Archive for July, 2008

Lost Spoon

Thursday, July 24th, 2008

This was previously named: Ale to be named later
I’m thinking of calling this: Lost Spoon
Other possible names: Bucket Brew, Aspirations, Girly Beer

10 lb Castle Pale Ale
2 lb White Wheat
2 lb Vienna
1 lb Cara Vienne
1 lb Candi Sugar
1 tbsp orange peal
1 tbsp coriander
1.5 tbsp cardamom
1 oz Sterling
1 oz Hallertau
Wyeast 3711 French Saison
A garbage can named poop bucket for disposal of spent grain.

Transcribed from notes taken by co-brewer Ben Alton (with 1 or 2 corrections)
7/22/2008
8:00 pm Added hot water to grains.
9:00 Sparged our hearts out. Needed to utilize 3 pots 2 strainers and a poop bucket. Began by draining from mash pot to pot #2 used for wort. Our strainer barely fit and collapsed into the wort a few times before we started taking extra precautions. We pressed the grains through the strainer into pot #2 then put the grain into the pot #3 for storage. We then needed more water, so we boiled more water. We then put the left over grain in the pot #1 in the strainer and poured boiling water though it. Once pot #1 was empty it was washed and used to boil more water. A smaller saucepan was used to gather water from pot #1, grain from pot #3 and continue sparging. As pot 2 was almost full, the remainder of water was added to pot #3. Pot #2, containing the wort, was then strained though a larger more structurally sound strainer back into pot #1. The pot 3 mixture was also strained into pot 1 until we had hit our desired water level.
10:00 The wort was then brought to a boil and half of the sterling hops pellets were added.
Oh yeah, and at some point I put the spoon in the poop bucket. I was then instructed as the existence of the poop bucket and a new, sanitary spoon was selected for continuing of the operation.
10:50: Candi sugar added.
10:55 We put in the other half of sterling pellets with a tablespoon of cracked coriander.
11:00 The Hallertau, orange peel and cracked cardamom are added.
11:11 Heat is turned off. A few minutes later the pot was put in an ice bath. Wort was moved strained into primary fermentation bucket and ice bath was continued.
12:45am Yeast was pitched while wort was around 88 degrees.

O.G. 1.052

7.29.2008 moved to secondary fermentation in 5 gallon glass carboy. gravity 1.0085
8.17.2008 bottled final gravity was 1.003  I have high hopes
8.31.2008 First taste: Good stuff! A wonderfull success.  I will describe it more later.

The Boil-over

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

We attempted an all grain batch of homebrew for the first time last night. What should have been a short and easy process with the right equipment was a disaster. 4 dirty pots ranging from a 6 gallon aluminum turkey fryer to a standard 4 quart from stove, 2 strainers and everything else we could find in the kitchen seemed to get used at one time or another. It took a ton of work just to get to the wort then we had no way of cooling it. 5 gallons in an ice bath just doesn’t move that fast. I had to pitch the yeast just before 1am when it was still close to 90 degrees. We used a pound of candied sugar and I don’t know how many pounds of malted grain and only came away with an original gravity around 1.05. I know that’s fine but it seems low for everything we used. The brew is also darker than I expected. I still have high hopes for this brew. Hopefully the yeast survived the night and will be bubbling and churning by the time I get home. I will put in the full details, pics, and recipe later.

Next time I will make or buy a proper mash-tun and have some way of cooling the wort. It’s time to drill holes in the cooler.

JavaScript quirk: Not implemented

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

I’m working on a small site that needs a Google map. There is no special functionality. It’s just pointing to one thing. It should be simple. It should be just a few lines of code. And it works fine in Firefox. Opera gives me a CSS error on the map but nothing from the JavaScript. For some reason IE throws and error. I usually don’t find useful information about js errors. This error description is the most baffling I’ve seen: “Not implemented.”

You can see it here

More info: This isn’t the best info but it’s what I could find. IE 6 throws the error for window.onunload. Also, window.onload seems to stall some how on IE 6. It seems to compile but the map doesn’t always render.