#Facebook Sux #Twitter is Better
Very interesting development. I’d like to see a more comprehensive tracker similar to Google Analytics w/ Websites or Feedburner w/ RSS feeds.
Fun w/ Yeasties
As you all may or may not know, I am a #homebrewer. I started brewing this past March with got 6 personal batches under my belt & also have a wine fermenting now. I’ve been on hand for friends brewing sessions probably a dozen or so batches. So I’ve still got a #Dump ton to learn about it still. A few weeks ago I brewed a Golden Palisades IPA kit from Austin Homebrew (I’m still doing extract kits, by the way). I used a White Labs California Ale Yeast (WLP001).
My buddy @Thile & me decided that we were going to enter in a homebrew contest in Hattiesburg (Info Here) & we decided to try our hand in yeast washing (harvesting the slurry at the bottom of the fermentation vessel) and use this particular yeast strain for our competition brew. (Read more about that here on MS Beer Nut.)
When I transferred my Golden Palisades IPA from primary to secondary last week, we got that taken care of. (I did the primary fermentation in a big 8 gal bucket that I bought for primary fermentation of my wine)
First thing we did was boil a bunch of water and mason jars. We also had a gallon mason jar soaking in Star Sans. We soaked it because it was going to be too difficult to pull a gallon jar full of boiling water out of the pot. You have to boil the water not only to sanitize the jars and lids but also to get all of the oxygen out of the water so the yeast will having nothing to feed on and they’ll want to go to sleep (aka hibernation).
We then poured the some of the boiled water into the gallon mason jar & put it in the fridge to cool down. After the water was cooled, back to room temp, we poured it in the bucket and swirled/shook around the trub left over in the bottom of the beer bucket from the left overs from my GP IPA to break up any of the clumps of stuff. (Lesson Learned: I didn’t break up everything & I had a little too much beer left after the transfer in the bucket)
We then poured that concoction into the gallon jar to separate into layers.
Later on it seperated more to 3 layers.
After separation was apparent, I poured the top 2 layers into a sanitized jug to further separate the junk from the good stuff.
Once that separated out,
I filled up the four pint sized mason jars that I had sanitized w/ the beer/yeast concoction. I then put them in the fridge so that they would go into hibernation.
This is how they looked after a day or two of being in the fridge. Notice the big yeast cake at the bottom.
A couple days later, we made a yeast starter to pitch one of the jars of yeast that we captured for our beer mentioned above that we brewed this past Saturday. Making a yeast starter is just brewing a small batch of beer so that you can tell if the yeast is viable and also to give them a jump start in multiplying. We used some light Dry Malt Extract. There is also a great calculator, here, to use that will tell you how much yeast you need based on what it is that you are brewing. We used 1000ml of water (a bunch of it boils off) and 3/4 cup of DME.
This is a pic w/ the yeast starter batch brewing and the yeast after I’ve decanted the beer that you saw in the mason jars in the pic above
You bring the water to boil, add the DME (make sure the heat is off while doing this), and then boil for 15 minutes. You then cool the wort down to 70-80 degrees as quick as possible and pitch your yeast starter. I just put a bunch of ice in the sink and put the pot in the sink, aka Ice bath, to cool. Make sure of course that everything is sanitized! We then put some sanitized aluminum foil over the top of the starter and then put the stir bar in the beaker and put it on the stir plate.
We had just went halfsies on a stir plate from AHS. The reason we bought it was to see how a stir plate worked in comparison to intermententy swirling the starter. And boy let me tell you there’s a difference. Even w/ a stir plate as cheap as this once (comparable stir plates are $160 and on up).
Watch the stir plate whip those yeasties into shape!
This is my first time using a stir plate so I have no basis of comparison, but this starter was going crazy! If you brew & don’t have a stir plate to use on your starters, you need to get one now.
After a day and a half on the stir plate, I stuck the beaker in the fridge so that the yeast would seperate from the beer so that I could decant that liquid and it wouldn’t add unwanted flavors to the beer.
Here it is right before I stuck it in the fridge. This looks loads more active than my starters have looked in the past when I was swirling the starter around when I thought about it.
I took it out of the fridge a few hours before we brewed and decanted that liquid on top of the yeast cake, then allowed it to come to room temperature & pitch the yeast like I would after you brew your beer wort & it has cooled.
It has been fermenting like a champ since then. I’m guesssing we did a good enough job! Now just to make sure we keep the fermentation temps right & hopefully we won’t have any off flavors.
I’ve tried to do some seperating of my beer tweets when speficially talking about my brewing, so I setup a new twitter @3DogBrew. You can follow if you want to follow my brewing tweets. Here’s the logo that @blonde_holly made me for my beer. She’s pretty awesome.
If you’ve got any questions you can ask me here on www.otownpyle.com, or on Twitter @OtownPyle or @3DogBrew.
WELLLLLSSSSTTTTTT OBVIOUSLLLLLYYYYYYYYY & Get At Me,
10 Tips For Twitter-Grifting More Followers
Twitter is one of the most important things in the whole world, and having lots of followers is the most important part of Twitter. So do the math. Hint: it’s a word problem, and the word is “Followers”.
