Doing Ginger -- Again

As I was getting dressed today, I thought of a joke that was sent on my Yahoo group email.      

A man is sitting at home on the veranda with his wife and he says,

"I love you."

She sarcastically asks, "Is that you or the beer talking?"

He replies, "It's me............. talking to the beer."

I was ironing a shirt that I got from one of my daughter’s best friends that says, “I ‘heart’ beer.”  I realized that I do love beer.  Maybe not more than my wife?  Ok she will read this so I should say not more than my wife.  The point is I really care about beer. Ok I love it.

We were brewing an all grain English Ginger beer on the 26^th of March.  It was our first 15-gallon all-grain beer.  We did the recipe last year as an extract on the fly and loved the results. We named it Doing Ginger. (Let’s face it -- everyone loves Mary Ann, but everyone just wants to Do Ginger.)

We did 3 yeast starters because we were going into three 5-gallon carboys.  It was a challenging brew session due to the fact that even though we followed the brew software we were still short on sparge water!  WTF?  Our gravity turned out dead on with our adjustments.  Our final outcome will be determined upon the the opening of first bottle and tapping of Jeff’s keg.

Now here comes the fun part …

At 7:30 on Friday, as I was getting the brew room ready, my wife Julie came out and said, “You need to come inside now!”  I said, “Why?” thinking the dogs had left a treat, or the cat had brought her kill in the house. I found out water was coming though the tile in my kitchen. Hooray! Come to find out the dishwasher had been malfunctioning for several days.  Did this stop us? Hell No!  We just kept on putting towels down and kept on getting ready for the brew session.  I did cut off the water supply to the dishwasher.  Had to make it look like I knew what was going on.

On Monday the restoration company and the plumber told me to contact my insurance agent.  Yes at this point I am screwed.  Even if everything is paid for, my brew center will be disrupted until May.  Right now we have 15 gallons of Doing Ginger English Ale waiting to go from primary to secondary.  This will not happen until I can clean my kitchen.  Hopefully this will be the week of Monday, April 4th.  Once the fans are removed, I can clean the kitchen of all the debris that the fans and the destruction have caused.

We hope to go into secondary early this week.  We will bottle/keg when the beer is ready.

If this is like the last year, you will love Doing Ginger.  We did.

Muffin (aka Scott)

Brew Day!

Team Golden Cock flies without a net today!  First, we bottle our Irish Red Ale extract from the last session, then we bottle Streudel's latest batch, THEN we brew the all-grain Irish Red Ale.

Stay tuned!

Irish Red Extract Transfer

Well, Muffin transferred the Irish Red Ale Extract batch last (Sunday) night.  Sans the rest of us.  I wusssed out and decided not to drive 3 or more hours each way for all of an hour of work, including prep and clean up.  From his description, it looks like the the red ale is really going to be amber or copper, like all of the other "red" ales we sampled last week after brewing.  The specific gravity was 1.020, which is about right for the end of primary fermentation, and the flavor profile seems to be lining up with our tasting notes and expectations.

But where is the red ale?

Scone and Muffin scoured the shelves in some of the better Charflotte-area beer purveyors last week, and I did the same here in the Raleigh area over the past few days.  We can't seem to find any really red ales.  Which begs the question about whether there are so few red ales because no one wants them, or does no one want them because they are so hard to find?

If we manage not be such slackers this week, maybe we can get our tasting notes from brew night posted soon.

Our Hobby...Our Passion

Homebrewing is the hobby you can drink.

It is the hobby that doesn't leave a lot of extraneous stuff lying around. Sure, you may have shelves and bins full of equipment, but when the brew is done, drunk, and gone, there really isn't a whole lot left. There may be a few empty bottles (or if you are really lucky or skilled) a few empty kegs lying around. Those get recycled or re-used. Scone pointed this out last night after the clean-up was done. Homebrewing doesn't leave a lot of "stuff" behind. And that is a good thing.

Beer isn't meant to linger. Sure there are some brews that you can cellar and take out for vertical tastings. Most brew, commercial, craft, or otherwise, is meant to be enjoyed while fresh and delicious. Beer doesn't have sulfites. It might have a lot of hops. It might not. Unless you are shipping beer half way around the world by sailing vessel, beer produced at brewery A should arrive at bar/shelf B in a few days or a few weeks after it is done. Beer is brewed, fermented, contained, shipped, and enjoyed. Repeat as necessary, preferably often.

