout, I add one pound of lactose powder at the beginning of the boil. The lactose powder contains sugars that cannot be converted to alcohol by the yeast. So, it will add a some sweetness and body to the beer. This is the defining ingredient for this style of stout.
With 15 minutes left in the boil, I add some Whirlfloc (made out of seaweed which will help clarify the beer) and my “wort chiller” (pictured below). The wort chiller will not be used yet, but it is added to the boil to be sanitized. Anything that touches the beer this point forward NEEDS to be sanitized. Otherwise, all the time and money will be wasted.
When the boil is complete, you need to cool the beer down as quickly as possible. The reason for this is at higher temperatures, dimethyl sulfide (DMS) can be produced which will give your beer a cooked-corn aroma. Cooling quickly also reduces the chance of contamination. Further, if you add the yeast when the liquid is too hot, it will kill them. I cool the wort down with the help of the wort chiller. This is just a 50 foot length of copper tubing with hose fittings. The garden hose is used to push water into the copper coil — the water goes in cold and comes out the other side hot cooling off the wort. Thermodynamics in action!
Once it gets to 70 degrees F, the kettle is drained into a 6.5 gallon glass “carboy”. This is the vessel that will be used in fermentation. Once completely, drained, I pour in the yeast (which we like to call “pitching the yeast”) and mix it about a bit. Just like when I made the yeast starter, I need to get oxygen into the wort so that the yeast can thrive. I hook up the oxygen and let it oxygenate for about 1-2 minutes (depending on the beer).
The wort is now ready for the yeasties to feast on the sugars and produce beer! I will go over fermentation and kegging in the third and final installment of this series. Stay tuned!
May 8, 2009 at 9:04 am · Filed under Home
A couple months ago D suggested that I might be interested in a book called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Prior to childbirth and cancer, I had a pretty great memory. I remembered tons of shit all the time, and prided myself on my mad multi-tasking skillz. Then I started getting the cutesy “brain” things. “Mommy Brain”. “Chemo Brain”. “Menopause Brain”. I’m sure Mommy Brain is still around, Menopause Brain disappeared along with the chemo-induced menopause, but Chemo Brain decided to settle in for good. I can’t remember anything. For months I was frustrated to tears because I couldn’t remember to get something at the store or make a phone call or some other random bit of daily life that was previously no problem. I finally gave in and gave myself permission to not know things. I don’t know! My new favorite words. Still, there are things that need to get remembered, and D thought this might help me out.
I got the book from the library and for the most part I “got it”. A tidy little system that made sense, and I could adapt away from a lot of the corporate organizational stuff in the book and make it work for me. I won’t re-hash the entire system right now (you can see the basic overview on wikipedia, which I just read today and is pretty much the exact set of notes I took while reading the book (that’s called “getting the exact same thing done that someone else already did”)).
Basically the parts that made me extremely excited to start GTD are so damn simple. Keep a system where you can jot down any note, thought, idea, or reminder at any time and throw them in an in-box. Go through your in-box at least once per week. Figure out what the next action is on each item (this is key! You might write “fix mower” on a to do list but never get it done. But if you write “buy wrench to fix mower” or “call Joe for name of fix-it guy for mower” you’ll be more likely to get it done (heh) because you’ve listed the specific action that needs to happen). File accordingly.
I was chomping at the bit to get started but circumstances dictated that I needed to wait a couple weeks before I had the time to tackle it. It was horrible having things bounce around my brain. I really wanted to write them down but didn’t want to screw up the system before I got started.
I decided to go to SCRAP in the hopes of getting some second-hand supplies. I totally scored! I got about two dozen pens, a huge stack of scrap letterhead (thanks Viewpoint Construction Software!), a tape dispenser, giant blocks of post-it notes, an accordion file folder, and some miscellaneous stuff for the kids for a grand total of $5.51. It was awesome.
XM had preschool today so I had a precious two hours by myself and decided it was time to implement the system. I went through all the steps and recycled a ton of junk, labeled the accordion folder, set up my action lists, projects, and someday/maybe file. I bought a bunch of half used notepads at SCRAP and set them around the house and in the cars with a pen. I even labeled them both, so if the ‘kitchen’ pen or notepad should wander away hopefully someone will put it back.
With Sophie as my helper I scanned my brain using trigger lists and wrote down everything I could come up with that was what they call an “open loop” - something that keeps popping up in my brain that needs to be done, like some sort of annoying Outlook reminder set to repeat every 5 minutes. Get O a haircut. Remember I want gin, tequila, and coconut rum from the liquor store. Patch my jeans. Clean off the cedar chest. Plant my new plant. Put a song on the kids’ playlist. On and on, lather, rinse, repeat. It took a while, but finally I was done! So why did my brain hurt?
