Just a little #CorkSoaking
A very different kind of Starbucks is on tap. It will serve regional wine and beer. It offers an expansive plate of locally made cheeses — served on china. The barista bar is rebuilt to seat customers up close to the coffee.
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,
The haven’t posted in awhile and talk about everything under the sun post
What’s up Fam? What’s good? Bunch of shit been going down my way here lately… Last day at my job of 4 years was this past Friday. Been busy doing the job search thing here lately, interviews, the whole nine yards & half ass training people to do my old job.
Haven’t brewed a beer in a couple months because of all the running around, being broke, and anticipating the next paragraph. Plus we’ve been all over the place this summer & I have a good 3 cases of home brew left in the closet.
This past Saturday was the inaugural Jackson Mississippi Top of the Hops Beer Fest. The wife & I volunteered to support the Raise Your Pints cause. It was fucking packed. They anticipated 1600 people and had over 2800! It was in downtown Jackson at the Convention Center. I consider that a succcess in my book. People were strolling in 3 hours after the doors opened! I have found out that I am not cut out for free labor so next year I’ll be buying a ticket for sure. We have a cap of 6% alcohol by volume (5% by weight) in Mississippi. RYP is working on getting that changed as well as trying to get home brewing of beer legalized. Check the link above, we need all the help we can get!
Additionally, the governor of Mississippi declared last week Mississippi Craft Beer Week. Which is HUGE! Check the letter here. Hopefully we can get some laws changed and caps lifted next time our bills go to the Senate.
We’re also going to Puerto Rico next week. I’m pumped about this trip. We’re going to do a cool all day “adventure” tour through the Puerto Rican rainforest, waterfalls, snorkeling and then kayaking in the Bio luminescent Bay that night. (More info here http://www.eietecotourspr.com/EIET_Web-Site_08/Quick_Clips_Triple_Play_Adventure_Day!.html). Should be a great day. We are also planning on doing a pub crawl and the rum tour while we’re there for sure. Hopefully this tropical storm gets through w/o any trouble/damage & we can get there safe and sound on time. At any rate, I plan on spending a majority of my time beach side w/ my “toes in the water, ass in the sand, not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand”.
When we get back, I want to try my hand in wine making. I’m going to buy a wine kit & another beer kit and get back to it. I thought it’d be cool to make something that 1) the wife might actually like 2) I could give the family for Christmas presents. I’m ready also to get to full boiling my extract kits. So I need to get a bigger brew kettle. Then I can slowly make my way to partial mash & All-Grain brewing.
At any rate, I’m unemployed all week and going to PR next week. I start my new job on the 16th. It’s gonna be tough going back to an office daily since I’ve been working from home for the past 8 months since we’ve lived here. But it probably won’t be a bad thing to get back in a routine. I’ve put on way too many lbs while working at home… Time to get back on the wagon…
In the mean time, I plan on playing Disc Golf daily this week even w/ the temperature above 100 every day. But I tell you what, I’d take 100+ degree weather over that cold shit anyday… I hate cold weather! Plus I have Freshballs and it was sent down from the heavens for men that have to live in this unbearable heat! Plus they got some funny promo videos on YouTube.
What to brew next??
I’m trying to figure out what I want to brew next. I’d like to do an IPA (India Pale Ale) as next #homebrew beer batch but I’m not so sure I’d like to do a beer next… I think I want to make a batch of wine.
I’ve been toying w/ the idea for awhile now. My uncle makes wine & @ostinsfriend @RaluNY make it at his mom’s farm… The only thing is they make theirs from fruit they harvest their selves… I’d be using some dried shit or an extract from a can probably… I mean is it worth it to buy fruit from the store to use? I guess I’d have to get the organic for sure… wouldn’t want pesticides tainting my beverage (I said Taint)… I still got to figure this out… And I got some time since I bought this #iPhone4… I’ve been paying back the man (my name for money that’s really not for blowing) for money spent :)
If I do a beer, I think I’m going to start trying to get into winter/fall beers… So maybe a Porter, Stout, Oktoberfest, or I could do an IPA… I am definitely going to try my hand at a Lager this winter out in the garage… Just gotta figure out how to keep the temp stable….
I’ve got a little time to mull it over because we’ve got a bunch of stuff going on in the next few weeks that’s going to keep me busy.
At any rate, what’s your take on my next project? What should I do? Beer or Wine? What type?
