The brewing went smoothly and a bit faster than it took with my first attempt with the Winter Warmer extract kit. It’s not so much the difference in the kit as it was gaining experience with brewing itself and using an immersion wort chiller this time around. It helped cut down on the chill time compared to an ice/water/snow bath. I had the wort down to under 100 degrees in 17 minutes, which is quite good.

I remembered this time to take my starting gravity measurement as well: 1.05. The grains in the stout kit smelled great, smooth with a coffee-like aroma. According to the description on the kit, it’s supposed to finish quite smoothly with a coffee finish to it and that it’s at its best when it’s served draft as opposed to bottled. Northern Brewer sells a five-gallon draft kit for $140, but I don’t have a spare refrigerator… and I’m not ready to invest in one of those just yet. So it’ll have to be bottled for now. But who’s complainin’?!

Anyway, a successful night of brewing. I got some good video this time around and hope to make a good beginner’s tutorial out of it. What would be really cool, though, is to have DVD tutorials and do some sort of bartering with Northern Brewer — like video tutorials for materials, etc, or given the opportunity to sell them wholesale to NB.

At any rate. A fun night of brewing. I can’t wait to taste the stout.

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I went to Northern Brewer to pick up a few more items to help make the brew process a bit easier, some more sanitizer and a new brew kit. I know I was talking about going with either the Dark Cherry Stout or the Honey Brown Ale, but decided to go with the Dry Irish Stout. I decided that it’s just still too early for the Honey Brown Ale — I’ll do that after the stout. And the Cherry Stout? I just wasn’t so sure about that one. I like cherry… but only in certain contexts… and I just wasn’t so sure about it in the context of a dark stout. Perhaps I’ll try that in the fall.

The Dry Irish Stout intrigued me with its dry, coffee-like taste. I think that’ll be a good evening beer to relax with.

In other good brewing-related news, I took a thief sample of my Winter Warmer kit that I’ve got going in the secondary fermenter and it was remarkably different in finish compared to the last sample I took. While the gravity level was near the same (1.018 - 1.019), the taste was a bit more full-bodied than before and the alcoholic finish also stronger. I think this is going to be a good beer. I may let it mature for another two weeks before bottling to bring out the flavor and increase the finish. One thing’s for sure though, it will be a strong beer — meaning, if you have more than two, you’ll probably want to rest it off for a bit before driving.

I am thinking of having a bottling party on the 11th of February for the Winter Warmer and invite various beer-loving friends of mine to help in the bottling process. Invites will be coming.

I’m starting the Irish Stout this evening and with the last kit in mind, I think I’ll be taking a few extra steps to ensure that it goes well.

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With my first extract brewing kit nearing the bottling stage, I’ve been giving some thought to trying the all-grain approach to brewing. I’ve looked on numerous websites and forums for information on getting started (without getting confused) and at this point, I’m leaning towards sticking with the extract kits.

I did find a web-based book by John Palmer, where he talks about the all-grain brewing process and ALL of the chemistry behind it [it was almost like reading a college textbook], but it sort of left me drowning in information overload. Granted, I’ll give him credit for providing comprehensive and detailed information for the advanced brewmasters, but it was overwhelming for me.

There are added steps involved in all-grain brewing and also requires additional investment in equipment — the investments aren’t that bad, but it’s the fact that there are also more opportunities for user error that intimidates me from venturing into the all-grain world. Adding to the user-error factor, it also requires a heckuva lot more space. For a five-gallon brew, you need about a nine-gallon boiling pot (with plenty of overhead) — and if you’ve seen our kitchen, we really don’t have a lot of space. The only way to get around that is to set up a propane system… and I’m not quite ready to go that far just yet. So I may stick with the extract kits for the next several rounds of brewing and perhaps I’ll be comfortable enough with the brewing process to try an all-grain or partial mash kit.

I was originally going to try the Oatmeal Stout, but that isn’t available as an extract kit. So instead this time around, I’m going to try the Dark Cherry Stout or the Honey Brown Ale extract kit from Northern Brewer. It sounds like a pretty interesting brew.

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Down right depressing compared to the likes of David Letterman, Keanu Reeves, Harrison Ford, etc. when you use salary.com’s salary timer. It’s a clever (but useless) JavaScript that compares your annual salary against an array of celebrities and then does a calculation (every second, on the second) updating your real-time salary.

I’ve had mine running up against David Letterman now for a little over an hour and he’s made $17, 800.00+ and counting — humbling what I make by comparison.

For a little extra bonus, click the Burg-O-Meter to calculate your earnings in burgers and other material goods. Just within this short sentence, David has already made over a hundred Big Macs and I don’t think I’ve even made one bite’s worth.

