Brewhaus Blewz

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Wednesday morning, Izzy & I met up with Big Ben for some Big League Brewing at Elevation 66… and it was just the three of us doing the brew. Well, Super Dave was there observing but… yeah, it was pretty fantastic. Before when I’ve been able to spend the whole day there, six or seven people were helping out… but here’s the thing… two of those guys are now starting jobs at other breweries (where they actually get paid) and the others have kind of feathered out… so yeah, a lot more hands on learning & I love it when I get a chance to help out.

 

How did I get away from the job to help out? Well… it was because I had to take the day off (and Thursday) for a Quick Trip to Utah… for family estate stuff involving my recently deceased father. Yes, “recently” means just over six months ago… but yeah, not going to lie… it’s been a little rough. Most of the time I’m pretty good… and then I’ll wonder if I’m being absolutely heartless by not having it be a huge deal in my daily life. Then other times, I’ll start tearing up over stupid sh*t that I see in a movie that I’ve even seen before… and then it’s like, “Where the hell is this coming from?” So yeah… fun stuff… but I’m doing fine…

 

As for the trip, I’m not going to go into details or anything… but basically there were only a few hours that weren’t completely occupied by stuff I rather wouldn’t have been doing & could’ve been resolved via email… I didn’t sleep well because the AC kept kicking on VERY LOUDLY at the hotel… and the last few hours I was in town, I got to spend some time with my brother for his birthday, C-Rock & Isaiah. They’ve been doing… not so good… but it was good to hang out with them & catch up. I also go to have gelato with my mom, niece & nephew. So yeah, for a 26 hour stay in the Beehive State, a lot was done.

 

Saturday, Izzy & I spent the day pretty much relaxing and playing video games… which may sound lame… but it really wasn’t… it was pretty awesome.

 

Saturday night, I met up with coworkers for a dinner & drinks at Roam Burger and then going to The Fillmore to see Anjelah Johnson a.k.a. Bon Qui Qui from “Mad TV” for a comedic musical performance that was actually pretty amazing. The comedy was tight… and the music with her husband’s band was pretty damn catchy and hilarious as well… I highly recommend to check them out on the Bon Qui Qui Tour… possibly coming to a town near you. Now… there’s only one picture… and it’s of us… boom…

 

Sunday morning, Izzy & I started our newest brew… the belated batch of Strawberry Hefeweizen for Clarissa & Andrew as a wedding present (married last month). This is the 3^rd time that we’ve made this fairly easy recipe so it’s been explained a little more in past entries… but basically it’s only a few pounds of wheat dry malt extract, one ounce of hops, and then strawberry puree in the secondary fermentation.

 

 

The main difference with this time… was the yeast. With every single batch that we’ve made before, we’ve used a vial of yeast from a brewshop… but this time, thanks to our FastFerment conical fermenter, we had a good batch of already active yeast from last week’s Dunkelweizen that we just pulled from its… I don’t know, “reservoir tip” at the base. Why do I mention this? Because it’s pretty awesome… previously with the vials, the reaction in the wort would take about 12 hours or something… and so it would start really doing its thing in the middle of the night & then we’d wake up to a mess of activity upon the carboy… but this time around… it was already blowing off in about two hours… pretty impressive. I think I’m really going to like this FastFerment thing…

 

So currently in our Brewhaus, we have this new batch of Strawberry Hefeweizen, Dunkelweizen in the FastFerment, our Cyser that’s probably ready to bottle soon, and we have our Chocolate Porter in the Whiskey Barrel. Not bad if I say so myself…

 

Another fun tidbit… about a month ago, a brewshop was handing out hop rhizomes that they had… and they were basically either expired or possibly diseased in all honesty… but we took some Columbus hop rhizomes to try planting in my backyard, just to see if they would work (and I had an open bucket) and… well, it’s sprouting pretty good…

Anyway, so it was a pretty busy weekend for being “quiet” but tune in next time… as there are a few movie preview screenings this week… and a trip to Tahoe this weekend coming up… so yeah, until then, have a great day everybody!!!

