A Beer and a Dog

"Why should I blog about brewing?", I asked. "Nothing like a beer and a dog...", So Sayeth Virtual Wayne.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

The day started out full of hope...


Then, I woke up. I was gonna bottle my Biere de Garde this AM but noticed that the gelatin was still floating on the top of the beer and that the beer was still cloudy. Damn. Maybe next week. Then after returning to bed and enduring anther round of fitful dream action, I got up and went to commune with dear ole Daddy. (Hack hack! Cough, cough!) Yeah, I know.

Looked for a device that I thought that I had that would allow me to cork the Belgian bottles... and found none. I did run across a Champagne bottle full of Mead that I made four years ago, corked, and full. (At least there's that. Save it for some special, spatial day.) I guess that I can cap what champagne bottles that I have left and use beer bottles for the rest of the Biere when I bottle.

The American Amber Ale is coming along well in the Primary and I will transfer it to the Secondary on Tuesday, my day off this week. I have an ounce of Cascade to put in it to dry hop.

Today I was planning to assemble the buckets on the inside corners of the deck for Trish to plant tomatoes in and I can still do that. Maybe mow the yard if it dries out enough. The yard looks like it needs it sorely. And tomorrow I do the truck, so I should have no trouble getting to sleep early after doing all of that. Amazing how little work wears me out these days.

I have a pain in the joint of my jaw; I suspect that it is from grinding my teeth during the night - and during the day when I don't realize it. Stress. Mucho stress. Damn.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Time to bottle my Biere de Garde 2.1

It's time to bottle my Biere de Garde, brewed about 4 weeks ago. I plan to use several Saison bottles that I got from Shysaboy and the rest in 12 oz. bottles. The Saison (and a couple of champagne bottles) will be corked - Something that I've done before several years ago and am rusty on doing. I'll get it figgured out by bottling time. I should look up corking bottles on the web just to make sure I do it correctly. I have about 5 gallons to put up. work around the campfire is that it takes 10 weeks to 18 months to bottle condition a Biere de Garde, and I dunno what the big descrepancy is all about. Maybe it depends on the yeast used? The temperature at which they are to be conditioned in, who knows at this point. Not me. Hopefully it will be properly conditioned before I 'sample' it all away, which happens from time to time when home brewing. Tomorrow's the day!

Friday, May 29, 2009

After work, went to Blues Barbecue....


Had a couple beers and a Honcho Burger & Fries at Blues BBQ after work tonite. The burger is a burger with a big heap of pork BBQ on it, and tonite they loaded the motha up! Had to eat it with a knife & fork. Ah, it was so good. I ate al fresco so I could smoke a good cigarette while waiting. They pipe blues music out to the sidewalk so you don't miss anything but the no smoking and the sports channels on their 4 HDTVs. Screw the sports, I want beer and BBQ, music and the solice of a table where I can talk to people without having to shout should I so desire. (When they have bands with acoustic instruments, you can have a conversation in the bar.... But it wasn't the case tonite. ) Besides, I wanted to enjoy the spring night with my friends: Beer, food, and good music. An oasis in Roanoke, to be sure.

In for a dollar, in for a shitload of dollars...

I was discussing the Gummint Bailout with Virtual Wayne. We came to the consensus that the bailout is having an ill effect on us all and the had the bahstids left the thing alone, the market would have taken care of things. But no. They had to screw with it. "GM (as an example) is too big to fail" And so they shoveled money into the banking system and bloated businesses and all for naught. 'They might as well have said, "In for a dollar, in for a shitload of dollars"', said VW. Bahstids, bahstids all!, said CyberDave. Let's go brew beer and get toasted.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

American Amber Ale

I brewed a batch of AAA on Thursday, my day off this week. Nothing spectacular happened... no boil-overs, no spillage of ingredients, not much damage to any of the equipment (there was an incident where one of the hoses that carries water to the chiller touched the hot frame of my cooker and melted a little hole or two thru the hose, squirting the tiniest of streams of water onto the surroundings, but a little Duct Tape will cure that) and I still have plenty of propane left to make a couple more beers. Wound up with 5+ gallons of beer in the Primary. I'll drop an ounce of Cascade hops into the Secondary Fermenter to give the hoppy flavour that I desire on Wednesday of next week, perhaps.

I have a carboy of Biere de Garde in a Secondary Fermenter that I hope to bottle on Sunday. I've put geletin in to help clear it up. I do this from time to time when I brew and it does an excellent job if you wait til the nasty stuff descends to the yeast bed. I've had a couple cases where globs of geletin wound up in bottles of beer and it looked (and felt) like there was snot in the bottom. Mmmmm.... Snotbeer! Quite embarrassing when it is a gift bottle.

Not one of these.. these... FAUX CyberDaves... but the TRUE CyberDave!


About CyberDave

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Contract engineering, working in the field in which I truly love: Mechanical Design.

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"Bonus Nachos!" as we say on my planet. "And CHEERS!"