Dane's Brains

As in going home to see the family for a couple of weeks, which is great!  When I get back I'll have plenty to post about, and heck, I might even post while I'm gone.  I DO have a lot of stuff to write about though, getting engaged, fixing up some controllers and the ol' nintendo, gardening, etc, etc.  So yeah, I know I haven't posted a good one in a while, but I will!  I've just been so darn busy, heck, I'll have to write about that too.

Boy this aight be exciting.

9:38am sitting in the jury lounge. Someone near by keeps dropping SBDs. I suspect the overweight business dude next to me.

10:43am The second round of jurrors has been called. I didn't get called, but the human gas-giant did, at least there's that. Also, the original prince of Persia is really difficult. I can't make it back over this one pit after I've gotten the sword. Frustration!

11:19am. Still haven't been called. There's a lady behind me that's been carrying on a conversation in French for the last two hours. I found it interesting at first... But that was two hours ago. Done playing games for now, maybe I can get out some Jurror-angst writin lyrics.

The new batch is finally complete!  At least it's continuing to bottle age in my closet right now.  The other night I cracked open my first bottle of the burnt red ale and it wasn't bad!  Now, it wasn't great either, and I noticed a few things right off the bat that I would do differently next time.  Still, what I ended up with is a very bitter, very smooth, very dry Red ale and I'm not complaining!  Initially the big millenium bitterness hits you right up front, and that's due to our continuous hop schedule.  What we could have done to balance that out a little better would have been to add a few ounces of hops right before the end of the boil.  That combined with a dry-hopping would have given the beer more floral notes to balance out that up front bitterness.  There are also some slight cidery notes which probably means that the yeast was a little stressed.  This also contributed to a light carbination and very little head on the pour.  Still, I'm thinking that might change a bit as it conditions more.  I only gave it two weeks to bottle condition.  This batch was a great learning experience, and it's turned out to be a decent little red in it's own right.  I think I smell a Big IPA in my future.

I haven't posted for a little while because I've been so darn busy!  In the last month or so I've brewed a new batch of beer, got a nice little patio garden going, and have been recording with my band.  Obviously I have a lot to talk about with all this stuff but let's jump right into the brewing.

As of my last post we made the trip up to Frederick to get new beer making supplies, and we finally put those supplies to good use.  Ryan and I decided to go with a hopped-up red ale, and so far the indicators point to a good batch of beer.  We got everyone together for the brew day, and we took it as an opportunity to initiate Jeff into the beer making ranks. Brew day is always a lot of fun, and I like the social aspect of it as much as the brewing.  It's great to get everyone together for some conversation in the kitchen.

We got the ingredients together.  Here you can see our grain, yeast, malt, and hops. We're still doing extract brewing and we probably will be for the foreseeable future.  We still have a lot of ground to cover though, and a lot of different recipes to try. We decided to modify the regular red ale recipe with a couple of extra ounces of Millennium hops and adjusted the hop schedule accordingly.  The idea is to get a bit of a bigger beer, one that is a little more complex, but still has a nice malty body and a smooth finish.

We started out with steeping a quarter pound of Melanoidin Malt Grain to get the ball rolling.  We then added a pound of light malt extract and a pound of Hopped light malt extract.  Ryan gave me a hand with that, I poured, he stirred.

 After that comes the fun part, the hops!  We went with a combination of Liberty and Millenium, and we followed a pretty consistent hop schedule throughout the boil.

Burnt Red Ale Hop Schedule:

60 minutes: 1oz  Millennium

45 minutes: 1/4oz  Millennium

30 minutes: 1/4oz Millennium - 1/2oz Liberty

15 minutes: 1/4oz Millennium

5 minutes: 1/4oz Millennium - 1/2oz Liberty

Jim Koch, the founder of Sam Adams says that hops are the soul of beer.  I think Ryan was trying to find it.

 So, we finished our boil, and cooled the wort down with ice, which I hadn't done before.  It was Ryan's idea and I think it was an awesome way to do things.  We got our wort down to a fermentable temperature a lot faster than it would have taken otherwise. If you look closely you can see Hank giving Ryan a hand.

After the wort got down into the seventy-five degree range we pitched the yeast and that was that.  We finished out the day with a cook out and a few beers.  Not a bad way to spend a Saturday if you ask me.  Two weeks later I racked the beer over to the secondary fermenter which I hadn't done before.  It helps clarify the beer, and it also gets the majority of it off of the yeast cake. 

