Brews you can use

It’s finally time to write off all the stuff I wanted to write about, so I can write something. Ahhh… that’s better.

More to come soon, hopefully. For now, just updates in the subject areas I cover here….

Brews

I guess I’m still a homebrewer, because I’ve actually brewed in the last couple months. It was a little 5 gallon batch of a steam beer. Other than that batch, I’m essentially out of beer.

[That "out of beer" is relative; I actually have quite a bit of beer, but only one "everyday" beer on tap. And a cider. And a very sour lambic. And some of the strong bottled beers I'm saving for a special occasion... It's actually quite a lot by my pre-brewing standards, but not enough to get me to bring beer unprompted to parties, family gatherings, AA meetings, and the like.]

Bikes

My first commuter bike (the Raleigh MTB) was stolen out of our garage a few weeks ago. That had me bummed out for a few days, but at least I still had the fixed gear Schwinn to ride. I actually found that more pleasant to ride when it wasn’t by choice. Since no part of my brain was saying “gee, I wish I could coast/shift/turn the pedals while stopped”, I was better able to enjoy the ride.

Shortly after the theft, Jess’s uncle bought a recumbent and offered me his old MTB. It fit me, so I took it. It’s a nice mid to late 90s Giant Yukon. The frame is basically a touring frame with clearance for huge tires, and with a few handlebar/stem upgrades it could be a nice comfy bike for road rides. Or, since it has horizontal dropouts, I could turn it into a single speed MTB. Choices.

The biggest detriment to bike commuting now is the new garage project. Shortly after the bike theft, we decided to move on the garage replacement we’d been talking about. With no garage to store bikes, I’ve been moving the bike in an out of the house. With our short entryways, getting the bike in and out of the house is enough of a hassle to make me grab the keys and take the vehicle that’s already outside. At least the garage should be finished soon, so that may no longer be an issue

Well, it was heading up to 40 °F today, nice and warm. I dressed like it was summer, except with a long-sleeved shirt. And drove in to work. If anyone thought I might be crazy for biking in at -10 °F, riding the car at 30-ish should remove all doubt.

Somehow, biking just didn’t seem worthwhile. The ice-cold commute at least gets your daily “Damn, that was stupid!” moment out of the way early in the day. Pleasant weather? Working bike? Where’s the adventure in that?

I’ve once again disassembled the Schwinn. This time, to pay some attention to the two (four?) bearings I missed earlier, in the hubs. The axles weren’t spinning that smoothly, either. The rear hub grease had assumed the consistency of rubber cement, and the front had turned sandy and gray from worn metal. It needs new cones.

Once that’s done, I’ll finally know for sure whether it’s the bike or the rider who’s out of shape. I think I know the answer…

…

And as for that other hobby, this hop shortage can end any time now. I’m plotting my next brew: my brewery is set up to use leaf hops, and I can only find a couple varieties of those for sale anymore. Even my backup hop sources are completely out. If I retool my brewery for pellet hops (which gets interesting, since I need to keep too much of the pellet gunk from going through the chiller) I could get a few more varieties.

I almost never did the American ale styles. Now the hops available will essentially force me into that for the next few years of brewing.

This will be tough….

I got a late Christmas present today. Well, not so much a late Christmas present, but a quarter century delayed inheritance.

My Grandpa died almost 25 years ago, and left some nice wristwatches for me and my cousin. I was a kid then, and my cousin was less than a year old, so it’s probably for the best that they took this long to get to us. Mine’s easily the nicest watch I’ve owned, and probably ever will own. I usually go for the sturdy yet disposable inexpensive digital watches, but this is a beautiful mechanical wristwatch made in Switzerland by one of the older Swiss watchmakers. I’ve been wearing it since this morning, listening to its rapid ticking, marveling at the fine mechanisms strapped to my wrist, and thinking of Grandpa.

…

I brewed yesterday, but nothing as odd as I thought I’d need to do. I had the hops to make a decent American IPA, and picked up a few more ingredients to complete the recipe. My last few beers have wound up underhopped, but I don’t think I made that mistake this time — my hops stash is gone now

I also finally got my bike out of the car, assembled, and installed fenders. The weather forecast calls for sub-10°F temps tomorrow, which knocked me out of my bike commuting routine last time. This time around, though, I have a fleece balaclava and a better base layer for the rest of me. I could wait for the higher temps later this week, but I’m itching to get back on the bike…

A couple days ago, I started to understand the appeal of the car-free life.

After digging the car out from being plowed in, I wasn’t able to get it into our backyard parking spot (its snow handling leaves quite a bit to be desired) so I parked it on one of the side streets, across from a sign reading “Night plow route this side of street”. It was towed the next morning when I went to run a few errands.

Turns out that marking one side of the street for nighttime plowing renders the opposite side a daytime plow route; this isn’t marked by any signs, I had to go to a St. Paul web site to figure this out. Having my car towed was a pretty effective hint, though….

