White House Honey Porter

This afternoon, 24-NOV-2012, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Mr. Taylor and I brewed "White House Honey Porter", a recipe put forth by the lead chef for the White House under the Obama administration.

The recipe as given on the White House website is republished below:

Note that we used 2 packets of UK Kent Golding hops for the 10 HBUs of bittering hops.  We had the Hallertaur aroma hops on hand, but I spaced out and did not include them in the batch (perhaps this was the result of relaxing, not worrying, and having a homebrew.)  At any rate, a taste test of the unfermented wort provided plenty of bitterness peeking out behind the sweetness of the honey -- the unfermented stuff had a decidedly hoppy, dry finish.  We shall see, but I think the batch will turn out fine, aroma hops notwithstanding.

There were no moments of real drama other than a very brief boilover early on that didn't even amount to much of a mess.  Mr. Taylor and I enjoyed each other's company, discussing various political and personal topics, and enjoying the last two bottles of homebrew.  I will say this: the recipe might be about the only worthwhile thing to come out of the Obama administration.

O.G. 1.029 @ 63F

Pilsner Bottled

Tonight I put up 36 16 ounce Grolsch bottles of the Pilsner brewed late last month. Final gravity was 1.012, adjusted to 60F. A preliminary sip from the hydrometer vessel indicates a hoppy brew with lots of flavor character. Should be good stuff once it carbonates. I'll be trying this stuff out on Xmas!

All the supplies and equipment have been cleaned up and put away. Total time, including cleaning and sanitizing all the counter space and the table in the kitchen, mopping the floor before getting started, washing/rinsing/sanitizing/rinsing the 40 bottles and their seals: about 3.5 hours. It is a lengthy process, even when you are starting from "clean" bottles. Wish it was faster.

Anyway, now we wait and see how it turns out!

A batch of Backyard Pilsner

Sooner or later, things had to break my way and point me back towards homebrewing, and tonight is the night. Angela and Savannah are away at 5th grade camp, so Joshie and I are batchin' it at home, making homebrew!

It's remarkable that I've gone from brewing as a single man in a one bedroom apartment to brewing as a husband and father of two, and having my six year old boy "help out," but that's where we are tonight. Josh took care of dipping the Cara Pils grains like a teabag and stirring with a big wooden spoon while Daddy wrestled with the *&*($!! electric can opener to get the two cans the malt extract syrup came in. At 8:30pm (it's a school night) he trundled off to bed, not without protest, and Daddy fired up the garage computer/jukebox with my day-old copy of AC/DC's new Black Ice album being pumped out of the main machine back in the living room. Life in the garage that is the Cavant Drive Fire Brewery is good, despite staring straight down the double-barrels of an Obama presidency combined with the worst economic times this side of the Great Depression, but hey, what the hell. I've got the next 8 years to drink homebrew, I hope.

This is a pretty straightforward brew, and being that it's been so long since I've had the chance, I'm not trying to do anything fancy; just trying not to screw it up. Being that Adventures in Homebrewing moved from their (somewhat) convenient location on the western outskirts of Dearborn to god knows where, I found the local brewer's supply house, Kuhnhenn's, over on Chicago Rd and Mound more than willing to sell me supplies. Of course, this means some minor differences in ingredients:

• Munton's Gold Continental Pilsner "40 pt beerkit": 6#, 6oz of hopped malt extract syrup
• Wyeast San Francisco Lager Yeast WLP810 (in pitchable liquid form)

Other than those two things, the ingredients are pretty standard:

• 5 gallons of Kroger's finest house brand Spring Water


• 12oz of Cara Pils


• 1 oz of Saaz hops (aromatic)


• 1oz of Perl hops (bittering)

1. With Joshua's help, I brought two gallons of the spring water to 160F with the 12oz of Cara Pils grains in my muslin teabag. Stopped at 160F for a 10-minute protein rest. Note that I used an old broomstick secured across the stock pot's handles with spring clamps to hold the bag upright by its tie string. Josh couldn't drop it in and was able to "dip" them up and down. It made him happy...
2. Opened the two cans that the Muntons HME came in. Note to self: find the manual can opener, the electric one doesn't like the shape of these cans. Added these to the wort, and began bringing to a boil...a loooooong process taking about 40 minutes for a rolling boil to start.
3. Boiled for 30 minutes.
4. Added 1/4 TSP Irish Moss to the brew after removing the Perle hops. Did this by measuring them, then sprinkling them in with my fingers while stirring. Boiled for 15 minutes. (Okay, it was 16 minutes 30 seconds. Have me shot.)
   
