Dead Goat Breath IPA

So far I've made an Amber Ale, a Pilsner, and a Red Ale, all from True Brew ingredient kits. I haven't tried the Red Ale yet, but the others were excellent. This time around I wanted to make an IPA, but when I went to get the ingredient kit there were no more IPA kits left.

Thomas Creek will put together all the ingredients for you from any recipe though so I still wound up getting what I needed to make an IPA. I had been thinking it was time to move away from the ingredient kits to get more variety, but wasn't sure if I really wanted to do that yet. I am now certain that I won't be doing any more kit beers. I haven't even moved this batch from the fermenter to a keg yet, but it just seems to be at a much higher level than the kit beers were. The grains and hops all smelled far better than the ones that come in the kits and fermentation was far more active as well. I'm still doing malt extract based beers, just not using the pre packaged kits. Eventually I'd like to start doing all grain beers, but I don't see that happening with my current schedule.

Ingredients:

• Crystal 120 8.0 ounces
• DME Light 7.0 pounds
• Fuggles (Finishing) 1.0 ounces
• Irish Moss 1.0 package
• Wyeast #1335 British Ale II 1.0 package

Recipe:

1. Place cracked grain in bag and add to 2 to 2-1/2 gallons of water.
2. Allow grains to steep for a minimum of 30 minutes. (150 to 155F is ideal)
3. Remove grain bag and dissolve DME in brew pot. Make sure that DME is completely dissolved before applying heat.
4. Bring mixture to a boil
5. Add bittering hops, set timer for 35 minutes
6. Add Irish Moss, set timer for 25 minutes
7. Add finishing hops, set timer for 2 minutes
8. Cool wort to 70 to 80F
9. Add wort to fermenter and fill fermenter to 5 gallons.
10. Add pitched yeast to fermenter
    

First 6 Months With iPhone

I decided to keep the iPhone since I wasn't able to find a phone on the market at the time that would cover all of my needs. Overall I'm glad I kept it, but at the same time I still have some pretty major issues with it and will replace it when I find an appropriate phone, probably an android based phone when the are available.

The biggest disappointment with the iPhone is that it is pretty much unusable while driving, or even riding in a car. I know a lot of people say you shouldn't be using a phone while driving anyway, but the iPhone is far worse than most other phones. I can't make a quick call or respond to an SMS at all while driving. I thought I would get used to it, but the lack of a real keyboard makes it so that you have to look at the screen the entire time you are typing a message or trying to dial a number. Even answering the phone requires looking at the screen while other phones can be answered without a glance. When riding in a car as a passenger every tiny bump while trying to type a message results in the wrong key being pressed.

The second biggest disappointment is the continuing lack of push email. I didn't think this one would really bother me that much since I've never had a phone with full email capabilities before. Now that I've been using it for a while I see how push email really is a requirement for a smart phone. Although I have the iPhone set to check mail every 15 minutes it can go many hours without checking for new mail. It seems to only check for mail if I open the mail client software to see if I have mail regardless of the 15 minute setting.

The Internet applications don't seem to crash like they did when I first got the iPhone, but Safari does still crash from time to time. The crashes seem to occur if I am attempting to look at a site while using the Edge network (which is very slow) and there are a lot of slow loading images on the page. I'm not sure, but it appears the crash is due to some kind of timeout waiting for data and not due to the file size of the images on the page.

I've been using my phone as my alarm clock for a while now. Overall it works well, but it would be nice if I could set it to play songs randomly from a play list instead of being limited to playing one of the few ring tones Apple decided to let me use. Speaking of the arbitrary limitations Apple decided to implement, you still can't record audio or video with the iPhone, or at least you can't do it without hacking it. On top of all that it still does not support MMS, or attaching a photo, sound file, or movie to text messages. It can't even read them when a friend sends me one. This seems like it would be a simple fix, even if there is a hardware limitation preventing it, the networking capability through wifi and edge networks should offer some workarounds.