It feels like my mind is still scanning for stuff I may have forgotten, and from what I’ve read I’ll just have to be faithful to the system and eventually my brain will trust that it doesn’t need to keep doing the pop-up reminders because I’ve written every little thing down and put it in place. I can’t wait for that, because frankly I just want to go to sleep right now to get away from my head.
Unfortunately I’m not sure if GTD is going to help with my own special brand of forgetting. I finished up my organizing just in time to go get XM from preschool. I had a note of things I needed to do while I was out, and brought along a long-forgotten packet to return to the preschool. Look at me, implementing actions and closing loops! In all my remembering, I forgot to bring my phone. D’oh! On the way back home I realized I brought the long-forgotten packet, but failed to bring it in to the school itself.
Before going to get O later in the afternoon I went through my errands action list and wrote down three things I needed. After getting to Fred Meyer I realized I’d left my list at home. By the time I was at the checkout I realized I’d forgotten my reusable bag in the car. I’d picked up some tissues for the car, which I ended up bringing in the house. When I finally decided to unpack the groceries an hour later I discovered the long forgotten Diet Dr. Pepper I’d purchased because I was so thirsty. I guess my brain closed that loop once I put the drink in my basket! I’m not sure how to deal with that sort of thing yet.
Clearly I’ve still got some kinks to work out, but I feel like I’ve got a good solid system here that should surely help me out in the long run. As long as I don’t let my brain get in the way. I really wish I’d taken care of the liquor store errand…
This post brought to you buy the humble hyphen.
April 30, 2009 at 11:26 am · Filed under Art
I have a painting in a show! I submitted a piece for Good Gallery’s upcoming Mayday Disaster show. Fun topic eh? I had done some sketches of lovely naked ladies floating around in my sketchbook. When I saw the topic I decided to have them floating around underwater - watch out for global warming and those rising coastlines! Anyway, despite it’s morbid origins it is really (imho) a lovely and quiet piece. You can sneak preview it here, or go to Good tomorrow night (Friday May 1) from 7-10 for the opening. Otherwise the gallery is open Thursdays from 4-7pm and Saturdays from 2-6pm.
April 27, 2009 at 11:58 am · Filed under Home, Kids
XM loves to garden with us, and she is forever moving around rocks and dirt from here to there. Late last summer she made a pile of dirt on the ground and stuck flowers it in and called it her garden. She was perplexed when the rains eventually washed it away.
Today we emptied out an old wood box that was loaded with firewood when we moved into this house and filled it with dirt for her. I dug up some sort of strawberry that grows half heartedly in the front yard and planted it in there, and she plucked some leaves and flowers and “planted” them too.
She recently painted the birdhouse she got in her Easter basket, so we hung it up next to the garden.
When D brews he emptys the water that he runs through the wort chiller into a rainbarrel, and she has just figured out she can get water for herself. Uh oh!
I think this will be the hot spot of summer playtime! We told her it was O’s garden as well, and I’m hoping to spice things up every once in a while by getting some shiny rocks or marbles to throw in there, or find some fake bugs or treasure to bury.
April 21, 2009 at 8:45 pm · Filed under Beer
We (okay, Lesley) has posted quite a bit about our obsessions - our kids, strategy boardgames, and drinking beer. However, I haven’t posted much about the MAKING of beer. So, I thought I’d create a series of posts that details my brewing process for anyone that is interested. In this first part of the series, I will introduce the process and go over the making of a yeast starter.
Let me start out by saying that there are many ways to brew. I am documenting the process that I use. I believe it is fairly typical, but every brewer does things a bit differently. That’s one of the great things about the hobby - everyone can play around with different methods and ingredients and, in the end, we all make beer.
I am currently brewing 5 gallon batches, which equates to 640 ounces or about 53 bottles of beer. This is fairly typical, although some brew 10 or even 20 gallons at a time. The brew day is a long one (about 6 hours for me) and increasing the volume that is brewed doesn’t add much time to that day. So, someday I might increase my volume to 10 gallons per day.
The Rundown
My brewing process consists of many steps:
- Cleaning
- Making a yeast starter
- Cleaning
- Mashing
- Boiling
- Cleaning
- Fermenting
- Kegging
- Cleaning
- Drinking
- Cleaning
Did I mention that there is cleaning involved? I don’t remember where I read it but I saw a quote that said something like, “Like doing the dishes? You’ll love brewing.” Cleanliness and sanitization are essential when brewing. Anything that touches the beer post-boil must be clean and sanitized or the beer will get infected and will be undrinkable.
