Old World Swine

Dirge for a Home Brew

A feeble whisper, and no more
As the cap was lifted, the smell of bread.
My beer was dead... my beer was dead.

O, Woe! for yeast played out and weak,
The hops and malt and time I'm mourning,
My poor home brew is dead a-borning.

Yes, my first attempt at home brewing in over a decade has come to naught. I suspect the yeast was not fresh, which is my own fault. I knew it was several months old (like, ten) but the date stamped on the packet said it should still be good. According to other sources I have read, though, one should never risk using yeast that old. I was afraid something wasn't right when the brew only bubbled for about a day, whereas before I could count on a few days of fermentation action.

It tasted green, displayed no appreciable carbonation and was just repellent in every way. As I say, when I opened the cap, it didn't smell like beer, but like bread, which again makes me suspect the yeast.

I'll check with my local experts and purchase some NEW yeast for my upcoming Oktoberfest brew. Stay tuned.

Advice or input from other home brewers would be welcome in the combox.

Nuts.

Brew-ha-ha

I took the plunge, yesterday, and finally got back into home brewing. W00T! My little batch of English Pale Ale was bubbling away happily as I left the house this morning.

There isn't a finer smell than the malty aroma of home brew cooking on the stove. Ahhhh...

I had been putting off this first batch (in probably a decade) because the process had grown somewhat foggy in my mind and I was a little nervous. I wanted everything to be perfect. Well, I learned a lot this time around, but here are a few high(or low)-lights;

I hate the electric stove top. I had two boil-overs, and burnt malt wort is horrendous to clean (wort is what they call the unfermented malt/hops brew). The heating elements on this particular stove don't work the way you might think... getting hotter as you turn up the dial. No. The element itself has only two temperatures; OFF and FULL-ON-BLAZING-CHERNOBYL-HOT. If you want a moderately hot burner, the element goes on-off-on-off-on-off to regulate the temperature. D'oy!! They can send a probe to Mars, can they not make an electric stove burner that just gets a little hot, or medium-hot, as well as Pele-Goddess-of-the-Volcano hot?

Anyway, next, I took too long in cooling the wort. As I had cooked only half the wort, I thought pouring in the additional 2.5 gallons of chilled, distilled water might be enough to bring it close to 75º, but it wasn't. That took it only to about 110º. So I packed ice around the plastic carboy (that's a big, lidded bucket that holds the brew), put the lid loosely on top, and waited. The thing is, in order to get an accurate reading of the temperature of the wort, I felt like it needed a stir before I dropped in the thermometer. So, I ended up opening the lid, stirring, and taking the temperature several times. This is not good, because the whole idea is, once the wort is cooked, to bring it down to 75º as quickly as possible, and then add the yeast and seal the thing up in order to keep from contaminating the brew with unfriendly bacteria.

The good thing is, next time I think I can pretty much tell by feel whether the wort is cool enough, based on this episode. I was getting more scientific than I needed to. 75º is about skin temperature.

Last, and most frustrating, was when I seated the airlock in the opening in the center of the carboy lid. The instructions recommended putting Vodka in the airlock, again, to keep out the marauding bacterial hordes (the airlock lets the happy little brewing bubbles escape, but keeps air out. Air is, apparently. just lousy with bacteria).

So, like a noob, I assembled the airlock, poured in the Vodka and then stuck the airlock in the opening, which slightly depressed the lid of the carboy. Unfortunately, when I took my hand off the airlock, the lid popped back up a little, and sucked several drops of Vodka down into the wort. At this point, I said a bad word. I actually said it three times. Nothing satisfies like that yummy Vodka-flavored English Ale!

But, as I say, the brew is now doing its thing, and part of the romance of the whole venture is not knowing exactly how things may come out.

Here's the coolest thing, though. Last week I discovered that my local home brew shop now carries (drum roll)... cheese-making supplies. I know what I'll be doing once this batch of home=brew is bottled!