Brewing Up Some Fun

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Saturday, we did a Costco run and a lot of cleaning up around the apartment to make it hospitable… and we stopped by Izzy’s house to see how her pets are doing… but more importantly, see how our hops are growing…

 

but after running around the bay area, we ended up at Izzy’s Aunt’s place for a barbecue… and it was pretty fantastic. Great food, great peeps, and a few hours by the fire pit getting that camp smell all over us… good times…

 

Sunday was a busy brewday which started out with us brewing another batch of Dunkelweizen like we did a month ago. This batch is for an SFHG competition and the first batch was pretty fantastic to style… but it was also kegged… and nearly gone now due to deliciousness. We brewed the same recipe, the same way, the only difference this time around… is we’re using the FastFerment fermenter!!! We got the replacement part & it’s working just fine… so we’ll see how it does…

 

 The next morning, already foaming like crazy...

We also tried a new method of taking stickers off bottles… so now we can use most beer bottles for our own use with some cleaning. For example, we get a 12 pack of Anchor Porter… and now instead of recycling them, we can take the labels off & use them for our own brews. Heck, even label them ourselves if we so choose…

 

We also FINALLY bottled our barrel-aged Scotch Ale which had been sitting in our whiskey barrel for the past three months… it’s delicious…

 

We then immediately filled the barrel with our Chocolate Porter for a 3^rd round… and possibly the last one using the barrel that won’t be a sour ale… I’m interested to see how it turns out… but we’ve got a few months at least until it’s ready…

 

So yeah, busy little weekend… but nothing compared to the rest of this week, hence the quick update. More fun stuff coming soon though… have a great day everybody!!!

Little Beers & Little People

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Okay… first & foremost, I have to tell you about this movie that I had never heard of… and I’m a little angry because of it. That movie is 2003’s “Tiptoes” which is a smaller independent film… but with a cast featuring Academy Award winners Matthew McConaughey & Gary Oldman… along with peak Kate Beckinsale… Patricia Arquette’s crazy ass… and two of my favorites Peter Dinklage & David Alan Grier… yet I’ve never heard of it. HOW??? Well, let me tell you why… it’s a horrible movie. No, not the premise or message or anything… just the execution of the “story” and… wait, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me set the stage for this movie first… it’s the story of a well-to-do man (McConaughey) with an amazing apartment… and a superhot artist girlfriend (Beckinsale) who just dropped the bomb that… wait for it… she’s pregnant! So… the man becomes INCREDIBLY worried… not about being a father or something typical… but because he comes from a family of little people… and he’s afraid that his genes may lead to their progeny being little… oh & they’ve never met or really mentioned each other’s families apparently. Anyway, here’s a list of the actors & a basically synopsis of the characters that they play:

 

Matthew McConaughey – He plays an apparently wealthy firefighter trainer who’s concern over bringing a little person into this world, despite being a major part of a benefit for little people to start the movie, turns pretty f**king dark… where he destroys (the world’s weakest) wall in the doctor’s office when he finds out it’s going to be little… grows increasing distant for the first few months of the child’s life… and then basically kicks out his wife & child at the 2^nd act. How will the 3^rd act end? My guess is horribly…

 

Kate Beckinsale – She plays an artist who makes horrible, horrible life decisions (“you can just say artist, $teve”) and even worse art… and frankly, I don’t know who dressed her for this movie… but even though she’s Peak Kate Beckinsale, I’m barely even aroused by her because of her wardrobe choices & hairdos (there’s one that’s a mix of Bram Stoker’s Dracula & Princess Leia) and that’s not even to mention the RIDICULOUS stuff that she says… here’s an example of some of the awkward sentences that will be spoken in this movie: (to her fiancé McConaughey) “You had a circle jerk with a bunch of midgets… I’d love to see that.” Ugh… That’s some sexy pillow talk… (slide whistle down) I also still have no idea what the tattoo is on her arm but… my money’s on Anne Frank & Izzy’s is on Shirley Temple… either way, she’s getting judged justly & harshly.

 

Gary Oldman – Gary Oldman is an American treasure! “Ugh, $teve… Gary Oldman is English.” HE’S EVERYTHING!!! HE’S A F**KING CHAMELEON!!! The man could play a live-action Easter Bunny and I’m all in… you are too. However… this role… is just a ridiculous stretch. I’ll explain it slowly, please try to keep up with me. He plays… McConaughey’s brother… wait, there’s more… his TWIN brother despite 12 years real life age difference… and the makeup & abs make it look more like 30 years difference. Oh wait… there’s more… he’s also… a biker, WAIT!!! One more little thing… he also wears glasses. They want you to believe that Gary Oldman is Matthew McConaughey’s twin badass four-eyed biker brother… how crazy is that? Crazy, right? Yeah… HE’S ALSO A F**KING MIDGET!!! (Mind exploding!!!)