Enough chit-chat, let’s get to the pictorial walk-through!
The Ingredients
Here are the ingredients I used for a recent batch of Milk Stout (think Sheaf Stout).
The main ingredients, those that are present in almost every beer, are various types of malted barley, hops, and yeast (and of course, water, but that comes later…). Also pictured is lactose, which is specific to this recipe. Milk stout = brewed with lactose. Rather than go on and on about all of these ingredients, I’ll go into more detail on each one when I describe their usage.
The Yeast Starter
Without yeast, I would just be making sweet and unpleasant barley juice. Yeast are the critters (actually a fungus) that will turn this sweet juice into alcohol. Not only that, the yeast can contribute over 500 aromas and flavors, including fruitiness (from esters) and spiciness (from phenols). There are a ton of different types of yeast that all contribute different characteristics to a beer. Not only that, the brewer has to choose from liquid or dry yeasts. I typically brew with White Labs liquid yeasts. Liquid yeasts are generally considered superior to dry yeasts.
In order to have healthy fermentation and happy yeast, you have to ensure that you have enough (but not too much!) of those little yeasties. The tubes of yeast purchased from White Labs contain 100 billion yeast cells. The stout that I am brewing would ferment best with about 200 billion cells. Sure, I can buy 2 tubes of yeast, but why do that when I can just buy one and create a yeast starter to grow my own?
Creating a yeast starter is easy and is usually done a couple of days before brew day. First, I measure out some dry malt extract. This is basically malted barley that has been soaked, boiled, and dried. It contains a lot of sugars and nutrients that the yeast need to survive and reproduce.
The malt extract is boiled for 15 minutes, then cooled to about 70 degrees. If you add the yeast when the liquid is too hot, the yeast will die. Hot yeast = dead yeast. Dead yeast = no alcohol. No alcohol = sad Derek.
The boiled malt extract is then put into a cleaned and sanitized container (I’m using a 1 gallon growler) and the yeast is added (”pitched”).
A side effect of boiling water is that the oxygen is driven out of the solution. However, yeast need oxygen in order to reproduce (to synthesize sterols and unsaturated fatty acids for cell membrane biosynthesis blah blah blah). There are a few different ways to do this. I just pump straight oxygen in there.
Put some tin foil loosely over the top, stick in a closet, and wait for the magic. Soon after, a foamy head of yeast and proteins will will form on top (krausen, pronounced kroysen) then fall back in. From this picture, you can see the white layer of yeast — much more than what was in the original tube! I have created life!!
The yeast is now ready for brew day. Funnily enough, brew day will be the topic of the next post in this series!
I hope you find this series interesting, informative, and slightly entertaining. Stay tuned for more…
April 16, 2009 at 8:38 am · Filed under Family, Holiday
Another Easter, come and gone - time for the obligatory pictures! First though, I must regale you with a tale of woe. In our part of the world there was a serious shortage of Cadbury Mini Eggs. I’m not talking about the Creme eggs with the delicious goo in the middle (we had plenty of those). I’m talking about the solid milk chocolate eggs with the insanely delicious candy coating. For three weeks leading up to Easter we looked in stores all across Portland, to no avail. Cadbury Mini Eggs were MIA.
A few days before Easter I found a giant Chocolate Cadbury egg with promises of mini eggs hidden inside.
We cracked it open and lo and behold there were mini eggs inside! Four of them! Four. I guess there was some truth in advertising, as the picture on the box showed four little eggs nested inside. It was a sorry sight, but I savored them the best I could.
This sad story does have a fairy tale ending. My friend from California was seeing mini eggs all over the place, and sent me three big bags! Jackpot! They had so many in her area that she called me yesterday to ask if I needed more, as they were now 50% off. O, to live in her world of plenty.
The kids, as always, had a lot of fun coloring eggs. We had to hide them many times, and when they tired of that they hid the eggs for us to find.
Despite all the activity Sophie wasn’t about to budge from her favorite spot, providing us with a fun hiding place.
The most exciting part of the day was the arrival of Sara! The kids were super excited to see their cousin again. They loved that her eyes were open and she could look at them.
April 11, 2009 at 2:57 pm · Filed under Art, Tech
I’m very excited to say that D gave my art website a big upgrade! Previously I had tried to split my art and my graphic design in two areas on the site, but really didn’t dedicate anything to either pursuits. He helped focus the site on my art, not my design, as I’m not really doing much of that anymore. I’m thrilled to have a space I can point people too and hopefully I can move towards getting more of my art hung around town. We still have some tweaks to do on it, but the basic foundation is there which is a huge relief!
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