The Den of Manly Pursuits

I actually made some progress this week toward the Grand Project. I realized some time ago that if I wanted to do the home brewing properly, I would need a dedicated space away from wandering animals (we have three dogs and two cats). Sanitation is crucial to home brewing, and having four footed beasties tromping through the apparatus can't be conducive to a clean, controlled environment.

So I began the tedious process of digging through and cleaning a little-used back room. It's a strange sort of room. So crude that it isn't even legally counted toward the total square footage of the house, yet it has a concrete floor and wall sockets, and is insulated. It was originally an exercise room, I think (I have some weights and an exercise bike in their now).

It occurred to me, though, that the room could be pressed into service in other ways, for instance as an extremely informal gathering spot where my son could bring his friends and where he and I could go to talk about manly things or watch manly movies like McClintock or Sci-Fi classics like the original War of the Worlds or Forbidden Planet. Just a room for him and me to flop in.

The room has been dubbed the Den of Manly Pursuits or the DMP (pronounced "dump").

I'll be going through my brewing equipment next, and setting up a space just for that. I even have a little window air conditioner that I can set up to keep the place temperature controlled (it isn't ducted).

My plan is nearly complete... MWAH-Hah-hah-ha!!!

Beer Hunter

Back in November I tried a Pumpkin Spice beer from Anheuser-Busch and was pleasantly surprised. It was first of all good beer. The mellow pumpkin was evident, but not overpowering, and the spice lingered nicely at the end, again without overdoing it. So, I was primed to try another flavored beer for Christmas, and picked up a six pack of Leinenkugel's Apple Spice beer. I made the tactical blunder, though, of not also having available a solid, reliable standby - just in case.

As illustrated above, I found the Leinenkugel's disappointing. Fizzy, insubstantial and much too sweet. A kid's beer (if one were of a mind to corrupt the yoots of the nation). It tasted like a light beer mixed with apple juice and given an extra kick of artificial carbonation. I found their Sunset Wheat to be much the same. It pours up cloudy, but still manages to be thin, bubbly and again, too sweet.

It might be that I had been spoiled by a sixer of Anchor Steam Beer just before trying the Leinenkugels. Anchor Steam is very good, but too expensive. Ten bucks is just too much to shell out for six bottles of beer, and there are comparable beers available for less. I just picked up some Full Moon Winter Ale as well as the obligatory Shiner Bock which, believe it or not, I have never tried before. I'll report later.

The Grand Project inches along at a snails pace, delayed by paying work and lack of a dedicated brewing space. Once I get my brew room going, I will investigate cheese making more thoroughly. The bread will be the easiest aspect of my culinary trifecta - the cheese, I think, the most challenging.

The Grand Project

The image at left - Bleu Cheese & Beer - is probably my favorite example (so far) of my own artwork, for a variety of reasons.

I chose Bleu Cheese for this piece because I find it a visually interesting cheese. The bottle (an antique from Belgium) would be beautiful even if I weren't fond of beer... but I am, which makes it that much more beautiful. Painting food, of course, needs no justification. Altogether, these things bring to mind the best aspects of the Old World. A rich and genuine simplicity.

The occasion of this painting also happened to be the first time I stumbled on what is now probably my Favorite Snack in the Whole World; Bleu Cheese on garlic toast, plus beer. I brought them all together for aesthetic reasons, but... after all, it was no good letting them go to waste. Waste is a sin.

Ah, well... art always requires some sacrifice, and I despise the idea of neglected duty.

It occurred to me that all three of these amazing substances are brought to us through God's gift of natural fermentation (it was sourdough bread, after all) and that got the wheels turning in my head. After reading a short essay on cheese by G.K. Chesterton, the outlines of a scheme started to take shape.

So, I'm now committed - some time in the next year - to sitting down to a plate of my own home-made cheese, on my own home-made bread and washing it down with my own home-brewed beer. That, along with this blog, I guess, constitutes The Grand Project. I'll keep you posted on that, as well as continuing art projects and other items of interest. Hopefully I'll stick with all of these things until I get really good at one of them.