X

Edwards, Obama

I’m torn. Usually by this point in a primary campaign, I have a good idea of who my favorite is going to be for the Democratic nomination, and who the likely prospects are on the Republican side. But I’m at a loss as to whether to vote for John Edwards or Barak Obama. The basic quandary that I’m facing is this; I like what Edwards says better, but I don’t think he means it as sincerely. I like the tone of Obama’s campaign, his charisma, and his focus on hope and the hopeful, but I’m not in line with much of his politics, nor am I convinced that he is actually capable of being the president (which after all is not an easy job). So who do I go with? The candidate who I agree with but don’t like or trust, or the one who I like and trust but don’t agree with? Maybe I’ll split the difference and vote for someone with no chance of winning.

The fact is, once the primary wave rolls out here to Oregon the decision is made already anyway.

On the red side (is it funny that the party of McCarthy is now clearly associated with the color red? Every time I hear someone say ‘red states’ I get a vision of Mao Tse Tsung standing on a podium, orating to the people of Kansas. It’s a red menace, I’m telling you, a menace) I’m hoping for a Giuliani victory followed by a major Giuliani scandal. Alternately, a Romney victory followed by a high profile statement of support for ‘our guy’ by the Mormon Prophet and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles would suffice (especially if it’s released on letterhead with their actual titles).

In the perfect world, the general election would be between Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul (with Mike Gravel and Ted Nugent as running mates). I would have to seriously think about who to vote for in a match up like that.

Homebrew terms

Looking back at the last few posts, I notice that I’ve thrown around a lot of brewing terms that I’ve picked up without providing much background. Here is a good glossary of home brew terms.

Also, I thought a basic “what is beer made of” might be appropriate, if I’m going to start babbling about beer. So here’s the scoop:

Beer is what happens when yeast are released into a solution of Malt, Hops, and Water. What are these things, and what do they do, you might ask. And I’m glad you did, because I’m going to tell you.

Maltose is sugar that has been converted from the starch in grain. This conversion process is called “malting” or “mashing”. When making beer, malted barley is the most commonly used grain.

Hops are a vine plant that produces a highly aromatic, bitter green flower that looks kind of like a fir cone. These things are what give beer it’s bitter, beery flavor.

Water is a medium for everything to come together and do its stuff.

Most beginner homebrewers, including my self, use malt extract instead of mashing all the grain at home. Mashing is an elaborate process that requires multiple five gallon vessels, including one with lots of tiny holes in the bottom, and a good way to boil five gallons of liquid (want a fun afternoon? try to boil five gallons of liquid on your electric stove. It won’t happen).

Rather than go through this, we use malt extract which comes either as a power or a syrup. Our beer doesn’t taste as ‘authentic’ as all-grain brews, but it’s a lot less time consuming and complex to make.

So, the malt and the hops and the water all go into a kettle with a few gallons of nice, pure water. Then we boil the crap out of it for an hour or so. Once it’s boiled, we cool it and put it into a giant glass bottle called a carboy. We add yeast and let it do its thing for a week or so. The yeast eat the sugars in the malt, and crap out good old alcohol and carbon dioxide. At the top of the carboy is a device that lets the CO2 out without letting air and bacteria in. At the end, there is ale.

Of course, this is the simple, simple, simple version. I’m learning more and more every day about the many pitfalls and joys of home-brewing.

The Nasty Elf is in bottles on the counter waiting for labels. It will bottle condition for around a month before it’s good to drink. The first week of that time is when the yeast will eat some fermentable sugar that we added before bottling the beer. The carbon dioxide that is released won’t have anywhere to go, since the bottles are sealed up, and it will dissolve into the beer. This is carbonation. The next three weeks it will age and improve in flavor. Then we will refrigerate and drink the little suckers. I can hardly wait.

Nasty Elf

This is the label for the “Nasty Elf Ale”. It’s going into bottles tomorrow. From the flat warm sample I tried this afternoon when taking the gravity reading, I think it’ll be delicious.

IIPA

Imperial India Pale Ale is a style of beer that doesn’t mess around. We’re making some beer the day after thanksgiving from this recipe I found on ratebeer.com. This beer has 17 oz of hops (including some very high alpha varieties) and over 10 lbs of dry malt extract. I expect it to be well nigh painful to drink. Boy am I looking forward to it.

Hombrewing

About a month ago, Taylor and I started on the adventure of home brewing. So far, we’ve made three batches of beer. The first was an English bitter which is currently aging in bottles in the attic. The second is an oatmeal stout which is bottle conditioning as well. The third started fermenting yesterday, it’s a medium bodied ale with some spices, orange zest, honey and brown sugar. Our next attempt is going to be an imperial IPA with enough hops to win a land war in Asia. Here are the recipes we’ve tried so far, with thoughts likely to follow.

