Got a pocketfull of quarters

About a month ago, we got a wild phone call out of the blue from some B-W friends we hadn’t talked to in, like, a decade. They were inquiring about our Calico Duck (a whole other story). At any rate, that call introduced me to the wonderful thing that is Jawbone Radio. Last night, I listened to an old episode of Jawbone that had me smiling. It was an interview with Buckner & Garcia.

I let that name sit for a sec.

Yes! That Buckner and Garcia! The writers and performers of the beloved Pac-Man Fever, Froggy’s Lament, Ode to a Centipede, Do the Donkey Kong, Berzerk (over you). The Pac-Man Fever album was the first LP I ever purchased. I remember visiting Ted and Nancy on that fateful day in 1982. For some reason I don’t remember, Ted was taking me to Children’s Palace and had given me a “budget” to be spent in any way I saw fit. After wandering about the cavernous repository of every toy available, I gravitated to the shrink-wrapped cardboard square decorated with a hyper-closeup of the blue on black maze through which the cute yellow pie-chart ran about eating dots and evading ghosts. As we drove back to T&N’s I couldn’t speak I was so excited.

We went downstairs and fired up Ted’s Hi-Fi, dropped the needle on the spinning vinyl, and gloried in the combination of pop music and video game sound fx. Sure the big song was Pac-Man Fever, but I quickly grew fond of several of the other tunes. Ted explained what a “magic twanger” was. We tried to DO the Donkey Kong. Over time, the B-side of the LP grew a bit tedious (Who ever really played Mousetrap anyway?) although “Goin’ Berzerk” found its way onto some mix-tapes I made for girls. But as a first LP purchase, I couldn’t have been happier. Ted taped the album for me so that I could listen to it on my off-brand Walkman. I then spent hours groovin to the tunes while getting blisters from my Atari 2600 playing Defender.

Thanks to Len and Nora for reminding me of good stuff.

For an explanation of the origin of this ale, see the entry for the first attempt.

A few batches on now from last year’s Inklings Ale debacle, I thought I’d tackle the recipe again and bring some to the Glen for the Thomas Parker Society. The CAMRA recipe calls for some Diastatic Malt Extract and a certain amount of mashing. Not having any Diastatic Malt Extract, in fact discovering that such an animal is not only hard to come by here in the US but increasingly so back in Merry Old, I decide to change things up a bit by adding some base malt and doing a partial mash procedure I read in BYO magazine. I also decided to try a different yeast than last try. Instead of the standby Wyeast 1028 London Ale, I tried out 1275 Thames Valley (which is supposedly a Burton ale yeast). My big excitement here was that I have purchased an erlenmeyer flask in which to make yeast starters.

Brew day went fantastically, with me hitting my marks on the nose. In fact, it may be the most exact brew day I’ve had.

The Numbers
OG: 1.050
FG: 1.013
ABV: 4.82
IBU: 30.2
SRM: 14
Yield: 16×12, 8×16, 8.41×22 (43.16×12)
Tasting Notes
Off the top, it looks great: coppery cyrstal clear, decent white foam. I continue to be amazed at the difference between the 12oz bottles and larger vessels; considering it’s bottle conditioned, I suppose I shouldn’t be, but I am. Some of the 12ers have a highly fruity quality that I’m not sure I like, whereas the larger bottles seem to be more balanced, allowing the EKG hops to shine. [update]The disparity between bottle sizes continues, with the 12ers presenting–to my taste–a sulphur trace. Took the brew to some professional tasters. One couldn’t sense what I was talking about; the other said he could taste the off-flavor but that he was hyper-sensitive to the particular flavor I was describing. So, no answers yet on this oddity.

At Thomas Parker, the ale was rather well liked. “Kick %&#!” was one response, along with many “Well dones” and people wrestling with their better angels over whether they could have another glass and still be fair to those who hadn’t yet tried some.

I recently learned some things about vitamins.

1. Above all, do not store gel-cap vitamins anywhere near the stove. The lovely sculpture you see above was created by storing multi-vitamins not ON the stove top but on top of the backsplash/control panel of the stove.
2. Not all gel-caps are filled with powder. These particular vitamins were filled with a brownish liquid that oozed and squirted.
3. Vitamin pill bottles are really tough. I had to use tin snips to cut away the bottle from the vitamin cake.
4. Vitamin pills made of solidly compressed powder seem to do ok on the stove backsplash.

Just another handy set of tips from the oh-so-helpful people here at Château Truffin.

Brewed 2/23/2008

On one of my online shopping excursions to The Grape and Granary, their ingredient kit for “American Amber” caught my attention. After the Brown ale experiment, I’d decided I wanted to go Red. I fiddled around with BeerSmith a while, but was never really satisfied with what I was designing. Then I saw that that the GG American Amber had most of the qualities I was seeking, including the usage of Simcoe hops. Why grind out my own recipe when, if my experience with other GG kits was any guide, a very fine recipe was mine for the having.