I let it sit in secondary for another two weeks, and I noticed that a decent amount of yeast had flocculated in secondary as well.  It looked like the yeast was happy, which makes for good beer!  Then it was time to bottle.  Ryan came over to give me a hand with that as well.  We racked the beer over to the bottling bucket from secondary and I have to say it smelled great!  I'm really looking forward to see how this beer turns out.

So, new posts are on the way.  I'm going to do one about our little garden we have going, and I'm also planning on doing a retro game post, as well as a post on how to fix/restore your old NES controllers and joysticks.  You never know, I might even post a rough mix of one of GMOD's new recordings.  Anyway, thanks for reading, I'll let you know how it turned out soon!

It is starting to feel awesome outside!  The weather has finally warmed up and we took advantage of it this weekend.  On Saturday Amanda and I and some friends drove up to frederick to get beer making supplies.  It's actually been the better part of a year since my last batch so it was definitely time to get the ball rolling again.  My old partner in crime, Bryan Wilkins, has relocated to the fatherland and I was afraid I wouldn't have anyone to brew with or talk about nerdy brewing stuff with.  That's where Ryan Jenkins stepped in.  He doesn't have the space to brew, but he has the know how (or at least the drive) to do it, so I took him on as a new brewing partner. We also took fledgling brewer Jeff Brown under our wing.  We got him set up with everything he needs for his first batch.  Since it's been a while (and I had middling results with my last batch) we decided to do a modified extract brew.  We're going with a nice red ale that we're going to hop up with a couple of ounces of millennium hops during the boil.  I also have a ton of frozen cascades left over from last years harvest trek as well.  While I was in Frederick I picked up a new carboy so I can do secondary fermentations.  This should help with clarity, and it'll give us another opportunity to dry hop it. Can't wait to see how this batch turns out.  When we do our brew day I'll make sure to have Amanda take plenty of pictures so I can post them on here.

There are a bunch of cool antique stores right around the brew supply store and I picked up a couple of gems while I was there.  They actually had a ton of great vinyl and I scored "Point of Know Return" by Kansas, Boston's self titled album, The Charlie Daniels Band's "Million Mile Reflections," "Aqualung" by Jethro Tull, Tarkus's epic self titled album, "The Magician's Birthday" by Uriah Heep, "Completely well" by B.B. King, and "Cat Scratch Fever" by the Nuge. Not a bad haul for randomly finding some vinyl in an antique store.

After our day trip to Frederick we came back home for the first cook out of the season.  Good Tunes, Good Food, Good Friends, and Good Beer, you can't beat a day like that.  It really was idyllic.  As the night wound down we put on "The Fourth Kind" on blu ray.  I have to say, I thought the movie was awesome when I saw it in the theatre, but it lost a little on the small screen.  It's still an interesting thriller though if you're in the mood for something scary.  Still, a mediocre movie couldn't ruin such an awesome day.  I turned in and slept like a baby.

This morning we woke up, grabbed Hank, loaded up the car and drove up to Mount Airy to meet Scott and Karolina and their family. They made all kinds of great food, and we just had a nice day of hanging out, eating and talking.  It really makes you appreciate how great it is to have good friends to share your life experiences with.  It doesn't have to be huge things either, a conversation around the grill, a laugh over a beer, or an embarrassing story, for me, are what life is about.  You really can't beat an awesome weekend outdoors relaxing and having a good time.  

On the Music front my band is going to start recording soon.  We finally got the computer put together and interfacing with the pro tools board.  It fought us every step of the way but on Wednesday at the end of practice it finally stopped fighting us and decided to be cool.  We did a quick one take recording to see how things sounded and I was pleasantly surprised.  Our new friend Jeremy has stepped up as our sound guy and is doing a bang up job.  He has a ton of experience and has been sharing his knowledge (And Equipment!) with us.  I'm really excited to get to really know these songs we've been playing for the last couple of years.  It should be a lot of fun and when we have some decent material I'll be sure to share.  

So, that's what I've been up to.  It's starting to get nice out, and I'm starting to get busier.  I'm sure I'll have a lot more to post about soon.  Amanda and I are trying our hands at gardening and I'm sure I'll have some stories to share about this whole new experience.  Of course, I'll get to art and music and everything else as it comes along, and I'll let you know where you can hear our new stuff.