Quick Tip: Go for the Full Boil

Let's say you've got a hole burning in your pocket for some new brewing equipment. If that is the case, one of the first things you should invest in is a boil kettle big enough for a full boil. Partial boils are a good way to start out, but they lend themselves to that "extract twang," which is actually caramelization caused concentrating the wort in a smaller kettle. Going for the full boil will greatly increase the quality of your homebrew. Of course, this means that you'll need to acquire a wort chiller at the same time because you cannot cool five gallons of beer with an ice bath very easily.

An Expert's Opinion On Lager Yeast Starter Temps

One of the thing that I enjoy about the hobby of brewing is that the experts and celebrities of the hobby are so accessible and down to Earth. One such homebrewing figure is Jamil Zainasheff. I have written him before asking questions and he has always answered me. Recently, I sent him and another email asking lager starter questions. That email reads as follows:

I'm trying to get into lagers, and I have a question about yeast starter pitching temperature. I remember hearing in the Jamil Show archives that a lager yeast starter can be made at ale temps as long as you only pitch the slurry and not the liquid. One thing that I'm confused about, though, is pitching. Do you pitch the warmer starter into the lager temperature wort or do you drop the starter temp to lager temps before you pitch? If you do pitch warm yeast into the cooled wort, how do you keep it from going into shock? If you do cool the starter first, how quickly (or slowly) do you cool it to prevent the yeast from going into shock?

This was Jamil's response:

Good questions. I prefer to let the warm lager starter ferment out, then put it in the fridge for a couple days to make sure all the yeast has settled out. Then I pitch just the yeast at fridge temp (<40F) into my lager wort (~44F). Then I let the beer temp slowly rise to ~50F for the rest of fermentation.

If I read this right, cold crashing the yeast starter slightly below pitching temperature, pitching, and then letting it warm up slightly after pitching will go a long way preventing the temperature shock that puts yeast to sleep. That is good to know.

Happy Birthday, Fran and Julie

MacGyvering a Blow-off Tube in a Pinch

Several years ago, I faced an emergency situation. The hefeweizen I was fermenting at the time kept spraying yeast and beer out of the airlock, and all over the place. I needed to fix this and fix it fast. Unfortunately, it was late, and the brew shop was closed.

I found myself at Home Depot right before they closed to pick up what I needed to fashion a blow-off tube. There, I picked up some half inch flexible vinyl tubing. However, when I wandered over to the fittings section of Home Depot, nothing stood out as a way to attach the tube. As a result, when I got home, I was faced with the daunting task of attaching it to the carboy.

I was looking over what I had -- the tubing, the airlock, the bung, and the carboy -- when the light turned on in my head. I realized that with some finagling, I could fit the half inch diameter vinyl tubing over the half inch diameter hard plastic tube inside a three piece airlock. Bingo, the airlock fit in the bung like before, just with a tube coming out of it into a bucket of water, rather than being filled with water itself, and having the middle plastic piece cup the top of it.

After sanitizing the whole assembly, I attached the thing, and the foamy krausen pushed up through the airlock, like before. However, it gently went down the tube and collected in my gallon bucket filled with water, rather than spraying everywhere. I simply changed the water once a day. After a couple of days, the foam calmed down, and I was able to attach a normal airlock again.

All-in-all, it was just another day of solving the problems that face a homebrewer.

A New Way to Bicycle in Paris

Now, I know this is a beer blog. However, regular readers know that I diverge from that once and a while. This post is about two other things dear to my heart: travel and bicycling.

According to a CNN article, Paris, France, has launched a new bicycle service where customers can pick up a bike for a nominal fee at one of 750 unmanned stations around town. One can then bike throughout the city and return the bike to any one of the stations. The service is called Velib'.

Pricing works as follows: one has to buy a pass, costing one euro a day or five euros for the week. Yearly passes are available, as well. Then, the rental fee for the bike is a sliding scale that is free for the first half hour, one euro for the next half hour, two for the next, and a four euros for each half hour after that.

