Filling a barrel...

A while back I received a few oak barrels as a gift, but, never managed to do anything with them, except fill them with water and well that was about it.  I've abandoned those barrels from a brewing perspective.  They will be used in the Brew Garage though.

Recently the BUZZ homebrew club decided to start a barrel project using some barrels from Victory Brewing's Dark Intrigue version of Storm King Stout.  All the chatter on the mailing list got me thinking, "Should I give this another shot?"  Well, I ordered a barrel from Victory and I'll be picking it up next week.  Here goes nuthin'.

I guess I'll have to brew 5 ten gallon batches plus some extra for the angel's share.  Here are the steps as I understand them right now.

• decide on recipe
• purchase bulk ingredients
• brew 10+ gallons 5 times
• ferment in carboys
• prepare the barrel (hmmmm...hoping I won't need to do much here)
• fill the barrel
• wait
• top off
• wait
• top off
• wait
• etc (as long as it takes to get a beer that tastes good)

I guess this is going to force me to get the brew garage in gear.  It's a mess right now.  Any homebrewers out there ever fill a 53 gallon barrel before?  (Yikes 53 gallons!)

New Homebrew Supply Shop Directory

Check out the new Homebrew Supply Shop directory.

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org./pages/directories/find-a-supply-shop

Seems to work pretty well.

What people buy @ Amazon via the nonconFERMist

This time of year I get more traffic than most. Topics like growing hops trend pretty high. This leads to people clicking on the referral links. I don't really make a bunch of money, but, it helps pay for domain name registrations.

So more often than I like to admit, I go to the Amazon referral reports and read through the items folks have purchased via this site. I don't see who bought it, just that somebody did. Items purchased this month so far include:

• Barley Wine: History, Brewing Techniques, Recipes (Classic Beer Style Series, 11)
• Making & Using Dried Foods
• Pale Ale, Revised: History, Brewing, Techniques, Recipes (Classic Beer Style)
• Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation
• The Complete Guide to Growing Your Own Hops, Malts, and Brewing Herbs: Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply (Back-To-Basics) (Back to Basics Growing)
• The Homebrewer's Garden: How to Easily Grow, Prepare, and Use Your Own Hops, Malts, Brewing Herbs
• Wild Brews: Culture and Craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition
• Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation (Brewing Elements Series)

All of those were books.  Somebody else bought some hardware!  Cool.  I'm thinking wort chiller :-)

• PETRA 63632048598 Copper Refrigeration Tubing, 1/4-Inch

Also, nice to see some readers checking out the electronic version of The Homebrewer's Garden (Kindle Edition). Haven't seen anybody buy a Kindle yet though ;-(.

Here's a little story about how I brew beer, or don't brew beer. You tell me.

So I couldn't remember the last beer I brewed.  I mean, it couldn't have been November of 2010, could it?  I guess so.  A black ale. and it was tasty.  Why no brewing?  Well, I had lotsa stuff goin' on in my life.  The job wasn't really panning out and well I eventually was laid off after 11 years.  (hmph)  Spent some time getting my wits about me.  I actually blogged on for a while and that was cool.  Well I'm happy to say I am employed again.  So much so that I've been so busy that I haven't had time to brew.  At least that's my current excuse.  No more procrastination.

Labor Day is almost here and I didn't want to show up to the family reunion empty handed.  So, I thought about it for about four weeks and last week I finally decided to brew.  The first night I was a little side tracked and decided to work on cleaning up the brew garage.  You know the one with the nice epoxy floor (before, after)  Well some shelves are up now and the stainless steel prep table is together.  Still looks like the brew monster threw up on some tires a scooter and lumber.

That was Wednesday night last week.  As they say, the best laid plans.  So, Thursday night became brew night instead.  I had some liquid pilsen malt extract in a partially full 33lb jerry can.  Found some roasted barley and aromatic malt in my box of brewing stuff. Picked up some Wyeast 1968 (Fullers strain, WLP002) from Home Sweet Homebrew in Philadelphia at lunch earlier that day (the only planning I did evidently).  Picked an English Ale Yeast mostly because it falls out of suspension quickly.  Quick is good when Labor Day is fast approaching.  Had about 4 ounces of dried homegrown Cascade hops harvested a few weeks ago and two ounces of homegrown Cascade hops from 2009.  Thought that would be nice for the flavor and aroma.  Now for some bittering hops, First Gold and Galena will do.