Well, I had been meaning to get back on the bike. I more or less stopped bike commuting when the temps dropped to 5° in late November, but the weather this week was pretty nice. I took the mountain bike out for my first ride on slushy roads. Kept it in low gear, took it easy and slow, and … wiped out spectacularly right out of the alley. Only my pride was injured or damaged, and I stayed upright for the rest of the ride to breakfast and then to the impound lot. A mere $240 got my car back, and I packed my $200 bike into the back seat, and went on with the errands.

…
The bike is still disassembled in the back of the car. I hope to get around to reassembling it in the next couple days. I’ll also try to get some fenders on it — I was wearing quite a bit of road salt from that short ride, so I added “buy fenders” to the TODO list. “Buy Nokians” almost made the list, but I’ll save those for later.

The Schwinn is downstairs again, after a couple enjoyable (if more physically taxing) commute rides. I just need to finish installing and taping the handlebars, and either get some 27 inch knobby tires (not as much variety in that size) and fenders or wait for more slick-friendly weather.

I also need to brew something before I go ack to work. I had been planning a pilsner, but the hops have become hard to get. Another experimental Frankenbeer it is, then

Good week this week, and not just because I’ve been off work:

• I brewed on Monday. This is almost getting to be a regular occurrence. I probably won’t get back to the 10 gallons per month rate I had going a few years back, but the chances of me selling off brewing equipment in disgust have dropped quite sharply. The beer? I don’t know what it will be, other than beer. Something dark, mildly roasty, hopefully hoppy, with a bunch of rye. For the moment, I’ve given up targeting styles/flavors/other beers. It’s my beer — I’ll probably like it.
• We hosted thanksgiving dinner. Jess’s aunt took the kids for an evening and we cleaned. Cleaned like we didn’t have to worry about waking the kids. Cleaned till we dropped. We have a reasonably clean downstairs now, and with 4 cats and two kids, that’s precious and fleeting, but quite satisfying.
• Oh yeah, dinner. Good turkey, excellent stuffing and squash, heavenly desserts (five-spice pumpkin pie, chocolate cranberry hazelnut torte, and the cranberry apple pie Jess’s friend contributed), and lots of family and friends to share with.
• Most of today was spent noshing, vegging, and snoozing. After the kids went to bed, I got the project bike set up so that I can feel safe commuting with it, put on some lights, and took it on a late-night test ride. There’s still a bit of work left, but it’ll get me to work and back, I think. It’s still a new and fun ride, so I’ll enjoy whatever portion of the commute it survives

I finally got around to cleaning my draft lines and taps after <mumble> months, probably over a year. I don’t know whether to be gratified by what came off/out of them, or horrified that I was drinking stuff that passed through, near, around — within the same zip code — as it. Shudder. The beer and cider tastes much better now, although that may be psychological.

I’ve got to get around to doing that more often.

While I was at it, I put the brown ale I brewed on 9/8 on tap. It was still warm and this time overcarbonated, but otherwise very drinkable. I think I’ll be enjoying this one tomorrow evening when it finally cools down. I also racked a stout that I brewed on 9/23.

And now I’m having a little toast. Some petrus oud bruin that’s been sitting in my fridg^H^H^H^H^Hcellar for a year or so. Quite good stuff.

I poured it, and sat down to write this post, when I noticed some of my spam alarms were going off at work. Bugger. Well, I guess I get to celebrate some beer progress with a bit of spam killing while I’m at it.

On “Brews you can use”? How strange.

I never thought flat, warm, un-aged beer could taste so good.

Yep, I actually got around to racking last week’s brew to the serving keg. It tasted a touch sweet, probably just enough to make it fizz up in the keg. No gravity readings, no notes, no stress…. (Rough Recipe, for posteritythe curious: quarter pound each of Simpson’s extra dark crystal, medium crystal, black malt, and Crisp Amber malt, twelve pounds of Rahr 2-row, 2 oz Fuggle in the boil, Wyeast 1028 yeast.)

While I was down there, I also tasted the ciders I started last October or November, and never touched. They’re still in their primary fermenters. That’s supposed to be a big no-no, but the ciders are still definitely drinkable. I may toss a few oak cubes in when I keg them, to complete the “rough and ready rustic” effect.

I think I may have ended a drought.

I haven’t brewed a beer since last November. I’ve thought of doing it a few times — even got to the point of gathering ingredients — but something always comes up. Kids, other plans, just a royally bad day, illness, sometimes acute laziness. I’ve been ==>this<== close to selling off my brewing equipment, just because its idleness [yeah, it's idleness, that's the ticket ...] was driving me mad.

Driving me to drink, in fact. For a while, I was substituting beer for soda (probably a net win, healthwise), but this and other unpleasantness had me first supplementing with, then switching to the distilled stuff to take a bit more of the fabled “edge” off. I would go weeks without having a single beer, but the whiskey (and occasional gin, rum, or tequila) would disappear at an alarming rate. Not good for motivation, or health.

Then I started biking to work. Amazing stress reliever. The alcohol consumption dropped to normal levels, I felt much more human, felt that I could do things. Perhaps even brew beer.