 

Peter Dinklage – This… may be my favorite. The great Peter Dinklage plays… Gary Oldman’s friend… who is a very proud & chauvinistic French Marxist biker… and everything that comes out of his mouth is f**king gold. However, I have a theory. Hear me out. I believe that Mr. Dinklage was supposed to play Gary Oldman’s character… and that originally there weren’t two biker characters, just him. Why do I think this? Well… I’m thinking that he was signed on… but in order to get funding for the movie, they wanted more name recognition (made in 2003 before “Game of Thrones”) so they brought in Gary Oldman… and thus the role was split. Furthermore… he doesn’t really do anything in the movie except bang Patricia Arquette’s character, spout French obscenities, have health issues for exposition about the struggles of little life… and has cornrows in one legendary funeral scene (that I assume was filmed separately from the rest, just on the way it’s shot). There’s no real reason for him to be in the story for progression.

 

Patricia Arquette – An extension of Peter Dinklage’s awkward addition is this character… who was THROWN OFF A BUS (no reason given) in the middle of the desert, I assume to die… and luckily right behind the bus… are two little people on big bikes to pick her up… and she & Peter Dinklage bang a lot… she has so little to do with this movie that I don’t think she changes clothes for any scene in this movie… just one outfit over the course or a year-plus.

 

David Alan Grier – He’s a showman & host of the little people fundraiser… and then is found banging Gary Oldman’s girlfriend later in the movie… it’s more of a cameo than anything else… for this Tony nominated actor. Good to see DAG in movies though.

 

The big question: Would I recommend that you watch this movie? Just to give you some perspective, when the two-hour cut of this movie was given to the studio, the director Matthew Bright was IMMEDIATELY FIRED and hasn’t worked in Hollywood since… and then the studio made some serious cuts & edits to get it to 90 minutes and… I think that’s why there’s a lot of loose threads & seemingly idiotic decisions… maybe that extra 30 minutes had some development points that were cut out… but yeah, probably not. It’s an interesting movie to watch with friends and basically make fun of… but yeah, if you want to see well respected actors do ridiculous things… and I loved little actors getting roles including the legendary Ed Gale as McConaughey & Oldman’s father… but yeah, it’s pretty bad. Watch while a little buzzed… and yes, you’ll have to rewind a few times because you thought you missed something… and you didn’t…

 

Sunday morning, we brewed a Chocolate Stout which we may later barrel age… but even if we don’t, we’ve made the same recipe in the past (with hazelnut extract) and we usually drink the keg in about three weeks… so it’s just a good recipe. Here are some pictures…

 

Another cool thing we found out at NHC was FastFerment which is a cool plastic conical fermenter with a reservoir in the bottom to collect the yeast during fermentation, a built-in thermometer to keep accurate track of the wort temperature during fermentation, and quick & easy switching of attachments for bottling, kegging and anything else that may need to be done. We are really excited to use it… but we ran into a problem when we added our wort into the FastFerment… and there was a little leak where the metal thermometer stand meets the plastic of the carboy/structure. It wasn’t much… but even at the miniscule rate, over the course of several weeks, it’ll basically drain anything above the leak (about two gallons of the five) AND there’s more possibility of infection (if wort can get out, other things can get in). So unfortunately we had to transfer to the standard glass carboys… but I’m sure we’ll get a new FastFerment quickly… or I might just have to work all the points where metal meets plastic with some epoxy or something. We shall see… here are some pictures of the process…

 

Next, we kegged our Dunkelweizen… which is the dark roasted German wheat beer recipe & due to a few scheduling things (graduation, graduation parties, weddings, NHC, etc) we weren’t able to really do a secondary fermentation, just kept it in primary for five weeks… so we’re curious how it’ll turn out… but if it’s anything like the sample from the hydrometer, it’s right on course for a 5% wheat beer and it tastes delicious…

 

More fascinating beer & movie related things to come this week… including movies so good that I decided to see them a 2^nd time!!! Yes, one of the ultimate compliments to movies made nowadays… watching it TWICE!!! IN A THEATRE EVEN!!! Until then, have a great week everybody!!!