Category Archive

Well, perhaps throwing your stir-plate away is a bit drastic. Recycle it in an earth friendly manner. No, keep it – you might still need it someday.

I’m moving to a Lab Mixer for yeast propagation.

Read the article here.

I’ve had a March 809 pump for some time now. I haven’t been using it because it cavitates when pumping hot water. During a KROC homebrew club meeting I over heard a guy talking about mounting his pump in a tool box. He showed me a few pictures and viola – here I am with a similar setup.

The nice features of this arrangement are – I added a 30A 2 pole on/off switch (which is upside down at the moment), a nice junction box for the wiring, a 6″ pine board for mounting the motor. I mounted the pump head before mounting the motor so I was only able to get one bolt to secure the motor mounting – if you attempt this, make sure you drill your motor mount holes in advance. When attaching the pump head to the motor I needed to buy longer 8/32 machine screws – 1/2″ worked well. To locate the spot to drill for the screws I followed another websites recommendation to put the screws in without the pump head, then put toothpaste on the screw heads and lined it up. The walls of the tool box were angled, which is not ideal, so I did have to expand the size of the holes to get be able to line them up.

Lot’s of close work getting everything mounted in a small box – but I think the results were worth it. It adds a large amount of “cool factor” to the pump and should make it much more usable.

Apparently if you haven’t been living on the west coast you are probably missing out on a popular regional food – smoked tri-tip! A friend sent a bunch of us some of his custom dry rub and challenged us to come up with a photo journal – this was my submission (I came in second place on this one).

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A beautiful hymn sung during the mass for the feast of the Epiphany today – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEkdr62eVMY

This was one of my earlier brewdays. I was experimenting steam injection to do a step mash and using a paint mixer to oxygenate the wort. I was also using a light bulb in my fermentation chest freezer and a bucket. When I moved to glass carboys I switched to a fermwrap to heat the carboy. Reposted from BigFoamyHead.com.

Pics!

mashing in

Infusion mash

Steam Injection Step Mash

God Bless Freight and Harbor! Cheap steam cleaner.

Iodine Tincture test to check for mash conversion

Three tier gravity based sparge

Ooooh Wooow - laser drilled sparge arm!

Collecting sweet wort

Time to boil

straining out whole hops - they did their job.

Aeration with power tools and a paint mixer!

In the fermenter with a blow-off tube in sanitizer

It’s been too long since I’ve updated my blog. This is a good one though – Boulder Beer had it’s second “rave” – this one during the day and featuring mostly Colorado beers.

Highlights from the Beer Score Card
Avery Brewing Company – Moloch (fantastic strong malty beer)
Blue Moon Brewing Company – Peanut Butter Ale (downright yummy!!)
Coopersmith Brewing – Chai Stout (this is always excellent)
Dillon Dam Brewery – Oktoberfest and Dunkelweiss
Estes Park Brewery – 9 hop pale ale!
Gordon Biersch Brewery – Blonde Bock
Great Divide Brewing – Year old Old Ruffian Barleywine (need I say more?)
Left Hand Brewing – St Vrain Trippel
Mountain Sun Brewing – Superkind
New Belgium Brewing Company – Tart Lychee (awesome sour beer)
ODell Brewing Company – Bourbon Stout (nice bourbon character!)
Oskar Blues – Barrel Aged Pilsner (another awesome beer!)
Pumphouse Brewery – Cherry Bomb Saison (YUM!!)
Sam Adams – Belgian Red (meh)
Trinity Brewing Company – Farmhouse Provisional (don’t remember it)

Not on the score card, but I enjoyed numerous Sierra Nevada Big Foot Barleywines! Fresh, strong and hoppy!
What was particularly cool about this event is that Boulder beer is celebrating 30 years so they had the breweries lined up by years in business.

They also opened up the brewery so there was plenty of room and snacks.

I am glad I took the bus to this event and got there a little late – this was not an event to drive away from. I’m still mad at my designated driver for bailing out on me, but it’s good to know how to use public transportation if needs be.

The title says it all… Something to try and say you’ve done it.

We usually make a soup to have around during the holidays. I had some time off and had a lot of hints passed my way that it was time to make a pot of Gumbo. Being a fan of James Spencer at Basic Brewing Radio I remembered his friend Steve Wilkes did a really fantastic Brown Ale Gumbo Ya-Ya. I cut the recipe in half and would further recommend not adding any additional salt considering the seasonings (Creole and Louisiana Hot Sauce) are mostly salt based.

Food pr0n!

Most of the ingredients laid out...

Roasted Chicken, diced

Gumbo Served over Rice

Happy Holidays! Lesse Le Bon Temps Roule!