This NY Life

Well, I’m here at work, which has been kind of unsettlingly quiet for the past few weeks and typing this post when I should be doing my status report. If a tree fell in the woods… I don’t know.

We went swimming in the building pool this Saturday and it was great. It’s just really relaxing and every time we go, we always say we need to go more often. Hopefully we will make that happen. The pool is 75 x 35 feet and enclosed and as Will says, no bugs can get in it.

PSP comics are a pretty cool idea and some of them look quite interesting. I’m still working my way through Watchmen, about 3/4 of the way done. It will be really interesting to see how they make the rich stories from the book come to life when they finally get going on the movie.

The Simpsons movie opens on July 27 which reminds me of one of my favorite scenes.

We went out to Mike and Kathy’s for lunch on Sunday and had a great time just hanging out eating, drinking beer, catching up, etc. We even got in some co-op Guitar Hero II action.

I have a renewed interest in R/C cars, though I think I’m a little bit more in love with the whole building procedure than the driving of them, probably because of the lack of space to drive them in. I went to storage and go out the two 1/18 scale cars I have. One of them is complete, with a BMW M3 body, the other is mostly done except for some of the electrics. I have to solder the motor leads and attach the speed control, attach the receiver and clean up the wiring with zip ties. Also I have to paint the body. I have a VW Beetle body shell that needs to be painted, maybe silver.

It’s strange, I think I’m drawn to things that I dont have space for because recently I have been checking out a few sites on Vespa restoration. I think this would be a great project, but only if I had a garage, some place to work on it, etc. Perhaps some day. I love the process though and could read about it for hours.

Recently we cancelled out NetFlix account. While we love the idea and convenience of being able to have a movie on hand all the time, its not too fun when you get psyched up to watch a movie (Match Point in this case), put it in and watch for about 45 minutes then it craps out on you. I took out the disc, cleaned it well, put it back in and still had the same issue. Then I broke the disc in frustration, I think I kind of frightened myself at that point and sent the disc back to NetFlix as damaged. When called about the issue, after waiting on the phone for 15 minutes, they had no problem letting us go as customers. We realize that discs get scratched, but they had nothing to say to us besides “OK, I can cancel your account”. It’s amazing they would rather lose a GIVEN $9.99 a month for a potentially very long time then do something for us. So, therefore, we joined a neighborhood DVD rental place with a good selection of movies ($4 per rental) and with the very few movies we watch in a month, this seems like a good plan. I did remember to print out my NetFlix queue though.

Beer update: Part of the beer has been bottled. When the yeast has run its course by eating all of the fermentable sugars in a beer, additional sugar has to be added to aid in carbonation. I had a case of clean bottles and after adding priming sugar to the still beer, bottled up a whole case. When I was almost done bottling, I realized that I had more beer than bottles. I bottled on June 24th and have let the rest of the primed beer sit for a few weeks now while I had a chance to gather more bottles (drink beer, rinse and save the bottles), this week I plan to re-prime and bottle the rest. The reason I needed to let it sit was to make sure that the priming sugar was all eaten up in the remaining beer. If too much priming sugar is added, exploding bottles could happen, and I don’t really want warm flat beer with shards of glass exploding in our apartment. Maybe if we had a house though, see above…

The beer is still hanging out in the primary fermenter. I took a Specific Gravity reading of the beer (its called beer now because the yeast have done their thing) to measure the amount of fermentable sugar still remaining in the beer. I took a reading at the beginning of fermentation, I will take another one right before I bottle, subtract the two and divide by .00738 to determine the percentage of alcohol by volume. I started out with a reading of 1.062, checked it last week and it was about 1.022, I am looking for a final gravity of about 1.016. The beer I made should have a ABV% between 6 - 8%.I am awaiting an order of some supplies (autosiphon, tubing, etc) which should be here tomorrow and I believe I will transfer to my bottling bucket to get ready to bottle this weekend some time.

