Heroes fans! Check out the following:

Yamagato Fellowship

This is a website set up for the charitable organization that Hiro Nakamura's father runs. There's some neat back story on Takezo Kensei that will be relevant to Season 2.

(oops, corrected the URL)

Name : Brewer's Best English Brown Ale
Boil Time : 60 minutes
Variation : Used White Labs WLP002 yeast instead of the included dry yeast.

Brewing Date : August 19, 2007
Secondary Fermentation Date : August 25, 2007
Starting Gravity : 1.049
Secondary Fermentation Gravity : 1.012
Final Gravity : 1.009
Alcohol By Volume : 5.30%
Kegging Date : September 6, 2007
First Draw : September 10, 2007

This batch went much better than the first batch of English Pale Ale - familiarity does make it a lot easier. Now that I know how to use the hydrometer, and have a "thief" to pull the sample out, I'm confident that I'm accurate on my reading. I did have to adjust the number slightly because of the temperature of the wort. The water coming out of the tap was over 70F because we're in the third straight week of hitting 100F nearly every day. I ended up pitching the yeast once I got the wort down to about 85F because it was simply taking too long to cool. That shouldn't really have an adverse effect on the batch, though. I let the WLP002 yeast sit out at room temperature for the full 3 hour brewing session, so it should have been pretty awake already. By the time I went to bed there was a little bubbling action going on with the airlock - nothing fast, but a slow up/down motion of the bubbler.

Skydog and Ladymerlin dropped by yesterday to see the process and borrow my Mr. Beer keg so that they could do a small batch of cider. I gave both of them a taste of Batch #2 and they both enjoyed it. Actually, Ladymerlin said that she doesn't like beer, but she's only tasted crap in the past, apparently. She kept saying how good the brewing wort smelled, so that's when she decided to try the finished beer I had in the fridge. Skydog enjoyed his pint that I poured for him and said he could feel it, so between that and my own reaction, I think my first batch was well beyond lawnmower beer and the hydrometer reading was simply way off. This batch should give a better idea.

ZOMG this batch is much lighter than the first batch of English Brown Ale that I made. Instead of having that heavy taste like a porter (which was still good) it is very light tasting. Unfortunately between the light taste and the high alcohol content (5.3% ABV) I can see myself sitting upstairs and getting completely trashed while watching a football game. Oh, wait, that's a problem how?

Recipe: Ed Wort's Apfelwein
Variations: Only had about 1.75 pounds of corn sugar, so that's what I used


Fermentation Date : 18 Aug 2007
Kegging Date : 12 Sep 2007
Drinking Date : 18 Oct 2007 (PhreakNIC!)

I picked up a 6 gallon glass carboy, a handle, and some Montrachet yeast at All Season's on Friday. Publix had the Mott's pure apple juice on sale 2-for-1 for the 1/2 gallon bottle, so I picked that up on the cheap. Ingredient costs were less than $15 for the entire batch. Add in the cost of the extra equipment that I bought (carboy, handle, airlock, stopper, 2 more 5L kegs, 4 pressure relief bungs) and it's more like $80. That still comes in cheaper than buying 52 ciders at the grocery store ($1.53 each), but I wouldn't have bought 52 ciders at once. Cost on this based on just the ingredients is a mere $0.30 per 12 oz serving of cider.

After kegging I tasted the apfelwein - it definitely has a very dry taste to it. I'll check it again this weekend after the CO2 has had a chance to carbonate it, and once the fridge has gotten it nice and cold.

I'm going to go buy a carboy this afternoon and an extra bubbler, along with another batch of English Brown Ale extract. I plan on brewing up another batch of the brown ale this weekend, and to make a batch of Apfelwein in the carboy. It'll take at least a month for the Apfelwein, but the ale should be ready to keg before I go on vacation Labor Day Weekend.

I took an online focus group study this week that paid $75, so that's half of a homebrew keg system. My wife has her old dorm fridge down at her grandfather's house, sitting unused, so if it's the right inside height then it looks like I'll get a free fridge to convert to a kegerator. If that's the case, I'll buy the keg kit next week and have it in time for the ale to fit into. Yay!

So I gave out some samples of my home brew batch #2 last week and have gotten some of the results back from the independent taste tests.

Mirage didn't like it, but he's weird, anyway.

Alan from work emailed me to say that he *really* liked the porter. Oops, it's not a porter. hahahahaha.

I think what happened is that I let the grain bag seep for a bit longer than I should have. I also let it slow cook the entire time, rather than going for a full rolling boil, so I didn't have any real evaporation. Although I'd think that would make the brew a bit lighter/weaker than it came out, but I have to agree, it is a very dark brown ale. However, I likes it.

Ok, it still boggles my mind that CBS actually covered this during daylight hours. For those who didn't catch it and are interested, here's the link for the segment that I uploaded to Google Video.