What earned this brew the name Albino Amber was a (happy?) brewing accident. For whatever reason, when I was racking the wort from the kettle to the fermenter, there was a large amount of trub. I ended up leaving more wort in the kettle than I thought so that when I topped up the fermenter with water, my specific gravity was 13 points low. Trying not to panic, I took quick stock of the pantry and set my hands on the remaining honey I had from, I believe, T-4. 2 pounds of Republic honey. I boiled the honey with some water, let it cool, and added it to the fermenter. The gravity was now a mere 3 points high: perfectly acceptable. At the time, I felt that the resulting color was a good bit lighter than I had hoped, thus, Albino Amber. As folks tasted the finished product, some, especially Peter W, questioned my title most severely.

The fermentation was a bit crazy (perhaps caused by the honey?). The top of the fermenting bucket blew off several times causing me to worry about nasties invading my brew. However, I think the positive pressure from the CO2 kept things clean. Once things settled down and I got it into the secondary, the process went smoothly.

This batch was also my first time using a Bench Capper. While the hand-capper that came with my original brewing kit is functional, it had trouble with Bass Ale bottles and could get unwieldy. The bench capper adjusts easily to any height, deals with a variety of bottles, and is much more stable. It also doesn’t require me to be hunched over on the floor. All in all, a rather good investment.
Ingredients
As this is a G&G kit, I won’t list the entire recipe. However, this is what’s in there:
Grain Bill

• Dry and liquid malt extract
• 80L Caramel malt
• Weyermann Carared
• Munich
• Chocolate Malt
• 2lbs Honey from Republic, OH

Hops

• Bittering: Horizon
• Flavor: Cascade and Simcoe
• Aroma: Cascade and Simcoe

Yeast
Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast

Final Numbers
OG: 1.058
FG: 1.009
ABV: 6.39%
IBU: 44.6
Yield: 54 X 12oz

Tasting Notes
Golden amber color with a clean white head. American hop aroma. Cascade and Simcoe hops combine their grapefruit and apricot/mango essences to provide a refreshing, fruity hop flavor. Munich and crystal malts provide a bready, caramel complexity. This is the first of my brews to display some of that GLBC graininess for which I search. Will definitely use Munich in the future.

The Brown Fox certainly proved to be quite the wily beast. Not only did it start out as one thing and end up another, it continued to morph in the bottle from a barely acceptable brew to something that has been something of a crowd pleaser.

My intention with Brown Fox had been to develop a Brown Ale. I was enamored with the idea of a rich, flavorful, low-alcohol session ale. However, my initial research into the style showed many commercial varieties that I honestly found rather bland. Starting from an amalgamation of a few recipes I found online, I started adding and tweaking the recipe until I thought it would have some flavor characteristics I like. The grain bill became somewhat complex, so I wanted the hops to be simple and English. While the bittering was done with some American hops I had laying around, I knew that they would add little, if anything, to the flavor; for the aroma and flavor, I stuck with the old standby East Kent Goldings.

Brew day was fantastic. I hit very close to my marks and increased my comfort with the partial mash system. The grain smells coming out of the kitchen were fantastic. Fermentation–reusing the yeast cake from T-12–went off without a hitch. On bottling day, I was pleased to yield 49 12oz bottles, just about perfect.

All of those good feelings took a bit of hit when I tasted the first bottle. It was sweet. It didn’t taste bad, but I couldn’t in any way get excited about it. In fact, I rued the idea of having to drink it all by myself because not only could I not foresee anyone help me down the stuff, I wasn’t even comfortable offering it folks to try. Friend Cindy visited from NC shortly after bottling, and we tasted it with several other browns. In addition to confirming my general feelings about the style, we thought that Brown Fox was not bad, but it wasn’t interesting us much either. Not knowing exactly what to do, I put the bottles in the cellar.

About a month or so later–maybe more, who’s counting–I brought a couple bottles of T-13 up from the basement and gave them a try. I’d heard various stories of brewers observing surprising changes in their brews over time, and I myself have witnessed the effects of time on ale. I wasn’t prepared for the virtual transformation of the Brown Fox. In the bottle, it became much more balanced; roasty characteristics came forward; the slight hop flavor developed. In short, it became a VERY tasty brew. As I gingerly ushered it into the world, the folks who tasted it were (almost) wildly enthusiastic.

Confused by this change and by the warm reception, I did some more research. The main discovery I made was that the ale I brewed was not, in fact, a brown ale. (Wha?!?) The recipe actually fit the characteristics of a Brown Porter. It was amusing to scan the characteristics and ingredients of the Brown Porter and see that the tweaks and additions I’d made to the brown ale recipes had very specifically moved the recipe out of that style. In the end, I may simply have to admit that the Brown Ale style is not one of my favorites.