Ok, now that I've gotten the various things about the iPhone that annoy me out of my system I'll point out some of the things I like about it. Some of the things I like about it may work just as well on other phones too.

By far the most important feature to me of the iPhone is not a supported feature. The first app I installed after hacking my iPhone is the SSH client. With this I've been able to get emergency work done on servers several times. Once I actually restored files from a backup for a friend while sitting in Animal Kingdom at Disney. Yeah, I hate that I had to interrupt my vacation to do that, but it was a big deal to my friend and I would have had to take a bus back to the hotel to do it if I hadn't had SSH on my phone.

One of the features I didn't think I would really like that much is having an mp3 player built into my phone. To me I'd rather my phone be a communications device and save the battery for that purpose. I hate the idea of killing my phone battery because I was listening to music or an audiobook. I can gladly say I was wrong on this. Yeah, I might kill the battery of the phone while listening to music, but it is far better to have just one device I have to carry with me all day, remember to charge, and try not to drop. So far battery life hasn't been a real issue unless I forget to charge it, or when my wife and I travel together and wind up trying to share a charger.

The weather app on the phone looks nice, but there are several web sites with better and more up to date weather information. I've been using http://i.wund.com/ from Weather Underground lately and it has really helped me when making plans for outdoor activities.

Having the ability to read email on phone means I wind up spending a lot less time in front of the computer. I used to grab my laptop a few times a night on weeknights and several times a day on weekends just to check my mail and waste time surfing the web when I could be working around the house or relaxing in a hammock in the back yard.

So overall I like the iPhone, but I still want something a little more robust and with fewer restrictions.

Red Gnat Ale

Red Gnat Ale was made from a True Brew ingredient kit following the included recipe. The kids didn't like the way the house smelled after brewing so I moved brewing operations to the back yard a few batches ago. In this case a small gnat fell into the brew pot early in the brewing process so we named it in memory of the insect. Yes, we did remove the gnat almost immediately.

While preparing for this brew I discovered that both the top and bottom of the case for my hydrometer were removable. Unfortunately the discovery that the bottom is removable came as the hydrometer was dropping onto the floor where it shattered. So for this batch I don't have a record of the specific gravity at start time. (nor when it was done and put in a keg). To make matters worse I was busy and completely forgot to check on it in the first few days it was in the fermenter. I have no starting gravity and I never saw it fermenting so I don't know if it actually fermented. It appeared to have fermented, but I can't be 100% sure. We will have to see what it tastes like once it is done aging. I did sample it while moving the beer from the fermenter to the keg and it tasted like beer, hopefully that is a good sign.

Brewed: 04-27-2008
Kegged: 05-04-2008

A New Hobby

I took up making homebrew beer a little under a year ago when for father's day last year my kids got me a Mr Beer homebrew kit. This kit makes 2.5 gallon batches of beer flavored water and was a fun start to my new hobby.

For Christmas of last year my wife stepped it up a notch by getting me a kegorator kit to convert the mini fridge we had in the garage to a 5 gallon CO2 pressurized beer tap system. With this setup we could have the homebrew on tap and not have to deal with bottles. After destroying the mini fridge we had, buying a new mini fridge, destroying that one, and then finally buying a third mini fridge we had a working kegorator.

Being as lazy as I am I didn't want to have to make 2 batches one after another in the Mr Beer kit, especially since each batch takes several weeks to ferment. We were off to Thomas Creek, a local brewery that has a small homebrew shop of homebrew supplies. There we got a 5 gallon homebrewing kit and our first ingredient kit to go with it. We were really impressed with the quality of our first real batch of beer and have continued brewing and consuming several more batches.

Today we have a Red Ale aging in a 5 gallon keg and an IPA that just finished fermenting in the carboy. Once the IPA has finished settling I'll be moving it over to our second 5 gallon keg to begin aging.