Nice. Three of my favorite things rolled into one: Christmas, music and… beer.
Lesson Learned
OK, so I kinda knew that one set of bottles I’d put away a little over a week ago had been slightly “over-charged” since, besides the same amount of sugar “charge” as all the other bottles, they also contained a goodly amount of trub that was likely to contain a bit more yeast the sugar could reactivate.
Oh, “lesson learned”? Don’t open one of “those” bottles while sitting at a computer. Screen, keyboard drawer, keyboard: all liberally sprayed by some hyper-carbonation. *heh*
Cleanup was delicious, though.
Trying Another Apple Cider Recipe
Update: 21:22 hrs. Both brews are bubblin’ away nicely, although the cider looks like it’s a fully carbonated, shook up pop, it’s fizzing so much. Ya think too much sugar? I actually used half as much as the new recipe I found called for, but it’s looking like something else… Oh, well. 🙂
It’s that time of year. Unfortunately, since I just started the cider today, it won’t likely be ready for Thanksgiving, but it’ll most certainly be ready for Xmas.
This is a really simple, easy-peasy cider recipe. Uses all stuff you can get off the shelf in most grocery stores, except for the wine yeast, which may not be available in your local store.
- 2.5 gallons of apple juice
- 1 quart “hyper-concentrated” apple juice (from frozen concentrate, made with 1/3 the water called for on the cans)
- 4C sugar
- 1 package Red Star Premier Couvée wine yeast
Heated the juice in a stock pot to 100-105 degrees Fahrenheit (about 40 degrees Celsius). Simmered slowly at about that temp.
Took about 1C of the sugared juice in a clean crockery bowl and added the yeast. Covered and let sit for about 15 minutes.
Checked the apple juice. Turned off heat and let cool a bit.
When the juice had reached a clear 100 degrees F, added it a bit at a time to my primary fermenter. When I had about a gallon in the fermenter, added the proofed yeast (it was really bubbling away!) and sirred with a clean stainless steel spoon. Added the rest of the juice pretty quickly after that, then added the airlock and placed the fermenter in a warm place, covered from light.
I’ll check back in a day to see how it’s cooking. In about a week, it could be ready to rack. I may just skip secondary fermenting, save for some bottle fermenting, of this first batch. We’ll see.
Next up? Some “Nut Brown Ale”. That’s cooking away in the stock pot now, with yeast proofing on the side. In 30 minutes or so, it’ll be time to start cooling the wort down… which I’ll do “impatient man’s style” by adding a gallon or so of cooler water. I’ve found by experience that that works as well for me as just letting it sit–at least with these “kit beers” like this “Nut Brown Ale” is.
When Thanksgiving weekend comes around, I want to cook up some beer that’s more from scratch, but getting back into the swing of another season of beer brewing, this is an easy way to get some better than average brew going.
Benefits of The Holy Brew (#1 :-))
As anyone who’s read here very much knows by now, I am a beer drinker for two very important reasons: good beer–as opposed to the stuff mass market beer manufacturers pour through horses–tastes good, and beer has many very positive health benefits (yeh, I know that’s redundant) when drunk in moderation (between 1 and 3 beers per day, depending on age and body mass).
But before I became a confirmed drinker of the number two “Holy Brew” I was long a confirmed drinker of the number one “Holy Brew”: coffee.
Here are a few noted health benefits of coffee:
At least six studies indicate that people who drink coffee on a regular basis are up to 80% less likely to develop Parkinson’s, with three showing the more they drink, the lower the risk. Other research shows that compared to not drinking coffee, at least two cups daily can translate to a 25% reduced risk of colon cancer, an 80% drop in liver cirrhosis risk, and nearly half the risk of gallstones. 1
Not bad, eh? How about some more from the same source?
“People who smoke and are heavy drinkers have less heart disease and liver damage when they regularly consume large amounts of coffee compared to those who don’t.”
Now, I haven’t smoked anything (well, apart from five small pipesfull of tobacco I found that had been languishiung in a drawer for almost 20 years), for nearly a quarter of a century, but when I did smoke (pipe, cigar), it was always accompanied by copious amounts of… coffee.