As to what happened to the Brown Fox in the bottle to transform it from not something I would share to a fan fave, I can only surmise that the wily beast wanted to lead me on a merry chase before revealing its true flavor.

Final Numbers
OG: 1.046
FG: 1.009
ABV: 4.82%
IBU: 32.8
Yield: 49 x 12oz
Tasting Notes
Rocky tan head, dark brown, slight earthy aroma, classic english hops, roasty malt, hint of coffee.

Brewed 2/9/2008
My summer experiment with Simcoe hops was so successful that I thought repeating it would be in the best interests of science. You know, that whole repeatable results canard of which they’re so fond. Of course, I can’t just do exactly the same thing. For one thing, I’ve added the partial mash to my toolbox. And, for this brew, I decided to see if a new technique I just read about would help me get even more hoppy goodness out of my precious hops: late extract addition. In LEA, you only had a portion of the malt extract at the beginning of the boil. This lowers the gravity of the wort. Due to various forces of physics and chemistry, fewer IBUs are extracted from hops in higher gravity wort; thus, lowering the gravity of the wort should help extract more IBUs from the hops.

That, and I planned on actually doing the dry-hopping that I’d planned and failed to execute last time.

So here’s what it looked like:

Numbers
OG: 1.059
FG: 1.014
ABV: 5.87%
IBU: 55.9
Color: 14.6 SRM

Yield
31×12oz, 14×16oz

Tasting Notes
I still love me the Simcoe.
Appearance: Crystal clear, deep amber going to red. Cream colored head. Very appealing.

Aroma: Early on, the dry hopping brought out something of what I’ve learned is a characteristic “cat-pee” quality (but in a good way!). That’s faded over time. Now it’s mostly the typical tropical fruit, almost sticky aroma.

Flavor: Bring on the fruity. On the hoppy side of things, but not too much. For all of my thought and tinkering on the grain bill, this ale is all about the hops, and I should probably simplify the grains with that in mind.

Mouthfeel: Medium to full. Finishes clean.

Overall: This is a recipe to make again. I’d like to boost the graininess.

Woke up this morning unable to find a white board, notebook, spare envelope, or even a pen. Until it was too late.

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Grandparents’ Day was on Sept. 7. In keeping with my being late for just about every holiday, public and private, here’s my homage.

I only have one grandparent still living (Hi, Nana!), but I have fond memories of Granny & Grandpa, and Papa. On this Grandparent’s Day, I’m resurrecting a poem I wrote in the fourth grade. One of the finest of my juvenile works, I present to you,

Grand Ol’ Grandparents

Grandparents are sweet,
And so very, very neat.
They live threw some grand times
And carry some grand chimes.
They carry memory
And maybe some History.
They ride the first car,
And become my star.

Grandparents are smart
And eat raspberry tart.
They sleep, sleep, sleep,
And are sweet, sweet, sweet.
They won old, old rocking chairs,
And have stories of their afairs.
They have an old wood tub,
And stuffed animals to rub.

—1980

As I get older, I marvel at the sagacity I displayed in recognizing the wisdom of eating raspberry tart.

Thanks to Jeffrey Overstreet for pointing the way to this wonderful film on Sacred Harp, or shape note, Singing. You can watch it for free this week by going to this link.

On playing disc golf in the dark with glow-in-the-dark discs:

• Champion/candy plastic is the only way to go. The white discs I had were still too opaque to be useful.
• Be sure the park you’re at is actually, you know, dark. Playing in the dark is challenging; constantly being blinded by night glare then having to navigate in the night is just not fun.
• Never play alone. Apart from the security concerns about roaming through woods at night (which is why the park was practically flooded with light), once your disc goes horizontal in flight, you’re not going to be able to see it no matter what lighting method you use.
• Those little LEDs sure look cool, but for the money, the glow ropes are A-OK.

On going to the zoo:

• Get the membership. Apart from admission from your local zoo, how can you go wrong getting reciprocal admission to zoos across the nation.
• Don’t go on days that are hot and crowded. The animals aren’t having fun, and neither will you.

On using MS-Word’s Indexing feature

• Ctrl-C anc Ctrl-V are your very bestest friends.
• “Mark All” is a wildly dangerous tool.
• Wow. This is cool.

On September

• Yey! It’s brewing season.
• Boo. The basement is still too warm, and I’ve still got a list of chores the length of my arm to complete the Reorganization of Chez Truffin.
• Yey! School started.
• Boo. I would never in my life want to be 16 again.

On Reading
After I started reading my third Patrick O’Brian novel since she’s been here, Stephanie asked if he was my favorite author. She didn’t appear to trust me when I said, “No.”