Isn’t that uplifting!?

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It took long enough, but my wife and I finally saw King Kong this evening — and like my buddy Jamison, I thought the movie was extremely long and thought there was a lot they could have taken out to make this a bit easier to digest… in one sitting.

The island sequence (along with the scenes leading up to it) were very good. Long, but very good. The cinematography, lighting, color, and awesome textures and composition was a sight to behold. There was little left to the imagination in terms of detail and realism. In that regard, the film was flawless.

With that said, Peter Jackson could have saved about 20 to 30 minutes of agony and grotesque scenes, removing the horror element altogether and made a nice 2 and a half hour film. But he’s Peter Jackson, what are ya gonna do.

All in all it was a great movie, the acting pretty decent, and the CG simply astounding. Even though this is obviously fiction, I’m surprised that Jackson portrayed the T-Rex in the film as a predator, when many paleontologists have been moving towards the theory that T-Rex was a scavenger and not a predator.

Anyway, it was still a great movie. I don’t plan on buying the DVD or anything, but enjoyed it enough to justify the $16.00 we shelled out for movie tickets.

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I took a gravity measurement this evening as well as a sneak taste at the brew — and I’m mildly concerned that something went wrong somewhere along the way. For starters, I’m not sure whether or not the gravity level is supposed to go down. When I added the brew to the secondary fermenter, the reading was at 1.02 — tonight’s reading (a week and a half later) is at 1.018. I was reading the documentation for high gravity kits (which the winter warmer kit falls under), and the gravity level there suggests that the level be around 1.064 or higher.

I think I’m doing something wrong.

In addition to that, the brew tasted kinda watered down and I can’t imagine why. I followed the procedure by the book — er documentation — and can’t think of anything that’d cause this inconsistancy. The only thing I can think of is that the grains didn’t steep long enough in warm enough water. However the instructions explicitely state to steep the grain mixture for up to 15 minutes or until the water reaches 170 degrees. My water was slow going, so the grains steeped for 15 minutes in about 90 degree water I think.

I may call Northern Brewer tomorrow to see if something might have gone wrong.

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I’ve been well aware for the past two years now (or so) that I’ve been out of shape and shall we say, bearing a little extra load. Well, the holiday season was a bit of a rude awakening for me when I discovered that the size jeans I once used to fit into are now fitting a bit too snug for my comfort zone. Talk about depressing — I was pushing a full waist size increase.

So I’ve resolved that I’m going to spend twenty minutes a day (excluding weekends) at our facility’s workout room — half cardio and half strength training. I have put this off for far too long and it’s time to find the semi-fit me, the me that used to wear a loosely-fit size 34. I just can’t stand that I’m teetering around 2 bills and want to return to a healthy 160.

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I’ve been a bad brewer — too busy with work to take gravity measurements everyday. I measured the gravity level and it was about 1.02, same as last time — so I decided to begin the second fermentation stage. Essentially you’re moving the fermented wort from the primary fermenting bucket into the secondary fermentation carboy (essentially a big glass jug) with what’s called an “autosiphoner”. It’s a simple device that you pump to begin the transfer/flow of beer from one container to another.

When you’re transferring, you keep the autosiphoner about an inch above the base of the primary fermenter (the bucket) as to only transfer the beer — and not the nasty sludge at the bottom of the bucket. Yes, sludge. As the wort ferments, the grain and hop remains settle to the bottom of the bucket.

After you’re done with the transfer, seal up the carboy with the stopper/one-way valve.

One thing you’ll notice is that the liquid that is transferred into the carboy smells MUCH MORE like real beer than what’s left in the primary fermenting bucket. I think this could be a good brew.

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My friend Isaac and I were chatting about computer games and what I grew up playing on — he’s a console/joystick kid, I was a keyboard kid. I had the TI-99 Texas Instruments personal computer. Boasting 16 colors and 16 kb of RAM, this powerhouse of a computer played cool games (like Parsec, Hunt the Wumpas, and some other game I played alot). I also learned a little BASIC programming — but you couldn’t save the scripts unless you were fortunate to have the full system. We didn’t.

Check out this link on old-computers.com. They’ve got photos, ads, and even links to emulators. How funny is that.

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I took a gravity measurement on my winter brew and it measured out at 1.02. The consistancy sure smelled like Summit Winter Ale — but it looked pretty mulchy when I thieved the sample for the gravity reading. From what I remember reading in the instructions, it didn’t mention anything about filtering, save for the two times you transfer the beer, you use an auto-siphoner to transfer betweem the primary fermenter to the secondary fermenter and from the secondary to the bottling bucket. I imagine that will help reduce the amount of sludge in transfer.

Smells good though. Mmm… Beer.

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