Time to haul out the keggle, scale, bowls, hydrometer, burner etc.  Fill the keggle to 10 gal, fire up the burner and well you get the picture.  I'll cut to the chase.  The steeping grains were steeped and the bittering hops were added.  What?  Oh right, forgot the malt extract.  Added 20% of the malt extract since I'm doing late malt additions.  Wait, I don't have enough malt extract!  That's right I didn't weigh it.  There's not enough.  I needed 16 lbs or something and I only had about 8.75 lbs.  Not good.  So either I make a 2.5% beer or find some more fermentables.

Scour the brew garage and the basement, I did.  Guess what I found, 12 lbs of basswood honey!  It's goin' in.  Yep, 3 lbs of honey in one 5 gal fermenter and um 7 lbs in the other (couldn't resist).  All the while I'm using Beersmith to calculate the final gravity, bitterness etc.  Just dumped it in the fermenter, no boiling or anything.  I guess that's OK.  Some people say DISASTER others don't seem to say either way.  I guess we'll see.

So, I guess this will be my first braggot.  Accidental introduction to styles are always the best, don't you think?  The higher ABV batch probably won't be ready for this weekend, but, the other one is already starting to drop clear.  Either way one of them is going to the party in a keg (not bottles).  

By the way as my brewing buddy Brian points out, this isn't necessarily me being rusty.  Evidently I brew like this all the time. (shrug)  Watch this be the best beer... er braggot I've ever made.  Or the worst ;-)

Hey...

...yeah I'm still around.  Check out http://www.notthewholepicture.com.  I've probably posted more stuff there recently.

Thanks for keeping me in your reading list.  I'll fire this thing up again.

How many variations of homebrewing are there?

Well I guess its all the same general process, right?  If you want to see variations, somebody created a site to cull tons of videos together from Youtube and other places.  Kinda like America's Funniest Homebrew Videos.  I had no idea this many people were making their own homebrewing videos.

Groupon: Midwest Brewing kit equipment + recipe + opener + $25 gift cert

Midwest Supplies:  So for the price of an equipment kit (at some other stores) you get the following.

• basic equipment kit
• extract ingredients for one of three style beers
• DVD
• $25 gift certificate for future ingredients

$64 + $12 shipping = $76. Not a bad way to start or get a friend started.

You can find it at Groupon.com under Philadelphia.

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Something new on the webpage...

Doing some Spring clean up.  Expect the following when you visit this webpage.

• decreased the size of the photos in the header
• added #homebrew twitter feed search to sidebar
• cleaned up the side bar

Oldie but a goodie. Our hops growing in a time-lapse video.

Here's a time-lapse video from a few years ago. You can see 8 hours of hops growing/moving in 30 seconds. Even added some blues music ;-)

A Duel. That's right Mr. Beer.

Warning this post is much too long and I enjoyed writing it way too much.

Just like Buddy's kindly owner, I too received a brown box in the mail...er UPS (pronounced ups not U..P..S).  I had been calmly expecting it actually.  A week ago I guess, a nice lady contacted me asking if I would be interested in reviewing one of these here Mr. Beer Premium Edition Home Microbrewery Systems.  While reading the email from her, I was very pleased that something had finally come of my blogging efforts, success at last.  I mean some bloggers make gobs of money, but, I got something that can make beer.  The story doesn't end here though.  I haven't explained the Duel.

As I do everyday, I visited The Interweb/The Facebook and noticed Mr Curtin's rss feed from his Liquid Diet blog manifested yet another news item via that Facebook Networked Blogs syndication app thingy.  It truly is a complicated world we live in.  Be that as it may, my daily routine rely's on it.  So I clicked on it and jumped to his site.  Long story short, I felt a little bummed.  I mean, he got one too.  Then he proceeded to write a witty post with color pictures.  Threatened as I was, I could only do one thing.  That's right.

So I did it.  I challenged him to a duel.  Not a duel with pistols, a duel with Mr. Beer Premium Edition Home Microbrewery Systems (MBPEHMS), a duel nonetheless.  At first my compatriots were not impressed.  This sort of thing happens around here all the time.

After mentioning Mr. Curtin, things changed at once.  I can only assume Buddy's been talking.  Anyway Jake and Ladybug were clearly enraged.  Ladybug went right to work and, well, Jake joined in a bit later.

After removing, sorting, relocating, arranging the contents of the package and picking up those crazy plastic bottles every time they fell heheh...they verified that yes we do indeed have a MBPEHMS.

(Real barrels not included.)

Took a picture for youns/yinz/youse. (its hard to write for a wide audience)  I'll be needing some moral support during the weeks leading up to what might ultimately be the demise of The NonconFERMist.  Sounds exciting don't it?!  Stay tuned er don't unsubscribe, don't unfriend, don't stop following my tweets.  Who am I kidding.  You were probably only here to find out what happens when beer freezes.

More to come :-)