This years Big Apple BBQ Festival was another hit, there are some excellent re-caps of the 5th annual event, which is a benefit for Madison Square Park, on Gothamist and Off the Broiler (and here). We went both days and were lucky enough to have some pretty amazing weather. Some standouts for us were the baby back ribs from Rack & Soul here in NY, the Brunswick Stew by the Proclamation Stew Crew (made up of Hokie alums) and Southside Market’s sausage. All the the regulars were there too, including Big Bob Gibson from Decatur, AL and Mitchell’s from Wilson, NC. We were able to get to Mitchell’s booth early enough on Sunday to get some chopped pork and some ribs with incredible pork skin attached still. So good, looking forward to next year. For anyone who is interested, we have gone from the first year and have learned that a Bubba Fast Pass is essential as it going for two days, getting there right when it starts and just relaxing. Here are some pics: Big Apple BBQ Festival

I can’t recommend enough John from Cincinnati. Its an excellent new show on HBO by David Milch who did Deadwood, one of my favorite TV series ever. John from Cincinnati is certainly odd, but I am rolling with it to see where things go. The first episode is pretty much an introduction to the characters, then the second episode has an event in it that just smacks you in the face.

Just and update, the wort is continuing to transform into glorious beer through the miracle of fermentation. Why am I picturing the baby birthing films we saw in the childcare classes before Will was born? The mind works in strange ways…

Anyhow, its Friday. Active fermentation has been going on since Sunday. According to things I have read, its recommended to leave the beer in its primary fermentor for at least a few weeks, as the strain of yeast I am using tends to be a slow worker. This weekend should be warm, so I’m sure there will be a little more activity going on than has been all week long.

One strange thing that happened earlier in the week was when I got home on Tuesday, I could smell a distinct sulpher smell. At first I thought it may have been the garbage, but then I got my nose near the airlock on the fermentor and yes indeed did it smell like old eggs. I have been assured on brewing message boards that this is just the way this type of yeast behaves, and after a few days it would dissipate. It did indeed dissipate. Plus, I would NEVER leave stinky garbage in the house all day, ahem…

So, the schedule coming up… Saison has to hang out in the primary for another few weeks, then I will bottle, then it has to bottle condition for a few months. Typically, this process would only be for a few weeks but since this style of beer is higher in alcohol than some other beer, it has to rest a bit. So, I’d say end of August- mid-September is when it will be ready.

While the Saison is in the bottle, I will brew something else. Maybe something heavier, maybe not, its still up in the air, any suggestions? Leave them in the comments.

Have a good weekend… Heading to the Big Apple BBQ Festival, will report back next week.

Oh, and of course, plenty of playground time:

So to follow up on my previous post… I made the yeast starter on Thursday night, and of course saw no signs of life at all. I made sure I aerated the flask every so often, giving those beautiful little yeasties lots of air, but still nothing. After a few postings to some brewing message boards, I decided to make the beer as planned. I shifted my brew day to Sunday, as the weather wasn’t supposed to be great, and also it would give the yeast a little bit more time to kick off.

Yeast Starter

The worst scenario would be that after I made the wort and added the yeast starter there were no signs of fermentation. In which case I could just order another vial of yeast and throw that in as well. One of the replies to my post about my particular strain of yeast said that he never sees any kind of activity when making a starter. That being said, I got to it around 8:00am.

Hops in plug form


Corriander seed and dried orange peel


Boiling wort

At the end of it all, about 12:30pm, I made a dumb ass mistake. After the malt and hops have been boiled, you want to cool it down fairly rapidly so that you have a hospitable place for the yeast to work their magic. I just use a sink filled with ice water, and I ended up using 2 bags of store bought ice to pack around my brew kettle to try and cool about 3 gallons of boiling liquid down to the 68-73 degree range (some people use immersion chillers). You would then take the cooled wort and pour it into the primary fermentation bucket and add enough water to top it off and bring it up to 5 gallons. So, what I did was to put 3 gallons of water in the fridge the night before, so that when it came time to cool the wort, I wouldn’t have to use as much ice, etc, just cool it down to a warm temp, add the cool water and hopefully hit my range.

