Happy Holidays!

Julie and I will be leaving town until January 2nd. We will be in sunny, San Felipe, Mexico, for four days. We will then be heading over to Austin, Texas, to bring in the New Year.

So, even though it is a bit early: Happy Holidays, everyone! Be warm, be merry, and be safe.

Curious Thing

All things went pretty well on last Sunday's brew day. There was one peculiar thing, however. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am worried. After the boil, there was very little break material in the bottom of the kettle.

Usually, I stir up the wort after I cool it with my immersion chiller, and let it settle in a cone. I then siphon the wort into the fermenter from the side of the cone, trying to avoid the trub.

This time, though, I used the valve to drain the wort into the fermenter. When I was done. The only thing at the bottom was some hops.

I thought that maybe it just siphoned into the fermenter. As a result, I let it settle for a while and then opened up the dump valve of the conical fermenter. Only wort came out -- no trub.

That makes me very curious. Did the protein dissolve back into the wort? If so, I'm going to have terrible haze issues. If not, where did it go? Very curious, indeed.

New Setup

Tomorrow is brew day. I am very excited this time because I got two brand new, 10 gallon, Polar Ware brewing kettles for my birthday (thanks, Julie and Julie's mom).

They are pictured above. One of them is my new boil kettle, the one on the bottom; the other one is my new hot liquor tank (HLT), the one on the stove. If you recall from one of my previous posts, I've been using an old enamel canning pot as my old boil kettle, and a seven gallon plastic bucket as my HLT, pictured below.

I am very excited about them, and I'm sure that I will have a post about them after tomorrow.

White Labs Yeast

I'm going to take a break from the SCA brewing posts and talk about White Labs yeast for a bit.

My local brew shop carries White Labs yeast exclusively. In fact, I've never used a Wyeast smack pack. With that said, though, I'm going to say that White Labs yeast can be a royal pain in the ass. Don't get me wrong, I like the yeast itself, but my complaint is in the packaging.

If you read the label on the vile, it says the following:

...Store in refrigerator, remove 3-6 hours prior to use. Shake yeast well, open cap carefully add to 5 gallons of aerated wort or must at 70-75F...

I've found this to be very problematic. I don't have an issue with storing it in the refrigerator. I don't have an issue with aeration. What I do have a problem with, however, is shaking the yeast and opening it right afterwards. That step will strategically place a fine spray of yeast all over you and anything near you, every single time.

After making that mistake a few times, I've come up with a way that I can get access to the contents with a better success rate. First, I do pull out the yeast a few hours before I use it, like it says. However, where I differ from the printed instructions is that I shake it just enough to loosen the yeast from the sides of the vile, right after I pull it out of the fridge to warm up.

Next, every 20 minutes or so, I twirl the vile to keep the yeast loose from the sides. I am careful not to shake the vile at all.

Finally, right before I open it, I twirl it one more time. I then carefully twist the lid until the pressure starts to release. Once the hissing stops, I turn it a little more, and a little more, until I get the cap completely off.

That is when I pitch it into my starter. I then shake the starter flask to mix up the yeast. This works much better than shaking the vile any day.

Part II: "Free Me"

As I mentioned in my last post, some of the early mead that my brewing friends and I made was quite terrible. We did get better, though. After a while we made some drinkable products. Unfortunately, between the terrible ones and the reasonable ones, we simply made more mead than we could possibly drink.

There were two batches in particular that were five gallons a piece. That represented a lot of alcohol. As a result, for years, they seemed to follow us from SCA event to SCA event, seemingly never ending. In addition, one was a very good batch of mead, the other -- well -- not so good.

One particular Estrella War, a large annual SCA event, we vowed to rid of all the mead, once and for all. We gave it away. We drank it. We bathed in it (okay, we really didn't bathe in it), until there were only two bottles left, one of each batch.

If you've never been to an Estrella, you have to know that the whole event is set up with everyone camping in a huge circle around the battlefield. By day, that is where battles rage; by night, however, it becomes a kind of social meeting place.

Declaring that I was going to rid of the last two bottles, I grabbed them and headed out into the battlefield, which was now free of battles as it was nearing dusk. I weaved in and out of the people until I reached the very center.