This excites me because my wife and I love to bike, and we also like to travel. In fact, a few years ago we went to Paris for New Years. It did not seem like the most bicycle friendly city at that time. However, I guess that they've made some changes. From the CNN article:

Velib' is Socialist Mayor Bertrand Delanoe's latest effort to make Paris more green and bike-friendly, after ripping up car lanes to install bike paths -- much to the angst of some drivers, who complain there are more bottlenecks now.

Today, there are 230 miles of bike lanes in Paris, and Paris City Hall says the amount of bike traffic has increased nearly 50 percent since 2001. Paris isn't a paradise for bikers yet -- there's still a lot of car traffic and confusing one-way streets -- but a ride is no longer the obstacle course it once was.

This, along with (first obligatory previous post plug) Napa Valley Bike Tours, is something I wish to try. In fact, maybe I can try (second obligatory previous post plug) my Frenchy ride there.

Quick Tip: Leave the Lid Off the Boil Kettle

As brewers, we are crazy about sanitation, and one of the easiest ways to sanitize something is to boil it. As a result, one would be tempted to boil the wort with the lid on. Unfortunately, this traps Dimethyl Sulfides (DMS) in the wort, which form during the boil. DMS is characterized by a cooked cabbage or canned corn flavor, and is considered a flaw. The best results come by boiling with the kettle at least partially uncovered, to blow off the DMS. After the boil, the kettle can then be covered for cooling, insuring sanitation.

Shhhh. Don't Tell Anyone

Okay, this is just between you and me. My wife's birthday is coming up, and I ordered her Wine Dogs: USA Edition. Whatever you do, don't tell her. It is a secret.

You see, when we travel to wine country, as we've done in the past, one of my wife's favorite things is to befriend the dog that they invariably have at every winery we visit. As it turns out, they make this book about winery dogs, and even include some of the wineries we've visited.

Apparently, in the book, they give a little bio about the dogs in addition to a pictorial. In fact, they give some pretty juicy tidbits, including which dog ate a couch, who chewed Bill Clinton's leg, and you even discover which dog stole Robert Mondavi's heart, according to the company website. Digging further, an Amazon review goes on to say that one dog likes to hide bras in the garden, while another is the spitting image of Groundskeeper Willie, from The Simpsons. It sounds like quite the book.

All that totally makes it the perfect gift for my wife, so mums the word. Remember, this is our little secret. It is a surprise for her birthday.

Let's Drink to "The Star-Spangled Banner"

Okay, the Fourth of July is here again, America's most patriotic holiday. What is more patriotic than "The Star-Spangled Banner?" It is a song that is notoriously hard to sing. It is a song that fills our baseball stadiums. It is our national anthem. Most importantly of all, though, it is a song based upon an old British drinking song. An old British drinking song?

That is right. Written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key, "The Star-Spangled Banner" originated as a poem entitled "Defence of Fort McHenry." As most Americans know, Key, an amateur poet, wrote the poem after being inspired by witnessing Old Glory still flying above Fort McHenry after a long night of bombardment by the British, during the War of 1812.

Francis Scott Key's original manuscript, on display at the Maryland Historical Society.

Lesser known, though, is that after he wrote the poem, Key gave it to his brother-in-law, Judge Joseph H. Nicholson. His brother-in-law realized that the words to the poem fit exactly the timing of a drinking song of the time entitled "The Anacreontic Song," also commonly known as "To Anacreon Heaven." He put the words to the music and the song was born.

"The Anacreontic Song" originated from Britain, in the mid-1760s, composed by John Stafford Smith. That song became the official song of the Anacreontic Society, a group of amateur musicians in London. It got its label as a drinking song by invoking the name of Bacchus, the Greek god of wine and intoxication, with this line: "And long may the sons of Anacreon intwine the myrtle of Venus with Bacchus' vine."

Therein is the irony of the whole thing: Our national anthem was inspired by a failed British attack on our country, but is set to an old British drinking song. It seems that the British won that battle after all. :)

You can read further information about both "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "The Anacreontic Song" at Wikipedia here and here (where I got much of the information for this post).