Want more? OK, more from WebMD,
There’s also some evidence that coffee may help manage asthma and even control attacks when medication is unavailable, stop a headache, boost mood, and even prevent cavities.
And,
“There recently was a study from Brazil finding that children who drink coffee with milk each day are less likely to have depression than other children… In fact, no studies show that coffee in reasonable amounts is in any way harmful to children.”
And it’s benencifial for diabetics, too:
“Coffee is loaded with antioxidants, including a group of compounds called quinines that when administered to lab rats, increases their insulin sensitivity… Coffee has large amounts of antioxidants such as chlorogenic acid and tocopherols, and minerals such as magnesium. All these components have been shown to improve insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism.”
Hmmm, and itsn’t there some quinine use for treatment of malaria? Just askin’.
And, just laid your keys down and can’t recall where? Have trouble recalling a 10-digit phone number you’ve just heard? Drink more coffee!
…volunteers were shown a sequence of simple images (the letters A, B, C or D) and then asked if an image was the same as the one shown two images earlier. The volunteers were instructed to respond as quickly as possible using the right index finger for “yes” and the left index finger for “no.” The task was performed after a 12-hour period of no caffeine and a four-hour period of no nicotine exposure. Administration of 100 milligrams (mg) of caffeine (approximately the amount in two cups of coffee) as well as placebo was randomized across volunteers so that each of them underwent a caffeine and placebo scan. In the “caffeine condition,” the volunteers demonstrated a tendency towards improved short-term memory skills and reaction times during the task. The fMRI showed increased activity in brain regions located in the frontal lobe, where a part of the working memory network is located, and the anterior cingulum, the part of the brain that controls attention. In the “placebo condition,” the volunteers showed no change in activation patterns from the earlier test.2
And of course there’s more, but why belabor the issue when my Coffee Shrine is calling…
Beer, good; TV, bad
I halfway kinda wanted to see the weird cop show, “Life,” last night, but only halfway, kinda. Instead, I spent the hour bottling a little over three gallons of Georgy Porgy Molasses Beer using about half and half screwtop 12oz bottles and 12oz bottles capped with my shiny new bottle capper.
Yeh, yeh, I know: recycling screwtop bottle caps on screwtop bottles is supposed to be a no-no, but I’ve had no problem even with the over-carbonated hard apple cider bottles, so I figured, why not? Admittedly, new bottle caps on non-screwtop bottles is faster, slicker, but since I have about a peck of reusable screwtop bottle caps and BOXES of the bottles to go with ’em, why not?
Still, I have to admit, the Sam Adams and New Belgium bottles are much nicer than the Red Killian (and other) screwtop bottles. But I also hope to be turning some of those into glasses in coming months.
Oh, I did bottle 51+oz in two sparkling grape (non-alcoholic) bottles left over from my Wonder Woman’s holiday sipping (yes, she shared). I’ll have to pour those in two glasses apiece, but Son&Heir will help out there, I’m sure.
Tomorrow evening, I need to bottle a couple of gallons of “Canadian Draft” brew. That I’ll bottle in some empty Grolsch swingtops, 16oz per bottle. I’ve found those seal well enough that I can drink ’em in two separate 8oz glasses, with some hours between, if I desire, with no loss of flavor or carbonation I can detect.
Next? Some lager, some more W(h)ine (still have about half a gallon of the last batch left) and another couple of batches of molasses or other beers. Maybe some strawberry w(h)ine or something even weirder. I won’t run out of bottles, because between Son&Heir and I, we manage about 28oz-32oz per day of the beers, less of the cider and w(h)ine. *huh*? Yep. Don’t drink much. Sometimes it’s less, cos he doesn’t have a beer every day (wise, Grasshopper, wise), and I only have one to two per day max. Of course, sometimes that’s one 16oz beer or two 12oz beers OR one 12oz cider (the cider seesm to be about 2X the alcohol content, on average, of the beers, measured by taste and effect on me–I don’t have a hydrometer that’s calibrated to measure alcohol content… yet).
All-in-all, a fun and tasty (and cheap) amusement that adds some health benefits to my daily diet.