There, I yelled out, "Free mead! Free mead! Free mead!" holding the bottles high above my head. However, everyone crossing the battlefield looked at me quite oddly. I really did not understand why at first.

It then dawned on me. I realized suddenly that they all thought I was yelling, "Free me! Free me! Free me!" and thought I was totally insane.

Embarrassed, I changed my tactics. I yelled out, "Free alcohol! Free alcohol! Free alcohol!"

That quickly gathered a group of people in front of me, each wanting one of the bottles. As a result, I had to make a snap decision.

"One of these bottles is the best mead we ever made," I said very confidently, "and one is the very worst." I then held the two bottles toward one gentleman right in front of me commanding, "You choose!"

The man timidly reached out for one of the bottles when suddenly the lady next to him snatched it away, tore off the top, and took a swig. She then gave it back to the gentleman, grabbed the second bottle and ran away as fast as she could.

The poor man stood there with a dumb look on his face as everyone laughed. The crowd then dispersed.

With a smug look on my face, I headed back to camp. My mission was successful and the mead was gone.

Next Time, SCA Today

In The Beginning...

Over the years, I've gotten pretty deep into brewing, getting into all-grain brewing, decoction mashing, lagering, and other techniques that are intermediate or advanced. That is not to say that I've learned all that I can learn. In fact, that is the fun of brewing: no matter how advanced you get, there is always more to learn. Sometimes, though, it is nice to look back at the journey, and where you've come from. This post is about just that: how I started.

I've mentioned a few times that I got my start in brewing in a medieval re-enactment group. In fact, it started about 17 years ago. I really did not drink that much at the time because I had grown up in an extraordinarily religious household where alcohol was strictly forbidden. At 19, though, I had moved out of the house, and was coming into my own, exploring life outside the home and the religion.

At the time, a member of the medieval re-enactment group I was starting to get involved with, called the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), talked about making mead. I did not know what that was.

I learned pretty quickly that mead was quite a popular drink in the Middle Ages, being basically a form of honey wine. In addition, I learned some of the lore around it, like the history of the term honeymoon, and so on.

That planted the first seed. Though I did not really drink, I wanted understand what alcohol was, and how to make it. The thought of becoming a frat party casualty, like so many people I went to high school with, was a big turn off. However, the thought of brewing and drinking my own alcohol seemed exceedingly cool. I was totally intrigued by the idea.

The person who talked me into brewing had brewed one batch before, so he was an expert compared to me. "Expert," though, is a pretty loose term. To be honest, he did not know much about making mead at all.

You have to understand that 17 years ago, there were no local brew shops and the World-Wide-Web did not exist. In addition, even though they existed, we did not know anything about Zymurgy Magazine, or the American Homebrewer's Association (AHA), or Charlie Papazian, or anything like that. In fact, we were simply armed with the Knowne World Handbook, an SCA text with a variety of medieval subjects in it, such as cooking, dancing, fighting, and so on. It, of course, had a small chapter on brewing.

I have to admit that the information about brewing in the Knowne World Handbook was pretty scant. It made vague references to medieval sources, like Digby and others. Instructions were vague and had a medieval flair. The one step that I remember was, "scum it until the scum riseth no more."

We translated the Handbook's instruction into somewhat usable steps. Also, we were armed with my friend's previous experience. To be honest, though, the technique we used most was the SCA member's favorite skill: we simply made up what we did not know. As a result, the brew day went something like this:

First we collected a bunch of two-liter soda bottles, cleaned them, and rinsed them out with bleach. We knew the being clean was important.

Next, we went to the grocery store. There we bought honey, lemons, bay leaves, ginger, and bread yeast. We took it all home. These were to be our ingredients.

After that, we heated up some water in a 3 gallon, enamel stock pot. In that, we placed the honey, the juice and zest of a lemon, some crushed ginger, and a couple of bay leaves -- everything except of the yeast. We brought that to a boil.

As it boiled, it foamed. Using the knowledge from the book we knew to "scum it until the scum riseth no more." As a result, for perhaps an hour we scraped off the foam from the boiling liquid.