Henry Kissinger’s Embittered Ale

This was actually made from a kit we purchased from Eugene’s Home Fermenter Center named ‘Monroe Street Bitter’, but we wanted to name it after our departed rabbit (who is in the freezer awaiting stew time). It was easy to make, as it was mostly malt extract with a very small portion of real grain steeped in for character. The kit came with;

5 lb. light malt extract syrup
1 lb. amber malt extract (dry)

3/4 lb. crystal malt

2.5 oz Golding hops for boiling
1 oz Golding hops for finishing

brewing salts (one package, looked like about 1/4 cup or less)
.5 tsp Irish Moss
dry ale yeast
3/4 cup dextrose

We steeped the grains and sparged into the big kettle. Added all the malt, the brewers salt, and the boiling hops, and started the hour long boil. At 45 minutes, we added the Irish Moss. At 55 minutes we added the finishing hops. We let the wort cool enough that it wouldn’t crack the Carboy and poured it in on top of about two and a half gallons of distilled water. Here’s the problem; it then didn’t cool enough to pitch yeast until the next morning. We have solved this problem by force cooling the concentrated wort in an ice bath before racking it to the carboy. Anyway, we pitched the yeast the next morning and within 36 hours the yeasties were super active, bubbling up from the bottom and down from the top in a sort of lavalamp effect much like this;

After 14 days in the carboy, we racked it into a five gallon bucket and siphoned it into 40 bottles to condition. We tasted one after about a week. It wasn’t bad, for a first attempt, but it had rough edges that we think will age out by Thanksgiving. More thoughts on the flavor once we’ve given it a real shot.

***

Mantelope Stout

Another kit beer from the Home Fermenter Center. They call it ‘Blackbeard’s Oatmeal Stout’ but we like giving things clever names of our own. A Mantelope is the body of a Manatee and the head of an Antelope. This one was a little more complicated. We ran into a snag with the steeping of the grains, not realizing that there were substantially more in this beer than the previous one and that we would need to use a bigger pot. We ended up just transferring the grains into a bigger pot halfway through the ‘mash’ (okay, not really a mash at all, just a steeping).

6.5 lb dark malt extract syrup
1 lb dry dark malt extract

1/4 lb dark crystal malt
1/4 lb chocolate malt
1/4 lb roasted barley
1/2 lb flaked oatmeal

1 1/4 oz northern brewer hops for bittering

ale yeast
3/4 cup dextrose priming sugar

We did this one about the same way as the last one. The sparge got a bit stuck toward the end because we didn’t have a big enough strainer. We ended up using cheesecloth and sacrificing some of our outer skin cells squishing the malt out. The boil went well, about an hour with the hops all added right at the beginning.

This time, we took good gravity readings. It started at 1.06 and landed at 1.021 after 14 days fermenting. That gives an alcohol content of in the neighborhood of 5.5%.

***

Nasty Elf Holiday Ale

This is the first beer that we did our own recipe modifications on. We started with a beer called Married Christmas Ale which I found on some guy’s website and made some pretty major modifications. Here’s what the recipe looked like once we got done with it;

4.5 lb pale malt extract syrup
1 lb dry amber malt extract
1 lb amber crystal malt

1.5 oz Golding hops for bittering
1 oz Fuggles for finishing

8 oz wildflower honey
8 oz dark brown sugar
2 oz grated ginger root
zest from 6 oranges
14 crushed cinnamon sticks
8 pods cardamom, crushed

3/4 cup dextrose
5 1/2 gallons distilled water
Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast

The boil was pretty much the same as everything else. Since we weren’t working with a kit, we had to crack the grain ourselves. We inherited a hand cranked grain mill from Taylor’s father with the rest of his beer making kit (most of which we’re still using). Once the hour long boil got started, we started the sweet/spicy ingredients boiling. They simmered for 1/2 hour and sat and steeped for the rest of the boil. Once the boil was done, we added the spice mix in before force cooling. We pitched the yeast that evening, but the house was too cool and it stalled, so we moved the carboy into the downstairs office and turned the heater up to ‘Tropical’. The yeast has just started to take, and hopefully there weren’t any free range yeasts (or god forbid, bacteria) that took hold during the cool night. This was the first time we used liquid yeast instead of the less expensive powdered variety. I’m not impressed so far.

So, more on each of these beers as we start to open and drink them. And expect more recipes to come as we continue with these adventures in home-brewing.