5. Added in the Saaz hops and continued boil for an additional 5 minutes
6. While on the final 5 minute boil, got the 3 gallons of spring water I had in the freezer and poured into the carboy. Yes, the handles were frozen.
7. Turned off the heat, double-triple sterilizing the strainer by having it in the boiling pot the last minute or two. Promptly put it into the funnel.
   
8. Donned my welding gloves and added the wort to the three gallons of cold water.
9. Measured an initial wort temperature of 90F. At this temp, O.G. was 1.043
10. Pitched the liquid yeast, put the cork in the carboy, and shook hard to aerate the wort.
11. Attached the blow-off tube, and ran the line into a refilled water jug to act as an airlock. Put the whole works into the fermentation room, i.e. the basement on top of the washing machine.
12. Started cleaning up.
    

We started at about 7PM (it took awhile to find the campstove!). I'm finishing these notes at 10:41, with Metallica's new Death Magnetic rolling in the background.

Soon: bottling!

Saflager yeast: the way to go for the Pilsner

It's been a long time since I've posted, and an equally long time since I brewed. The 'breakdown' brew I wrote of in February was a flop; I blame two things: extended time in the fermenter due to having the Intrepid laid up for a month with a broken timing belt, and the off-brand yeast I used because the brewing store in Dearborn no longer carried Saflager.

At the moment, I'm deep in my Turbo Acclaim project, working on wiring, and haven't had any good homebrew for months. I am asking Santa for some mail-order Saflager yeast and some other brewing supplies, and will probably resume brewing in January. Since the MML is coming to town for NAIAS, I might even heat up the garage and brew with them while they're here...we'll see!

Breakdown beer

Well, here it is, the end of February 2005, and spring would be in sight, if it wasn't for all the snow falling!

This evening the Intrepid rather inconveniently chose to leave me stranded by the side of the road - the left hand break-down lane of I-75, no less - after an infrequent trip into the office in Dearborn to move some data. Early indications are that the camshaft position sensor gave up the ghost after 105,000 miles of service; time will tell. At least the tow truck driver was an interesting guy, easy to get along with. I sat by the side of the road for about an hour, idly hoping that some drunk wouldn't whack into me while I awaited AAA's magic. I had the car towed home. Hell, I can fix it!

In the meantime, I used some of my birthday money to buy ingredients for a third batch of Pilsner. Running low as I am, I probably have cut things a bit close, but money's been a bit tight as of late, and somehow spending $22 on beer all at one time has been assigned a distinctively lower priority than keeping the roof over our head and various and sundry other items. So my in-laws came through with $50 for my 37th birthday...and I'm a-brewin'! So I ran down to Adventures in Homebrewing the other night with Joshie, and picked up the ingredients. Not sure, but I could swear that I ended up with less malt extract syrup than usual; when I queried the store owner on it (who relayed a sad tale of a newborn first child deep in the throes of colic) he claimed I was probably used to getting more than I pay for. Such is life, I suppose.

This evening, Angela is off to Julie's doing the scrapbooking thing, Savannah and Joshua are tucked safely away in their beds, and the Intrepid is gathering snowflakes where the tow truck left it, out on the street. The temperature outside is in the low 30s, but I'm comfy and cozy, hovering over my Coleman propane camp stove, marvelling at the wonders of LP gas heat out in the garage, which is a very tolerable 68F.