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Racking Out
Last year, I made a “keg” of about the same size as my “Mr Beer” nano-micro-mini-keg using:
1 plastic “kitty litter” bucket. (three cats; you do the math on how many of these things I have laying around…)
1 plastic water spigot–the kind you would avoid putting in outside for your water hoses/sprinklers, whatever (because it’s cheezy and easily broken) but which is better, IMO, than brass for a cheapo brew setup.
1-male/female threaded coupler to fit the spigot–and a rubber “hose washer”
1-male/female threaded 1/2″ PVC coupler
1-male threaded/female Unthreaded 1/2″ PVC pipe coupler
2-1.5″ sections of 1/2″ PVC pipe
1-1/2″ PVC “trap”
(The last four pieces are used in constructing the airlock for the keg/bucket fermenter.)
I cleaned the kitty litter bucket very, very well with dish soap and water, then rinsed it and filled it with clean water with 1/2 cup chlorine bleach (yes, I soaked the lid in the bleach water for a few minutes before putting it on the bucket). I let that soak over night.
Traced the size of the water spigot end and the male/female threaded couplers in their respective places—the spigot about 1″ above the bottom edge of the bucket and the male end of the coupler (to the airlock) traced in the center of the snap-on lid to the
bucket.
Placed all the plumbing parts in the bleach water to soak.
When the bucket and parts had soaked overnight, I discarded most of the bleach water (reserving about a gallon for cleanup after finishing construction), rinsed them and laid everything out on clean paper towels.
Next, using a razor knife, I cut the holed on the inside of the traced lines and threaded the male threaded/female UNthreaded 1/2″ PVC pipe coupler coupler for the airlock into the hole on the lid and secured it with the male/female threaded 1/2″ PVC coupler on the inside of the lid.
Then, I threaded the hose washer onto the water spigot and the water spigot into the hole 1″ above the bottom of the bucket. I then secured that with the pipe coupler that fit its threaded piece.
Next, I rinsed the rest of the plumbing pieces yet again in bleach water, then clean water and assembled the airlock as per the graphic.
I then filled the bucket with the remaining bleach water, topped it off, shook the water around and then drained all that would drain through the spigot, dumping the rest from the top. Followed that with a thorough rinsing with plain water. Placed the top back on.
Well, this year I made another, but spent all of about $5 on a plastic spigot and a 3-piece manufactured airlock. Tonight, I racked some “apple wine” (yeh, I know there’s no such thing, but I used wine yeast to ferment some apple juice for hard cider, so that’s what I’m calling it. So there. :-)) from its primary fermenter into the new “kitty litter fermenter”. Slick as goose grease. I only transferred about three gallons (it was a 3.5+a tad gallon mix) and bottled the other half gallon or so in Grolsch swingtops with a lil bit of priming sugar to hopefully induce some carbonation. I’ll check one of the bottles in about a week or so to see if it’s OK.
Fun stuff. On the schedule: brew another batch of beer tomorrow as a reward IF I squeeze in the water pump installation for the lil Saturn econocar and maybe bottle the molasses beer this weekend (I’ll sample it and get it bottled if it’s ready).
Meanwhile, I have some racking out of another kind to do.
More beer notes
Update to the recent note about brewing: brewed up some molasses beer last night and got it all started in a new primary fermenter (For the tightwads out there, a PET plastic fermenter, complete with airlock and spigot: $10–33% of its already low $15 price. Enables making another batch of ultra low cost, drinkable beer, as opposed to buying the overpriced stuff obtained by draining horses that is foisted off on stupid beer drinkers by most large American brewers). It’ll take a minimum of 24 of the swingtop bottles (or 32 12-oz regular bottles I could use my new bottle capper and regular caps to bottle) when it reaches time to bottle condition it. Oh, molasses beer? Essentially just use molasses in place of unhopped malt extract or brewing up some wort from scratch, add some ginger, cloves and lemon zest. Oh, and (this time) I “hopped” it twice–once while boiling the wort and then a dry hopping after pitching the yeast to the wort in the primary fermenter. Easy-peasy.
