Brown ale…

Started a new batch of brew last night.  Everything went fairly smooth, but I did dump roughly a pound of steeping grain into the sink on accident.  Overall, the process is getting more streamlined as I get more practice.  The recipe is below.

Cascade Brown Ale

 

Steeping Grains:

1 lb Briess Carapils

1 lb (Supposed to be 2 lbs, but had an accident) Simpson’s Medium

.5 lb chocolate Malt

 

Extract:

6 lbs Organic Light LME

3 lbs Gold LME

2 lbs Wheat LME

 

Hops Schedule:

60 min – 2 oz Styrian Golding

15 min – 1 oz Styrian Golding

10 min – 1.5 oz Cascade

0 min – 1.5 oz Cascade

0 min – 2.0 oz Centennial

 

Yeast: Wyeast American Ale

 

OG:  1.062

The new Kölsch…

Whipped up the following tonight.  Should be a great summer beer if I can control the temperature and lager it properly.

Kölsch

9.25 lbs Pilsen LME

1.5 lbs Wheat LME

 

Bring 3 gallon wort to a boil

Hops Additions:

60min – 1oz German Hallertauer hops (3.9% alpha).

30min – .5oz hallertauer hops

15min – .5oz hallertauer hops.  Add 2 tsp irish moss at this stage, as well.

Used a Wyeast Kolsch variety yeast.  I’ll let this one take off fermenting then drop the temp to 55-60° and let it lager.  May try to go cooler (45-50°) for as long as 4 weeks if I can.

 

 

Summit IPA…

Since August, when I was given the great gift of a homebrew starter kit by a certain little lady, I have been brewing pretty regularly.

My first batch was a rather uninteresting pale ale that turned out a bit too malty and not enough hoppy for my taste.  Next, I made a chocolate-honey porter that turned out really thick and chocolatey – perfect for these winter months.  Also, I just finished bottle conditioning an excellent Irish Red.

This is my first recipe that is pretty much created from scratch.  I enlisted a newer variety of hop – it’s a dwarf variety that is grown around Yakima.  It’s potent, with an alpha content of 16.7%.  I hear it has a strong grapefruit quality to it.  

Here’s the recipe:

Summit IPA:

 

Steep the following in 3 gallons of water at 65 °C for 30 minutes:

     1 lb.  Briess Organic 2-row malt

     1 lb.  Simpson’s medium crystal malt

 

Remove the grains from the wort and stir in:

     6.0 lbs Northern Brewer Gold malt syrup

     3 lbs Briess Golden Light Dried malt extract

     2 oz of Summit hops (16.7% alpha acid)

 

Bring this all to a boil, then add 1 oz of Irish moss – boil the wort for 1 hour.

 

At the end of the boil, add 1.5oz of Centennial hops (10.5% alpha acid) for 5 minutes.

 

Add cooled wort to the fermenter and top with water to make a 5.5 gallon batch.  Cool to 24°C and aerate.  Pitch your yeast – I used Wyeast American Ale in a smack pack to ensure a quick fulminant fermentation.  Let it completely ferment at 20 °C until fermentation is complete.  Finally, dry hop with an additional 1.5 oz. of the Centennial hops for 3 – 5 days.

 

Bottle with ¾ cups of sugar for priming, and let it condition.  

 

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

 

The fall harvest…

Happy Thanksgiving! I was lucky – I went in, rounded on my patients and was able to escape the hospital by 9:30am. Not bad at all.

I came home and cleaned up the garden a bit… there were a few tomatoes that were still hanging on, but most were past their prime. Also, the lemons are coming in full force. I would love to brew a hefeweizen for the sole purpose of utilizing the citrus, but it seems so out of season. The good news is that my honey chocolate porter that I brewed a couple of weeks ago is now conditioning nicely and already tastes GREAT. It’ll be perfect by the time Christmas rolls around.

Likely the last tomatoes of the year…

The lemons, coming in strong…

 

A mandarin orange, just starting up…

I’m out, NYC…

For all of you that haven’t heard, we’re moving to California!  Look for us back west in early June.

PDX…

Got into Portland last night and I am slowly transitioning into Christmas mode thanks to my sister’s Christmas tree and abundance of nog in her fridge. 

Something happened last night that answered one of the burning questions I’ve had since childhood.  For as long as I can remember, I have always wondered what would happen if an escalator stopped moving with people on it.  Last night at PDX, my question was answered.  Two escalators were moving in parallel, and each was fairly packed with tired travelers, as it was almost midnight.  Suddenly, the escalator next to me stopped.  It didn’t slowly grind to a halt.  It just stopped.   

There were yelps, and inertia caused everyone to jolt forward, but everyone caught themselves.  I was kind of smiling, realizing I’d waited my whole life for this.  The result was far less catastrophic than I always imagined.  

One interview down…

I’m in Tucson right now waiting for my flight back to NYC. Everything went well and Tucson itself is a great little city. I really wish i had a bike here since there is an abundance of mountain biking.

I’m not looking forward to transitioning from this beautiful 85 degree weather back to frigid New York temps.

Moving on…

NYC has been fun, but I’m ready to move on.  I’d even considering moving happily to the midwest instead of staying here.  It’s funny how once you mentally prepare yourself for leaving, you begin noticing more flaws with the place… as if you’re preparing yourself mentally for the exit. Current options for the next stage of my training include Colorado, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Vermont.  I’m still waiting to hear from Oregon, Washington, and a slew of places in California.

Picking up where we left off…

I had a call the other night from the kid I considered my best friend through much of middle school and high school. I think it was our first time speaking in roughly 3 years. I don’t know why we quit speaking… I think it was probably due to busy schedules and just general laziness on both of our parts. Regardless, we had a good conversation and it was great to get caught up.

Funny how with truly good friends, conversations are pretty effortless even after years of silence.

NY Transit Museum…

This city has numerous famous museums – the Met, Guggenheim, Museum of Natural History, etc. While the Museum of Natural History will always be my favorite, I discovered a hidden gem this past weekend.

After a short walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, I headed towards the New York Transit Museum. The museum is contained within an old (still functioning) subway station. They have subway cars from the turn of the 20th century to the modern day along with tons of historical background. I really recommend it. There is a tremendous amount of city history contained within the subway itself.