Next, we poured the hot liquid into the 2-liter bottles. Afterwards, we set them aside to cool. After they had cooled significantly, but were still warm to the touch, we added a pinch of yeast to each bottle.

Our concoctions were complete. We knew that liquid nectar would soon be ours. All we needed to do now was wait.

Within a day or two, the bottles started to bubble. We had no airlocks, so whenever one of us walked in the room, the first thing we did was let off the pressure, putting a nose up to the cap, and commenting how wonderful it smelled. Fortunately, we never had a bottle explosion.

This went on for a month or so, until the bubbling slowed down. We then poured the cloudy liquid in Grolsch bottles, leaving behind as much sediment as possible. We thought that it must be done.

The end results were...um...interesting, shall we say. It was bready and very sweet, but medicine-like in taste. It most definitely had alcohol in it because it warmed the palate when we drank it. We also had to be careful when we drank it because of the sediment. In fact, the occasional unidentified floaty would end up in our tankards once and a while. I remember that the color was somewhat gray, I think, because it was so cloudy. In addition, after some time in the bottle, some carbonation seemed to appear. Obviously, fermentation was not as complete as we thought.

We considered the results a success, and repeated it many times. We would often bring the bottles to SCA events, passing them around. To be honest, it was quite awful stuff, but because we brewed it, we loved it. People were quite polite when drinking it.

This technique went on for several years, even as I went to college. What changed things, however, was that a liquor store began carrying brewing supplies, like carboys and real yeast. Finally, though, a full blown homebrew shop appeared in Flagstaff, where my brewing buddy and I went to school. That is when I got into brewing beer and learning real brewing techniques.

Next time, Getting rid of bad brew

Burp

Mmmmm

John Barleycorn Must Die

There is a song that I was humming the other day that I remember hearing many years ago. In fact, I heard it for the first time when I first got involved in a medieval re-enactment group. What is funny is that I've not heard the song in years. That song is called John Barleycorn.

According to Wikipedia, there are more English versions of John Barleycorn than any other song. The version I first heard was one by Celtic Stone, a band that made traditional music in the late 80s, early 90s. Unfortunately, there is little information about Celtic Stone on the web. I'm afraid that they must be long gone.

In my search, though, I found some lyrics to the song, also on Wikipedia. They quoted a version dating to 1782, by Robert Burns. It goes something like this:

There was three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die. (1)

They took a plough and plough'd him down,
Put clods upon his head,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead. (2)

But the cheerful Spring came kindly on,
And show'rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surpris'd them all. (3)

The sultry suns of Summer came,
And he grew thick and strong,
His head weel arm'd wi' pointed spears,
That no one should him wrong. (4)

The sober Autumn enter'd mild,
When he grew wan and pale;
His bending joints and drooping head
Show'd he began to fail. (5)

His coulour sicken'd more and more,
He faded into age;
And then his enemies began
To show their deadly rage. (6)

They've taen a weapon, long and sharp,
And cut him by the knee;
Then ty'd him fast upon a cart,
Like a rogue for forgerie. (7)

They laid him down upon his back,
And cudgell'd him full sore;
They hung him up before the storm,
And turn'd him o'er and o'er. (8)

They filled up a darksome pit
With water to the brim,
They heaved in John Barleycorn,
There let him sink or swim. (9)

They laid him out upon the floor,
To work him farther woe,
And still, as signs of life appear'd,
They toss'd him to and fro. (10)

They wasted, o'er a scorching flame,
The marrow of his bones;
But a Miller us'd him worst of all,
For he crush'd him between two stones. (11)

And they hae taen his very heart's blood,
And drank it round and round;
And still the more and more they drank,
Their joy did more abound. (12)

John Barleycorn was a hero bold,
Of noble enterprise,
For if you do but taste his blood,
'Twill make your courage rise. (13)

'Twill make a man forget his woe;
'Twill heighten all his joy:
'Twill make the widow's heart to sing,
Tho' the tear were in her eye. (14)

Then let us toast John Barleycorn,
Each man a glass in hand;
And may his great posterity
Ne'er fail in old Scotland! (15)

One may ask why this song even appears on The All-Grain Evangelist. It seems like a song about the brutal torture and horrific murder of a medieval hero.