WoW Arena at WSVG2007

Yesterday I had DISHnetwork installed at the house, and I think I was close to making the installer's head explode. He had a hard time understanding why I ordered a 4 room setup and put them all in the same room. Let's see if I can explain it well enough - there are two receivers (R1 and R2), each with two tuners (T1 and T2). R1T1 and R2T1 both use an infrared remote, which I can emulate through an infrared transmitter. That makes it ideal for controlling with my MythTV box. R1T2 and R2T2 both use UHF remotes, which I don't have a way to emulate - I'm sure it's possible, just not economical. However, my wife still wanted the ability to change channels and watch TV in other rooms that don't have MythTV front ends on them - namely the kitchen and bedroom. R1T2 sends its signal out on Channel 73, and R2T2 sends its signal out on Channel 80, and they appear to not interfere with each other. I fed the output of R1T2 back into my house cabling setup, reversed the splitters (so that what used to be an OUT is now an IN), and I have the ability to walk around the house with the UHF remote and change the channels on the "dumb tv sets". I'm not using both T2's yet because the tech support people at DISHnetwork said that I can still use infrared on the T2's, so I may get another PVR-150 to add into my MythTV box and then have 3 independent inputs from satellite.

Name : Brewer's Best English Pale Ale
Boil Time : 60 minutes
Variation : Used White Labs WLP002 yeast instead of the included dry yeast.

Brewing Date : July 15, 2007
Secondary Fermentation Date : July 23, 2007
Starting Gravity : 1.032 (Lower than it should be)
Final Gravity : 1.010
Alcohol By Volume : Approx. 2.8%, or 6 Proof
Kegging Date : July 26, 2007
First Draw : August 3, 2007

Notes :
Prepared the recipe according to instructions, only that I don't have a floating thermometer (yet) and had to keep using a probe thermometer. Unfortunately for the wort cooling process that thermometer doesn't register below 140 F, so I had to guesstimate on when it was cool enough to pitch yeast. I placed the fermenting bucket in the closet and didn't realize that the AC register was still open, so when I checked on it at day 2 the bucket was pretty chilly. I closed off the register and gave the bucket a swirl to stir up the yeast and hopefully kick start the fermentation again.

When transferring to secondary fermentation I was glad to see that the bulk of the yeast sediment was on top, which it should be for an ale. The beer has a good smell to it and if anything the secondary fermentation helped get rid of a lot of the sediment - mainly the pile of hops laying at the bottom of the bucket.

I finished up the partial keg of Pale Ale last night and the flavor has definitely improved over the first draw from it. I'll have a couple out of the other keg tonight so that I can try to finish it up by bottling time on Friday. I can already tell that I need to get more mini kegs so that I can have more than one batch in them at a time. Now that I sold the Sea Doo, I've got a little more flexibility with my spending money, since I won't be putting $50/month onto the credit card bill.

Since I still have some pale ale in one keg I decided to get some bottles. It will also help with sharing, since I'm not going to share my keg and tap-a-draft system with others. Bottling was fairly easy after the first two - the first two I was pressing down on the valve too far and it wasn't shutting off when I wanted to.

I couldn't wait - opened up one of the bottles on Friday night, Aug 3. Wow, it came out really well. The flavor reminds me a lot of a darker brown ale, rather than a lighter one - something akin to a cross between a Rogue Nut Brown Ale and a Flying Dog Road Dog. There was very little sediment, too, which I hope is due to the secondary fermentation. The next batch I'll have a better grasp on how to take the hydrometer readings, so we'll see if I was way off on the cooking, or on the reading, next time.

Name : Mr. Beer American Pale Ale (included in Mr. Beer package)
Boil Time : Mr. Beer is a "no boil" kit
Variations : Instead of tap water, I used spring water. Instead of table sugar, I used corn sugar. Instead of plastic bottles, I used 5L mini kegs.

Brew Date : July 3, 2007
Bottle Date : July 10, 2007
First Draw : July 17, 2007

Notes :
I started with the less full of the two kegs - maybe 3.5 liters worth of beer in there. I'm using a tap-a-draft system for delivery. The first pint was definitely flat, with a bit extra sweetness to it. Of course, there was too much sugar in this keg since there was only about 3.5 liters of beer. The subsequent pints weren't as cloudy as the first, and the CO2 from the tap-a-draft may have taken away some of the flatness. It tastes like a pale ale, which I'm not the biggest fan of, but I doubt it has much alcohol content at all. Not bad for a first try.

Ok, swapped out from keg #1 to keg #2. Even though keg #2 was allowed to carbonate for an extra week, it was just as flat. The problem is that I used the original plastic bung that came with it, rather than the heavy duty rubber bung that came with the tap-a-draft system. The plastic bung didn't create a tight seal so that the CO2 would pressurize inside the beer. Oh, well, it's a learning process. After a couple of days with the CO2 cartridges it will be well carbonated. Right now it's just too flat to drink.

I passed my Tang Soo Do test for 3rd Gup (red belt)!

Now to go take a nap. They wore me out!