I forgot about the cold water, so my wort got real cool, pretty quick which forms a cold break (”Proteins that coagulate and fall out of solution when the wort is rapidly cooled prior to Pitching the yeast.”). So cool that I ended up adding about a half gallon of hot water. A cold break isn’t bad, in fact, it’s what you want. A cold break ensures that a lot of the solids fall out of the wort helping with clarification and taste.

I added the yeast to the fermentation bucket, gave it a bunch of rolls and shakes to aerate it pretty well… and lo and behold, after getting home Sunday night around 830pm, there was signs of fermentation. The yeast was doing its thing, Monday and this morning as well.

Next up, wait for fermentation to stop, leave it alone for a few days then take a specific gravity reading with a hydrometer to see if enough sugar has been consumed and determine the alcohol by volume. his style of beer is usually in the 6-8% alcohol by volume range.

So, its getting a bit warmer and what is the first thing I decide I want to do? Brew beer.

Ideally this desire should have stuck me last fall and maintained through out the winter, then I could be drinking (and sharing) all sorts of delicious home brew. But, no… I wait till it gets warm which limits my choices for beer production. I decided on a Saison, a Belgian farmhouse Ale.

Beer is made from just a few ingredients and, of course, fermented using yeast. While there are a bunch of different types of yeast imparting different flavors and carbonation to a brew, there are only a few that are good for warmer weather brewing.

Yeast is an amazing thing, and every time I think about what it does, it pretty much blows my mind. It’s a single celled organism that consumes sugar, need oxygen and its by-product is carbon dioxide which creates carbonation during fermentation.

First step in my early summer/late spring beer making session was creating a starter. When making beer you can get yeast in two forms, liquid or dry. For whatever reason the last time I settled on a liquid yeast. Making a starter is essentially yeast farming, the idea being that if a little vial of yeast with a 10-50 billion cells of yeast would ferment 5 gallons of wort well, a starter with over a hundred billion cells would ferment that same wort even better and faster. Last night I boiled 1/2 cup of Light Dry Malt Extract in about 1 pint of water for 15 minutes which makes a wort, transferred it to an Erlenmeyer Flask and submerged it into a water bath to get it down to a decent temperature to put the vial of yeast in. Once the yeast has been “pitched”, aeration occurs (me shaking the crap out of the flask for a few minutes). So then I covered the top of the flask loosely with some tin foil, gave it a kiss good night and put it in a spot where I thought would be good.

This morning I woke up and no signs of life. I think where I had it was too cool. I had made a water bath for the flask. The flask has been moved since to the kitchen counter and I’m crossing my fingers that the temp will be good and I will see some fermentation soon.

Yeast likes average temperatures between 68-72 degrees. Saison yeast is a bit heartier and can stand temps a little higher and, from what I have been reading, even up in the 80-85 degree range.

Sorry for the boring post, I will take some boring pictures (OF YEAST MID-FERMENTATION!!) tonight and post.

Next step will be to make the beer itself. I chose ingredients to make Bridget’s Love Potion Saison from HomeBrew Adventures. The description of the finished product says “The color is classically golden orange and the flavors are refreshing with citrus and fruity hop notes.”

Stay tuned…

Edit: I forgot to mention the other thing that is a by-product of yeast above. In addition to Carbon Dioxide, the other by-product of yeast is alcohol.

“I heard on NPR some time ago that its a marketing ploy big large brewers to serve and market beer ice cold to deaden the tastebuds so I drink beer at room temperature ergo I don’t drink beer when I am hot, I would much rather have water or a cocktail”

My eyes rolled pretty much instantly, particularly at his use of the word “ergo”. The thought of having a Bloody Mary or a Makers & Ginger after a long summer bike ride is gross, but I think this guy got the story pretty much right. There is no doubt in my mind that “large brewers” (Anheuser-Busch, Coors, etc.) market their beer to be consumed ice cold, and white wine manufacturers sometimes bet on their wine being served cold as it hides imperfections.

That being said, there is nothing like a co-cold one on a hot day and nothing like a 45-50 degree Hennepin on a cool day. Its all about choosing the best beer for the job.

HI:   Need a beer, Glen?

GLEN:    Does the Pope wear a funny hat?

Hi considers this.

HI:   ... Well yeah, Glen, I guess it is kinda funny.