Anyway, I followed the instructions as set forth in earlier posts, with the notable exceptions that I actually got the 160F protein rest right on the money, and I also remembered to add the Irish moss *before* the aroma hops and did the fifteen-minute boil as prescribed. Leo, our new beagle, was in attendance as I variously stirred and muttered incantations over the brew, which incidently was the maiden voyage of my new 24-quart stock pot. Boy, I love this new stock pot. Larger, made out of heavier-gauge stainless steel, it seems much more thermally stable than the old stock pot. The protein rest went without a hitch, and the temp stayed within 4 degrees of target with the burner on the camp stove turned completely off. It's also much larger and hence deeper than the old one; I was unable to boil it over with 2 gallons of brewing wort in it despite several attempts. Still, it's adviseable to monitor it carefully, and control the boilovers by keeping the lid slightly ajar.

The only thing that leaves me wondering about this evening's brewing activities is the O.G. I ended up with: 1.032 @ approximately 89F. Not sure why it would be so significantly lower, unless my hunch about the lesser amount of malt extract syrup is correct; typically I see values in the low 1.040 range. So...what will it taste like??? Will it be essentially the same with a slightly lower alcohol content? (It could afford to lose some alcohol content. One 16oz pint can sometimes leave me wobbly, and that's not exactly always what I'm looking for. Hardly ever, to be truthful.) If the taste is unaffected, the body about the same, and the alcohol content slightly reduced from the approximate 5-ish percent it's normally at...I think I can live with that.

The other difference this go-round is that my friend in Dearborn has stopped carrying the SafLager brand of yeast. This has been successful for me, always working up a vigorous fermentation within mere hours of pitching, so I'm disappointed to say the least that he's elected to stop carrying it. He assures me that the Aussie brand of lager yeast offered as a replacement will be equivalent...but I'm doubtful. It remains to be seen, of course, if "Superior Lager Yeast" (Product of Australia, imported by Superior Brewing Supplies of Hamilton, ON) produces a better brew, well I wouldn't have found that out if not for the inconvenience.

So as always, there were a bunch of little variables I couldn't control for. But I had a good time anyway, and was done with everything, even the cleanup, in under 3 hours. Not bad.

Award winning....

...well, sorta.

Siena Heights University's Alumni weekend featured an alumni brew-off today. Which would have been great, except the only two participants were myself and Bill Blackerby, a business professor at the college. Bill has an affinity for porters and ales, so he brought some of that along, and I brought down four bottles of the first batch of Pilsner for judging.

Something happened along the way toward getting things organized, and not everyone who might have participated was notified to show up. So, basically, I won by default, although we sat down and had a nice conversation with Bill, Joe and Christi Balusik, Tony Scioly, and some other faculty and a few students. Bill did the show and tell bit on what homebrewing is, having brought along some of his equipment. I filled in a few details here and there, and in between watching the kids while they had their faces painted and bounced around in the big moon walk, I received some nice complements on the Pilsner. Bill disqualified himself for the grand prize -- a giant beer mug with an engraved plaque proclaiming the bearer to be "First Place -- 2004 SHU Alumni Brew-Off," so I ended up with it.

As a bonus, Mr. Balusik, who, uh, has connections in the Toledo glass industry, kicked in a couple of brand-new cases of 12oz bottles.

And a good time was had by all.

Beer: The reason for the two-party system

My buddy Joe Balusik sends this along...

The History of Social Evolution

The division of the human family into its two distinct political branches occurred some 10,000 years ago, when humans coexisted as members of small bands of nomadic hunter/gatherers.

The pivotal event of societal evolution was the invention of beer.

This epochal event was both the foundation of modern civilization and the occasion of the bifurcation of humanity into its two distinct subgroups: Liberals and Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered, it required grain, and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so it was necessary to stick close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days killing animals to barbecue at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of the conservative movement.

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting, learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly barbecues and doing the sewing, fetching and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the liberal movement. An interesting evolutionary side note: some of these early Liberal men eventually evolved into women.

Liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the trade union, the invention of group therapy and group hugs, and the concept of democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that the conservatives provided.

Over the years, conservatives became to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth.

Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men.

Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't "fair" to make the pitcher
also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer; they eat red meat, and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumber jacks, construction workers, medical doctors, police officers, most corporate executives, all soldiers, some athletes, and generally anyone who works productively outside government.

Conservatives who own companies hire other Conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to "govern" the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America. They crept in only after the Wild West was tamed, and created a business of trying to get MORE for nothing.

Here ends the lesson in social history.