Brewing Time & Some Miscellania

Let there be home brew. The weather has cooled off. Snow is falling. For me, that means brewing season is full swing. I could brew year around but the cooler fall and winter prompt me more than any other time of year. Perhaps the lack of daylight and looking forward to Old Guys Gaming provides the necessary spark.

I like a range of beers but for home brewing I lean toward porters and stouts. The first fall batch is an oatmeal stout. Of all stouts, oatmeal recipes make me salivate. I like the flavor profile — smooth, dark along with a shades of breakfasts from my childhood. When it comes to beer, I leave the experiments to occasional six-packs and brew masters. My recipes come in kit form from one of many home brew suppliers on the internet and local merchants. The stout is from the fine folks of Austin Homebrew Supply.

The next beers on tap for brewing is a porter. For some reason, a flavored one struck my fancy so it will be a Raspberry Porter. After reading through the reviews, the berry can be overwhelming so I will halve the contents called for the recipe. I want a hint of raspberry not a dominant presence. It still sounds tasty. Looking forward to trying it. #3 on the brewlist is a summer ale. I like the spice in Sam Adams Summer Ale. I brewed a clone last year which was pretty good. This year, I’m going for a Belgian style ale with similar highlights. Nothing crisper than a summer ale on a warm spring day.

Blog wise, I’m in the midst of cleaning out the most recent set of dead links. I’m also cleaning up a few generators which have no audience or I failed to finish. Those I purge will redirect to the original content providers, where possible. A few dangling posts associated with the same content will also be eliminated. Minor stuff but a few people may see items disappear they’ve used in the past.

Finally, I signed up for a game of ROTWORLD. The pre-generated character was targeted as a good ole boy / redneck. I modeled it after the coolest redneck I know. Ferocious attitude with a big heart. Looking forward to the game. The other players have generated great concepts as well so the party dynamic should be fantastic.

Character Portrait

That’s the “portrait” I used for Kenneth “Syrus” Halbert. If some fool snuck in my house and painted a door like that, I’d be pissed off at the world for a while. Syrus is chuck full of bad attitude but has a softer side as well. Should be entertaining to see how the gruff exterior meets the new reality… Syrus has the benefit of having some wheels. A Ford truck of unspecified nature. I picked this one.

Orange is the New Black

Too stereotyped? Could be. I’ll stick with my choices.

Blackberry Mead

Yet another batch of mead. Pretty much the same as the grocery store mead except I used White Labs Sweet Mead yeast rather than Fleischmans and I added around a pound of blackberries. Additionally, the orange went in with the peel unlike the prior batch.

Blackberry Mead

The blackberries were from the freezer section of the grocery store. I let them nearly thaw then tossed them in the blender. If I had a small brewing pail, I may have placed them in a cheesecloth bag rather than adding them directly. I plan to add a second round of berries when I rack into the secondary to augment the fruit flavor.

I’m also giving the balloon method a try for an airlock. I should know how well its going to work within a day or so.

Happy Balloon (Airlock)

Grocery Store Mead

Conversations at Convergence always vary widely. Randall and I were talking about brewing at one point and I mentioned I’d been thinking about trying a batch of mead. From what I’d seen, brewing mead was far simpler than beer but thought it took quite a while longer for the fermentation and ageing. He thought it would be nice to try. The idea was still ticking about in the back of my head on Monday so I did some research.

Mead is an interesting drink. I like it on occasion but really didn’t want to start with a five gallon batch. Several sites I read mentioned 1 gallon batches as an easy way to get started along with a variety of recipes. The primary components for a batch of mead are water, honey, and yeast. Yeast varieties vary for beer brewing and mead brewing has several choices as well from what I read. Then I stumbled on stormthecastle.com’s page: How to make some Mead today -the cheap, fast, and easy way.

I already needed to visit the grocery store. So along with the other necessities, I picked up the water, yeast, honey, balloons, oranges, and raisins. The total additional cost was $14.78, the bulk of which was honey. A Colorado brand was on sale so I chose it over the store brand, which added a minor amount of cost. Also, it turned out one of my beer airlocks fit the water jug nicely so I didn’t need to buy the balloons.

Raw Ingredients

The instructions are pretty clear except for one thing. I wasn’t sure if the orange was sliced with or without the peel. After watching one of his videos, I discovered its peel and all. Mine is missing the peel but the orange is apparently optional. The omission of the peel will likely not add as much acidity but should be fine. I also added a cinnamon stick and a bit of vanilla bean. Spices are crazy expensive but both were on sale. For the amounts I used, the cost elevated by a couple of dollars.

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