In actuality, the song is much less sinister than it seems. In fact, it is nothing more than a great metaphor. The character in the song, John Barleycorn, anthropomorphizes and personifies barley and the process of growing and harvesting that barley, to malt it, and eventually make beer. Each verse represents a step in that process.

Looking in detail at those steps, the song starts out in the first verse with a decree that John Barleycorn must die.

In the he second verse, John Barleycorn is buried. In fact, when the song starts, he is already dead. This verse represents the planting of barley seed.

The third verse goes on to talk about the following spring, and how John Barleycorn is resurrected. This part represents the sprouting of barley in the spring.

The fourth verse follows suit, talking about how in the summer John Barleycorn grows strong, and is armed with spears. The metaphor continues with the maturing of the barley plants. The spear is representative of the grains at the top of the stock forming.

The fifth and sixth verses draw John Barleycorn's life near to a close, as he grows pale and sickly in the autumn. His fate is sealed when his enemies decide he must die. This represents the barley plants turning brown and being ready to harvest.

With the seventh and eighth verses, a darker tone is taken, as John Barleycorn is cut down at the knee, cudgelled, and then hung. This represents the actual harvest, where they cut the stocks, beat the stocks, and hang them out to dry.

The seeming torture continues with verses eight, nine, 10, and 11, in which John Barleycorn is thrown into a pit, drown in water, tossed on the floor, scorched with fire, and crushed with a stone. This part represents the malting process, where the grain is soaked in water, allowed to germinate, followed by spreading out on the floor of the malt-house and kilned. At the end of it all, it is milled.

Perhaps the most macabre verses in the song are 12, 13, and 14. This is where John Barleycorn's blood is consumed by all with great joy, being said to cause courage, or cause a man to forget his woes, or a widow's heart to sing. This represents the consumption of the beer that was created from the grain and the side effects of drinking: unusual courage, forgetting your problems, and so on.

Finally, the last verse is a toast to John Barleycorn and his posterity. What is interesting is that if you take his posterity and start the song again, you see that it is a big circle, as the seeds are used in the next year to plant again.

I remember when I first heard the song, I was shocked at the brutality of it. Like many songs of the time, it told the story of a tragedy. However, when I finally understood the metaphor, it was like a light turning on. I had a greater understand of the medieval brewer's mind.

I got my start in brewing in a medieval re-enactment group. This song certainly had an influence. I thought that I would share that and the song with the readers of this website.

I Have Not Forgotten

I realize that I still have not posted part III of my all-grain brewing series. Don't worry. It is in work as we speak. I promise that I will publish it as soon as I finish it.

American Taboos and Prohibitions

Last Friday, CNN published an article entitled "Berkeley lifts fraternity alcohol ban." In that article, they wrote the following:

After a half-year ban, students at the University of California at Berkeley will be allowed to drink alcohol at most fraternity parties starting this month, officials said Thursday.

Most of the time, I could care less about articles like this; it has been a long time since I cared about drunken frat parties. This time, though, it got me thinking about something: I strongly believe that American attitudes about alcohol cause the type of problems that caused that ban in the first place.

Think about it. What happens when a person turns 21? Exactly. They go out and get drunk. In fact, I bet they spend most of that month drunk, or even the year. We, as Americans, have put such a taboo on under-age drinking that when we finally can drink legally, we go nuts.

In my opinion, people have to learn how to drink responsibly, and that takes time. Sadly, we do not learn that until we are in college, and out of the house. I truly believe that if at younger ages, people were allowed to have a glass of wine with dinner with their parents, many taboos associated with drinking would go away. Unfortunately, America still has one foot in the same Temperance Movement that caused Prohibition.

Having been to Europe a couple of times, I can tell you that alcohol attitudes are much different there. Alcohol is less about getting obliterated, and more about the good things in life, like food, family, friends, and good living. That is not to say that there are not drunks over there. They do, however, have a more accepting view of alcohol.