So, how much time and money can you save as a homebrewer? Slim to none, and Slim just left town. Seriously, you might break even if the volume and rate of brewing reach a certain level. Homebrewers enjoy brewing and the camaraderie. They enjoy making and sharing the beer they made. They enjoy the "big fish" stories -- the brew that got away. But most of us certainly aren't saving or making money.

We do it because we it are passionate about good beer.

What is the difference between homebrewers and craft brewers? Craft brewers have made their hobby and passion the avocation they hope others will drink and enjoy.

Did I mention that homebrewing is the hobby you can drink? I'm thirsty.

Jeff Riehm, a.k.a Cupcake

"Give a man a beer, waste an hour. Teach a man to brew, and waste a lifetime!" -- Bill Owen

My Decision...My Choice

Life is hard!

Big picture stuff, huh!

From the beginning, everything we do is difficult. We’re born and the proverbial life clock starts ticking. Childhood is all about learning about what not to do; after you’ve already done it. Think about how many times you heard, “It’s for your own good.” Teenagers are nature’s oddities much like carnival sideshow freaks on steroids. Being a teenager is about as uncomfortable as eating raw oysters, standing in a bucket of prunes, naked except for the sign around your neck which states that you love velour, while in front of 40,000 people at Wrigley Field. Oh, and I forgot to mention that your Grandmother is walking through the stands showing everyone the new underwear which she made for you embroidered over and over again with, “Light My Fire!”

And so far we’ve only discussed approximately a quarter of your eventual life!

Adulthood is such a peach. The following words adequately describe the next fifty-five years of our lives. College. Inebriation. Graduation. Debt. Unemployment. Employment. Engagement. Marriage. Home-ownership. Debt. Relocation. Parenthood. Promotion. Blackberry. Nuclear-Family. Weight-Gain. Cynicism. Weight-Loss. Viagra. Surgery. Flirtation. Temptation. Termination. Unemployment. Debt. Estrangement. Divorce. Regret. Cancer. Retirement. Suspicion. Bitterness. Death.

Did I mention that life is hard? The irony is that the older we become, the more we wax philosophical for our teenage years.

Life is a speeding car with black-out windows. You only see what’s in front of you and miss everything else as it goes flying by. Don’t believe me? Here’s a simple example. Go to a movie with your friends, significant other, spouse or children and turn off your communication device of choice for just two hours. Now…what’s the first thing that you want to do when the movie is over? Give up? That’s right, turn on your cell phone out of some unidentifiable urge to reconnect to the grid. I double dog dare you to not check your phone, once, while dining with family during your next evening out together.

Psychobabble, you say!

What does this have to do with beer and home brewing, you mutter!

See that’s just the point. Why would we do anything else in our prospective, difficult-laden lives which would make something completely effortless, completely problematic? Keep it simple, stupid! Sound advice and yet so absolutely ignored by us home brewers on a regular basis. The most uncomplicated path would be to simply drive to the store and purchase your beer of choice already ice cold; readily drinkable. We jump back in the car, take the five minute drive home, plunk ourselves down in our comfy chair, pop the top and imbibe at will. Repeat process at end of six-pack, twelve-pack or case. Ah, satisfaction and gratification.

Not us home brewers. Recalcitrant and stubborn, we spend hours formulating, researching, discussing, acquiring, cleaning, sanitizing, brewing, recleaning, fermenting, waiting, transferring, waiting, bottling, waiting for our concoction to mature to drinkability. Brew days can exceed ten hours from start to finish. Spouses roll their eyes at the allusion of beer. Neighbors lock their doors and unplug their phones so as not to hear about how you are going to challenge the craft brew industry with your latest batch of Applewood Smoked Butternut Squash Ale. Want banishment from the next neighborhood meeting? Become a home brewer with a propensity to adequately describe every hop variety grown throughout the world for the third or fourth time to everyone within earshot.

John Wayne is given credit for the following quote. “Life is hard; it’s harder if you’re stupid!”

I think that adequately describes what we do as brewers of beer. Hard does not begin to describe what it takes to brew an average beer. Stupid does not begin to express my voluntary choice to participate in this hobby.

I would not have it any other way.

Matthew Cary, a.k.a Scone