Bookshelves

Anyone who knows Coz and I will know that we like books. Hell, Anyone who's passed me in the street on the way to work knows I like books. A fact probably much less-known is that I hate bookshelves. I don't hate them for what they do, I hate them for how badly they do it.

Most bookshelves are boxy things that are too deep - so you end up piling the books in in two rows, and can't see the ones in back. Or you just pile miscellaneous crap on the otherwise-wasted front of the shelf. And the shelves are too tall, so you stack them two rows high and then they collapse in a heap whenever you take anything out. And they waste all the space above the unit as a whole, while taking up more space than they need out from the wall. In short, they end up looking like this, which we just moved out of our bedroom:



I've been saying for half a year now that I wanted to just make my own, and last weekend I finally got to it. They're just pine, and they're a bit knotty, though straight. And the finish is a little rough, because I got some sawdust in the urethane. And the wall brackets are unevenly-spaced, because one of the studs was crooked. And I don't care; they're perfect:






They go floor-to-ceiling, and 10 feet across the whole wall. They're 8 inches deep, so they don't eat much of the room, and they alternate between just taller than a paperback, and just taller than a hardback. 100 feet of bookshelf, all for us! Apparently we don't own enough books... yet.

Pale Ale

A personal recipe from the guy down the brew shop - which kindness I have repaid by losing the bit of paper with his name on it, so I can't even give him credit for it. On this blog that nobody really reads but me when I'm trying to remember a recipe. Which is either consolation or insult to injury - I'm not entirely sure.

Anyways, no final SG for the last one, or any SG for this one, because the hydrometer got broke. I reused the yeast from the previous cream ale on this guy, and it got almost two weeks in the fermenter - partially because I had no hydrometer to tell when it was done, and mostly because I was sick as a dog and didn't want to deal with it. Fermenting was so vigorous that it blew the lid clean off the fermenter at one point, so hopefully it didn't get contaminated. But seriously? When the yeast is going _that_ gangbusters I don't rate the chances of your average bacteria...

11 lbs. 2-row pale malt
0.25 lbs Crystal 20L
0.25 lbs Crystal 90L
1 lb. Munich malt

1 oz. Amarillo Gold @ 60 mins.
1 oz. Cascade @ 10 mins.
1 oz. Centennial @ 10 mins.
1 oz. Cascade @ 0 mins.
1 oz. Centennial @ 0 mins.
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Just cracked the keg on this one; very nice. Got some hops to it, but not in the rip-the-back-of-your-head-off way that seems to be getting more and more popular with IPAs these days. I mean, don't get me wrong; I love a pint of Arrogant Bastard, but I'm not sure I want nothing but it in the keg in the garage, yes? Give the taste buds a chance to come reeling to their senses every once in awhile...

Anyways, this is a nice brew. Make it again.

Wolf Creek Cream Ale

Bloody hell; I haven't logged a brew since August? I am getting slack.

I made a whole slew of things. Got far enough ahead of myself to cellar things a bit more, which seemed good to me, but since I almost never do the same thing twice it'd be hard to say how much difference it really made. I did drink through most of the aging stuff without replacing it over Christmas though, so its just as well it was there. I'm thinking I did a red and a scotch ale, among a couple of others, but I may be making that up. One of the side effects of having more things in the cellar is that I can never remember whats what; need to label the kegs. In amongst there I had a chat with the Beer Guys at the brew shop about re-using yeast cultures, and did a couple of batches back-to-back that way. Seemed to work pretty well. Apparently it keeps pretty well, but its harder to go from something really hoppy to something less so (or really, to reuse the yeast at all after really hoppy things) and also harder to go from high alcohol to lower.

Oh and back in July I did a batch of red wine from a kit (they were on sale for half price at the shop.) It was fiddly, but seems to have worked pretty well; I'm drinking the first of it as I write this, and I'm not dead yet (bit bland flavoured though.) Re-used screwcap bottles but dipped them in melted wax to seal them better for aging.

So this weekend I'm doing the first of another double batch, re-using the yeast culture. The weather said to make a lager, but they need more keg time, and I've got a bit behind in the brewing over the hols, so I'm going to do a couple of quick-and-easy's first. This is a cream ale (no actual milk sugars in it though; just the name) from the Homebrewers Outpost Wolf Creek Cream Ale full grain recipe. It has corn in it? Weird. Hope its not too sweet.