Oh, I’d forgotten to get some fresh beer yeast, soooo… I could have used bread yeast. After all, the earliest known beer recipe used bread soaked in water. But, nah. I’d just bottled a fresh batch of wheat beer the day before and saved the trub. Revived the yeast in the trub and used that. Result? It’s bubbling happily away today. Nanny-nanny-boo-boo to any snooty beer mavens out there who think a new batch of yeast every time is absolutely essential.
Of course, that does mean I didn’t get to use the trub to make a batch of bread with. Oh, well.
“Poured from a horse?”
Most manufactured American beers are better used poured back into the horse they came out of. Small–and a few mid-sized–American brewers often make some very, very good beers. Boulevard Brewing, Sam Adams and others make some beers that are oh so very drinkable. But, cruising through my fav package store the other day, I saw a “craft beer” collection offered by Michelob and thought to give it a try. After all, Michelob makes one of the less bad manufactured American beers, so giving it a fair drinking on its proferred “craft beer” selection seemed a fair thing to do.
So far, the stout is… almost. On the lower end of drinkable, but still drinkable. The lager in the collection? Not as good as Grolsch or others, but not poured straight out of a horse, either. The pale ale offering? Not bad at all. Nice and hopsy, drinkable. Not anywhere near good enough to make the top 25 drinkable beers I have tried, but again, not poured straight from the horse.
I doubt I’ll try any of these again, but the money wasn’t totally wasted, either. I got some nice bottles to save for bottling the “hobo wine” I have started in my lil “kitty litter” fermenter. 🙂 Oh, yes, that does mean that if I’m not using some of my collection of Grolsch swingtops I’ll have to buy a bottle capper. Oh, dear? Another brewing tool? How awful! *heh*
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year… “
Yep. October. Time to start making beer again (summer’s just too much hassle here at twc central). Here’s the “kit-let” I started with last year, a nano-mini-micro-brewkeg from Mr. Beer:
I soon “graduated” to making “kitty litter beer” (*heh* just some molasses beer made in a bew keg made from a WELL-cleaned 3-gallon plastic kitty litter tub), and this year I plan on making more of almost all the beers I made last fall/winter/spring and adding some hard ciders and wines.
Why not? I have plenty of empty Grolsch swingtop bottles!
🙂
Beer: the second of my much-venerated “holy brews”–lagging only slightly behind coffee.
Oh, this is much better, indeed, than moping about, griping and complaining about politics!
Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, Right Voices, and DragonLady’s World, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
“Snow” Day Again
Late start today. Not that the whole county shut down, but since my Wonder Woman had a “snow” day, I’ve kept things close in and we’ve worked on a little advance Spring Cleaning. I’ve been in storage areas of my office that haven’t seen the light of day for years. Two whole drawersfull of stuff I simply dumped in a box for later sorting (and yes, I will do that!) and labeled, “Junk from 2 drawers”–*heh*
Once whole LARGE file cabinet drawerfull of ancient floppies. Need to sort through them all, archive (and enter into database that’s stored in the same place!) all the data I should/want to keep and burn to multiple CDRs or a couple of (duplicate) DVDs for archiving, then format or toss (or even archive, sorted and labeled) the floppies in a more easily accessible fashion.
To give you an idea: I have 3.5″ and 5.25″ floppies going back through all the DOSes to about DOS 3, back further to TRSDOS floppies–and even some Mac software/archives.
That stuff really needed sorting out!
(My paper files were mostly sorted some weeks ago.)
Then, there’s the “surface” storage… shelves and such like. Most of the old music, language, history, etc., books have already been boxed (and labeled and etc.), but there’re still five very, very full shelves of books n such that need sorting out.
Then, of course, I need to clean and sort out the bookshelves in the living room for refiling with previously boxed books…
This Spring cleaning thing is pretty heavy stuff (book boxes, get it? :-))!
Oh, well, at least I had some “deck beer” to lighten the load. (“Deck beer”–over-sugared some beer for bottle conditioning. Temnps outside have been mostly below freezing for a while… so, placed a bunch of bottles of this beer outside for conditioning after only 3 days. It’s all turned out very, very good. Whatta save!)
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