Now generally, I do not get involved in political arguments on this blog. In fact, I hope that you cannot even tell my political affiliation by reading any of my posts, and I'd like to keep it that way. However, since this involves topics I do regularly talk about -- namely beer and wine -- I feel that it is okay to bring it up.

I've had my rant. I feel better now.

Dream Of The Blue Turtles

You know you are a brewer when you start having beer dreams. The beer nightmares, though, are the worst. Last night was one of those nights. Basically it went something like this:

It started out as one of those dreams where I was back in school, and missing a test because I couldn't find the classroom. As I wandered around campus searching, I came across some dorms. However, these dorms were much like a motel, with upstairs and downstairs. All the rooms had doors facing outside, where one could walk along a balcony. The doors were numbered.

I wandered along the numbered doors until a came to one that was not. For some reason, I was compelled to open it and look inside.

The door opened to a common room filled with people -- students really. Each held a glass of beer. In fact, there was a group of them surrounding a bar.

"These are not the dorms I remember," I thought to myself, as I wandered up to the bar.

The beer on tap was typical college beer -- cheap American crap: Budweiser, Miller, and so on. In fact, the only thing I was willing to drink was Sam Adams.

"How much?" I said to the bartender.

"No charge," a college kid said back. "Just leave a tip."

I rummaged around in my jacket until I found my wallet, pulled out five bucks, and left it on the counter.

"This guy is a big tipper," I heard someone whisper.

Then I took a sip of beer and spit it back it out. It tasted like dog hair.

"We've been having trouble with the beer lines," said the same kid who told me to leave a tip.

"Maybe I can look at it. I've got a draft system at home," I offered.

"Great."

"LAST CALL," someone called out and everyone filled up their glasses.

Afterwards, I began looking at the system. I noticed that all the kegs hooked up to it were corny kegs. However, they were all made of glass and I could see the beer inside. They looked pretty good. I then looked under the counter at the lines.

"They must be dirty," I thought.

I found a couple of buckets and in one of them, I mixed up some BLC. Pulling the end of one line out, I stuck it in the bucket. I then went to the other side of the bar and pull out another line, and stuck it in the empty bucket. The BLC poured out of it. With it, white gooey clumps fell into the bucket, looking very much like the trub you find in the bottom of a fermenter. It reeked of yeast.

"They really are dirty," my thoughts continued.

The goo turned into a steady stream, spraying into the bucket like a garden hose, quickly filling it up. I then ran back over to BLC bucket to pull the hose out of it to stop the siphon, and therefore the flow. However, that bucket was gone. Only the end of the hose remained, and it too was spraying goo.

"Shit."

As I tried to bend the hose to stop the flow, the trub like goo sprayed all over me and the floor.

"WHERE IS THE BUCKET?" I screamed, to no avail.

Looking to the other end of the bar, I could see the goo pooling up on the floor.

"CAN SOMEONE HELP ME?"

Nobody was around, so I ran to the other side, but slipped on the huge puddles of goo everywhere. I landed with a dull splash. Clumps of goo covered my face and my clothes.

When I finally made it to the other side, that bucket was gone as well.

"WHO TOOK MY BUCKETS?"

The goo was now getting deeper, up to my ankles. It was becoming difficult to move because every time I stepped, it tugged at my shoes with a slurping sound.

"I've got to get the hell out of here," I thought quickly, turning for the door.

Each step I took got harder and harder, as I slogged through the muck. Finally, I reached for the door knob, pulled on the door, and it pulled open, but slowly as though the thing were in a vat of honey.

When I stumbled out, covered from head to toe, I noticed two buckets across the street and a ravine, next to a tree.

"There they are," I thought.

I jumped into the air, flew over the road and ravine, landing next to the tree. However, when I reached for the buckets, a woman's face peered at me through the tree. She was young, perhaps in her twenties. Her hair was gnarled and black and her eyes were black as pitch.

"Why did you take my buckets?" I shot at her.

She screamed back at me a demonic scream.

That is when I woke up to the sound of my dog, Angus, snarling at our other dog, Murry. It was 4:30 am.