If you’re not driving new follower subscriptions to your Twitter right now, you’re wasting your time and my time. So either get off the Internet and make way for the people whose thoughts and feelings matter, or read this quick guide to Twitter-Grifting yourself enough followers to not be so embarrassingly uninfluential.
1. Let’s Get Widgetal — Twitter has lots of embeddable Widgets you can use to seed link-backs to your account. You should put these Widgets all over your own site, social profiles, open networks, the comments sections of other people’s blogs, and anywhere else on the Internet that allows embedding. Widgets!
2. The “Follower Fake-Out” Trick — Start following a bunch of people, but after they follow you back, just quietly unfollow them again (thus keeping the number of people you follow down so people don’t think/realize you’re just a spammer). Usually people don’t even notice, and will go right along for months or even years under the impression they are in a reciprocal Twitter relationship with you. And if they DON’T follow you back at all, keep a record of who they are so you can make them sorry someday.
Been Super Busy
It’s been quite a busy time over here at the @OtownPyle casa.
Went on vacation to San Juan, Puerto Rico which was awesome. Hit up the rain forest, checked out the San Juan fort, (the whole history of this place is pretty cool, maybe I’ll get to it a bit in a later, longer post specifically about our visit), went kayaking in pitch black darkness through a 1.2 mile mangrove channel to a bio luminescent bay (Laguna Grande), drank a bunch, got a better tan, spoke a little Spanish, etc. When you stick your hand or ore into the water the micro-organisms in the water emit light. It’s so awesome. Once in a lifetime experience. But mostly because I won’t ever do that shit again! Went and checked out Old Harbor Brewery in downtown San Juan. They have some good brews down there. I’d recommend it, if you’re ever down that way. The beer of the locals is Medalla Light. Nothing special for sure. Just a super light lager similar to most of the big three American style lagers. But boy do the locals push it. Their local cuisine consists of alot of mashed plantains. Just basically fried fritters. Nothing special. I like my food here. Though we did eat something I’ve never seen here from the Sushi places. Sushi Pizzas. Basically it’s a patty of sticky rice about 6 inches in diameter, tempura fried, with the meat and toping of your choice usually w/ spicy mayo drizzled on top… These were awesome!
Started a new job. Had to give up the work at home gig, so now I’m back it an office. Let’s just say it’s been a transition. Apparently these places make you wear pants! Ludicrous I say…
Went this past holiday weekend and visited some family down in Gulf Shores, Al. Didn’t ever make it to the beach (for obvious reasons) but visited the lagoon (brackish water off of the Gulf of Mexico) that they keep blocked off until the water gets high then then have to drain it. They blocked it off w/ a big sand dune when the oil spill happened. And also went and floated the Styx River. Which is always fun, but if you don’t like drunks or rednecks or both (& I are one), then it might not be for you.
Also got a tattoo! on my calf! My first tattoo, BTW. It felt like @StinkyPeso scratching me for 3 hours. The anticipation was the worst, then didn’t feel that bad but by the end my endorphines had ran out I think and I could feel ever single needle it seemed like. Also about half way though my tattoo artist told me that their tattooing equipment puts 2 or 4 million holes in your skin per minute (I can’t remember which but that’s still a #Dump load).
Here’s a pic of the new ink (or “pigment” as it’s now called)
Bascially, the whole deal behind this tatt is a few things. One my birth name has been translated as King or Little King. I’m a Leo, which is also king. Hence the crown and all. My favorite animal has always been a tiger. In fact when I was little I always said I wanted a pet one when I got rich… I think they had one on Aladdin or some shit & Mike Tyson (see The Hangover) has one so it has to be cool. If you’ve noticed my avatar pic, that’s a tiger paw in the background :). Thanks @blonde_holly for your wonderful artistic design. It also doesn’t hurt that I went to the University of Memphis #GoTigersGo. Additionally, I didn’t think of this actually, but @ARVaught brought it to my attention before I got the tatt and was showing off the design to my #Pals (That’s right just gave the #Pals a plug), that the design looked like a Rasta Lion (Google Rasta Lion if you don’t know what I’m talking about). Reggae just happens to be probably my top genre of music so that just works so well. Icing on the cake if you will.
On the #HomeBrew Front, I’ve started back again. Been so damn busy lately that I haven’t been able to do anything. But now I have a Vintner’s Pinot Gris wine & a Golden Palisades IPA from Austin Home Brew fermenting right now that I’ve got going in the past week or two. @Thile & myself are also fixing to brew a beer for a #Homebrew competition at Keg & Barrel in Hattiesburg, MS in November for Lazy Magnolia Brewery. The winner is going to have their beer brewed by Lazy Mag as a special seasonal brew. The info is on K&B’s site which is referenced above, or click this link for a PDF of the rules. I’m still doing extract partial boil batches. I’d like to hurry up and move to full boil & then partial mash hopefully before end of the year… We’ll see…
That’s it for now…
WELLLLLSSSSTTTTTT OBVIOUSLLLLLYYYYYYYYY & Get At Me,