I was going to brew on Labor day, in memory of Michael Jackson (”no, not that one” as we once needed to say) who had passed away suddenly the week before. It almost worked, I had a plan, I had a free day to do it, and I had the ingredients.

In retrospect, though, I should have made the yeast starter the day I spent fixing the TiVo — the old tube of yeast didn’t revive in time, and my “emergency dry yeast” supply was even older. Feh, brewing canceled. To work off *that* stress, I tossed the kids in the bike trailer and started pedaling, eventually finding my way home after about 25 miles of wandering.

So, today was the day. I fought a nasty, exhausting headache all morning, couldn’t even stomach a lunch beyond crackers and ginger ale, but dammit, I needed this. I finally started around 2:00 pm, and tried to keep it simple and stress-free. I took only fragmentary notes, and no gravity readings. I did a shorter than normal mash (the result was still very clear) and boiled a little less than normal, and was all cleaned up and put away at quarter after six. So fast, I swear I must have forgotten something…

I’m not worrying too much about it (”Did I kill the yeast?” “Will it ferment?” “How will it taste?”) — any stress would be very counterproductive at this point. Either I get a decent little (or big?) brown ale or porter-ish vageuly-English beer out of it, or I don’t. Either way, I’ve taken a big step out of a nearly year-long brewing funk, and that feels good.

Surprisingly, I did manage to enter the Upper Mississippi mash-out as I mentioned a couple posts ago. I included the Imperial Stout, bringing the total to 6 entries. I hope at least some of them do well, I won’t know until the 27th.

I’ve recently gotten into Rye Whiskey. A New York Times Article had quite a bit to do with it. If it hadn’t been posted on Making Light and mentioned in a conversation with a co-worker in the same week, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought, and continued to view the few Ryes on the liquor store shelves with a suspicious eye. The article sold me on the style, so I decided to give it a try, starting with a mid-range “value” rye to avoid being turned off of the style by a low-quality example.

First up was Sazerac, ~$25/750ml at Surdyk’s. Quite good, light bodied and spicy. Next, I tried the next step down, Rittenhouse ($12/750 mL) which disappeared pretty quickly also. Rittenhouse was somewhat mellower, but definitely a quality whiskey. Currently, I’m down to “Old Overholt”, a $10/bottle whiskey and thus among the cheaper liquors sold in glass bottles… It’s also my favorite so far, a wonderful value and a good example of the Rye style. I haven’t tried Jim Beam or Wild Turkey yet. As for high-end examples, the only one I’ve seen locally has been a 21yr Rittenhouse for $130/bottle, so I won’t be having one of those anytime soon…

All have been decent sipping whiskeys, but an old out-of-style liquor calls for an old out-of-style cocktail. Rye shines in an Old Fashioned. Its bold spicy flavors give a tasty and balanced version of the cocktail, in contrast to the mellow, sweeter, usual Bourbon version.

They’re also a simple cocktail to make. Put a sugar cube, a thin (1cm) wedge of orange, and a splash of water into an Old Fashioned glass (short, thick bottom, straight sides, ~6-8 oz capacity) and muddle until the sugar is dissolved and the oranges are nicely bruised, especially the skin. Add a dash of Angostura Bitters, top off with 3-4 oz of Rye Whiskey and ice, stir. and serve. This is now my favorite cocktail by a large margin.

I think I may actually get some entries to the Upper Mississippi Mash-out this year. More entries than ever before, in fact. I almost feel like I have a hobby again!

Of course, competitions means bottling (with the exception of Beer and Sweat keg-only competition, with two drawbacks: location, and insanity), and I keg. Enter the Beer Gun. Quite cool, very easy to use. I’ll be sold on the concept unless/until all the beers I sent to the mash-out get dinged for oxidation.

So, I’m planning to send:

• The steam beer and pale ale I brewed two posts ago. They aged well….
• My 2005 wild-yeast-fermented cider. I tried both the natural and the pitched yeast versions side-by-side before deciding. The natural cider basically screamed apple!, while the pitched version was much more subtle with honey notes and a crisp, dry finish. In beer, at least, subtlety does not seem to do well at competitions, so the natural cider goes.
• The Dubbel I tossed together last summer. This is turning out to be a wonderful beer. Unfortunately, not the beer I’m in the mood for most of the time. I may have to work my way back into liking the Belgian styles again…
• The Rochefort 8° clone I brewed two summers ago with a friend. Since I haven’t been in a Belgian mood, and when I am, I want to save this stuff rather than drink it, I have most of my case left. It’s quite excellent, and I’m sending some.

The Rochefort 8° clone was a tough choice to send vs. keep all to myself. I’m currently drinking another tough choice, an Imperial Stout I brewed back in 2004 (<boggle>, was it really that long ago?), and is developing very nicely. I have somewhat more than a case left, and it did really well in the 2005 State fair competition (high score, no medal — Imperial stouts are a popular style among homebrewers). This one will be a gametime decision….

… and I still need to work tomorrow. Feh. Me sleep now.