5 lbs. 2-row pale malt.
3.5 lbs. 6-row pale malt.
1 lb. Flaked corn (maize).
0.75 lb. Cara-Pils Dextrine malt.
3.5 gallons H20 @ ~180 F.

mashed 1 hour @152 F

sparged @ 168 F to ~6.5 gallons, brought to boil, added:

1 oz. Tettnang (4.8% A.A.) for 1 hour.
0.5 oz. Saaz (3.9% A.A.) for 15 mins.
0.5 oz. Saaz (3.9% A.A.) for 5 mins.

initial S.G. 1.040
pitched yeast packet at ~80 F
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Just finished this. It was ok, but kinda pale and bland. I did a cream ale as kind of an experiment - not really knowing what one was - so when it turned out kind of pale and bland, I looked them up; apparently, cream ales are kind of pale and bland. Yay, I made it right?

Traquair House Ale clone

A scottish ale, recipe from a "the best of Brew Your Own" magazine. And I seem to have skipped the last quite a few before the porter before this, but I don't remember doing anything exceptional.

15 lbs. pale UK malt
0.25 lbs. roasted barley
~19 quarts of water @ 163 F

mashed @ 152 F for 1 hour. Drained off 1 gallon and set to rapid boil (to carmellise) for 30 minutes. Sparged the rest with water at 168 F until I had 7 gallons. Began boil. After 30 minutes, added carmellised wort and:

1.5 oz. Kent Goldings (~AA 4%?)

Boiled for another hour and added another:

1.5 oz. Kent Goldings (~AA 4%?)

Cooled, aerated, added an ale yeast. Forgot to get an initial SG again.

Smoked Chili Porter

Yeah yeah, so I missed blogging a couple of more brews in here. Nothing too interesting. Last couple have come out a bit yeasty-flavoured; I think I'll try racking this one, which I've never bothered with before. I wonder if the beers really are getting yeastier, or if I'm just getting more finicky about my homebrews?

Anyways, I decided to try to mix two of my favorite things: porter, and chipotles. Now I've tasted some pretty bad attempts at chili beers, but they're usually done as lagers with too much chili added. I wanted something more subtle, so I figured why not add smoked jalapenos (which is all that chipotles are, really) to a smoked porter - they should blend in better that way. We'll see.

Started from a clone recipe for Vermont Smoked Porter, as done up for me by the folks down at Homebrewers Outpost, with some substituted hops. Added some coffee and just a bit of chipotle.

8lb 14oz 2-row pale malt.
2lb. smoked malt.
0.5 lb. black patent malt.
0.5 lb. chocolate malt.

Mashed in ~17 quarts of water at 152 F for one hour. Sparged to ~6 gallons with water at 168 F. Added:

1 level tablespoon of chipotle puree (take a can of chipotles, whack it in the blender til its paste, and put it in a jar in the fridge to use in nearly everything.) The amount was just a guess, but about a tablespoon makes a large pot of pasta sauce pleasantly spicy; I figured I had about three times that volume, and I wanted just a hint of spice. Brought to a boil and added:

1 oz Nugget hops (13.0% AA)

Boiled for 60 minutes. Added:

1 oz. Goldings hops (4.5% AA)

Boiled for 5 minutes. (Both of those hops amounts are a bit more than the recipe called for, I note.) Added:

12 shots of fresh espresso (3 lots of our little machine on full.)

Initial S.G 1.040

Oatmeal Stout

8 lbs. US 2 row
1 lbs. US Boosted (? end of name unreadable)
8 oz. Crystal 60
4 oz. Bulk Patent

1 hour:
1 oz. Fuggle (AA 4.8%)

15 mins:
0.5 oz. Hallertau (AA 3.8%)

5 mins:
0.5 oz. Hallertau (AA 3.8%)

Initial SG 1.042 (? not sure this number on this scrap of paper is from this brew...
Final S.G. 1.014

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Beast of a full smoky flavour, but I like it.

An Irish Red?

Made an Irish Red in here somewhere, which I seem to have forgotten to blog. Not sure what-all went in it at this point, but it ended up with 2 oz. of Hallertau hops (AA 3.8%)

And when I went to tap the smoked porter from the previous batch I seem to have mixed the kegs up, because I'm fairly sure its the red we're drinking now. Which means the red didn't get much more than a couple of weeks aging in the keg, and the porter is getting extra.