nuxx.net – Page 245 – Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

Beer Recipes

May 16, 2005

[Cross posted to and .]

In case anyone is interested, I’ve finally added some beers to the recipe section of my website. While I’ve now brewed five beers, there are only two recipes. This is because I only plan on posting recipes for beers that I (and others) really liked. The crappy / experimental / currently unfinished ones will not be posted. As I acquire or come up with other good recipes, they will be posted.

These have also been changed a bit from my personal notes into more logical steps. The wording isn’t the greatest, but hopefully they are good enough to follow.

Here’s the current recipes:

· California Style Imperial Pale Ale
· Golden Ale

More… Food…

May 14, 2005

Click for huuuuuge…

So for the last while, I’ve been wanting to make the Baked Macaroni and Cheese recipe from the Good Eats episode For Whom the Cheese Melts 2. Well, today I went and picked up the ingredients, and said she’d stop by to eat (some of) it with me, so I made it. That picture up above? That’s some of it…

I took the recipe, substitued Clancy’s Fancy Hot Sauce for the paprika, and made it. I really do think it came out good, even if I didn’t brown the bread crumbs enough. In addition, the aforementioned recipe seemed to vary slightly from my memories of that particular episode of the TV show, so I ended up reading a transcript of it to fill in the details.

I’ve also got two other pictures of it, one of the whole dish and another looking down into the dish after a scoop had been taken out.

Beyond the macaroni and cheese, it seems that the krausen has mostly fallen away, so tonight was also supposed to be the time for racking the Rochefort 10-ish Clone that I’ve been brewing. After moving the carboy to the counter and propping it to facility racking, it seemed to be releasing a bit of CO₂. One can even see the trails of bubbles in the full res shot of the carboy from behind. To be certain it’s not from yeast, I’m going to let it sit until tomorrow and rack then. After that point, the secondary fermenter will be relegated to the basement for at least a month and a half of aging and clarifying before being bottled and allowed to age for a further ten weeks.

Hopefully it’ll be good… I’ll also check the density tomorrow so I can see how far along the fermentation has gotten, how alcoholic it is, etc. That will also require me to take a taste. < crosses fingers >

beer food moved from livejournal

Random Photos…

May 12, 2005

As I tend to do, I take photos of random crap that I find interesting. Well, I figure people here might find them interesting too, so here’s some of the random photos I snapped today:

· Stuff I picked up at Red Wagon Wine Shoppe today.
· Junk mail that I received which tries to play on the fear of someone becoming the next Terri Schiavo.
· A sternly worded cage around a mole trap placed under my bedroom window.
· Evil spiky parts of the trap which will kill the mole. (Pictured above…)
· Flowers on a tree out in the court yard by my condo.
· Detail of the aforementioned flowers…
· Growing bit of pinetree…

Oh, also, I picked up a four-pack of this beer: Dogfish Head’s 90 Minute IPA. I can’t wait to try it.

beer found things moved from livejournal

!!!

May 12, 2005

Click for moblog…

So, yeah. In order to better contend with the extra bright light problem here at work I’ve expanded on my previous monitor hood. This still doesn’t solve my problem of having to sit under such bright lights, but at least I can see my monitor better.

Next I think I’ll make an actual wooden one with a nice matte black finish on the inside.

making things moved from livejournal work

!!!

May 11, 2005

Also, large appliance repair information doesn’t appear to be available online.

I *think* I need a new thermostat for my fridge, but I’m not sure.

UPDATE: Rock. It seems that repairclinic.com allows you to email them with questions about what could be wrong, and they’ll reply with info, offering to sell you the part. I sent this:

Recently my refrigerator has been seeming to run quite a bit, and during this time the temperature swings tremendously. In the freezer compartment the temperature will regularly swing from -20°F up to +40°F.

When playing with the refrigerator temperature control, the compressor doesn’t kick on or off until the knob is almost at it’s maximums. For example, I just had to turn it to off in order to turn the compressor off, and then up more than 70% through the dial’s travel before it turned on.

Could this be a bad thermostat? Or, do you think it could be something else? I’ve already ensured that the condenser and all surrounding components are free of dust, but this hasn’t remedied the problem.

Thanks for any suggestions you can give…

So, now we wait!

around the house moved from livejournal

!!!

May 10, 2005

Click for huuuuuuge!

Yay! I finally picked up a wort chiller… I was planning on making one, but the materials would have cost around $18 – $20, and if I screwed up the bending of the tube and crimped it, I’d be out around $16 of that cost. This one, pre-made from Cap ‘n’ Cork near my house was $36.50. Not bad, and it saves me the hassle of making one.

These devices are typically hooked up to a cold water supply, then you submerge the coil in hot wort (sugary stuff for fermenting into beer) and it chills it. Yeah, the price is a little high, but I’d been spending around US$6/batch on ice. So as long as this works out well, it should pay for itself in around six uses.

With any luck I’ll rack this current batch of extra-strong stuff to the new carboy I picked up today. Then it’ll get parked in the basement for a good month and a half to two months of bulk aging. While this is aging I’ll make up another batch of the golden ale (beer #3) that people seemed to rather like. I personally thought it was great, too…

acquired things beer moved from livejournal

!!!

May 10, 2005

Hey everyone! Want to know why it’s important to clean the coils on your fridge once in a while?

Because a condenser that looks like this doesn’t do a very good job of bleeding off heat!

Fortunately mine now looks like this…

Not that things can just be good, mind you. I think my fridge needs a new thermostat, as the temp know has to be turned to about 10% short of either extreme in order to have it turn on and off. (I take this to mean the thermostat has a HUGE range of temperature fluctuation.)

I’ll give it another few days and see what happens. This would really be a nice time to have a data logger so that I could record how much the temperature really does swing.

around the house moved from livejournal

Fridge…

May 10, 2005

Click for more info…

So, I’m thinking that I need a new fridge. Mine has been acting iffy for the last while, and now it’s seeming that the freezer will swing from just above freezing to -20F. So either I need to clean the coils or get a new fridge. :( I really don’t like laying out that kind of money, especially because it’s around the price of a new laptop, just for a fridge! Ah well…

Oh, I was curious what people here might think of the fridge shown above. I’m thinking that a french door fridge (both doors open to one large compartment) might be rather nice, and with the freezer on the bottom it’d be both a bit easier and more efficient.

Thoughts?

acquired things around the house moved from livejournal

Beer!

May 7, 2005

Well, between that last post and when I woke up, the beer really took off. It is fermenting so vigorously that krausen (foam) from the beer is regularly flowing all the way from the carboy to the bucket. The line even occasionally becomes clogged (this is a 1.5″ line, mind you) and there is a sudden GURGLE sound audible throughout the whole house when the clog pops free.

Here’s some extra photos and videos of this:

· Fermentation assembly ~17 hours after pitching yeast.
· Detail of the carboy, actively fermenting away.
· Blowoff bucket full of stuff.
· Krausen and trub flowing through the blowoff tube. (Video)
· Krausen moving from the carboy into the blowoff tube. (Video)
· Krausen bubbling into the bucket, and the line occasionally getting plugged. (Video)

So, yeah… It’s definitely fermenting well.

Also, I just realized that I haven’t had any caffeine since Thursday morning, which would explain the dull headache that I’ve got. Must remedy that sometime today, I think… Or, maybe I’ll just hold out for a while. Hmm.

Anyway, time to go eat food… I’m feeling hungry.

beer moved from livejournal

Rochefort 10 Clone-ish

May 7, 2005

[Crossposted to and .]

Click for gallery…

Well, after arriving home from consuming a few pints of a locally brewed Hefeweizen with friends I checked on my Rochefort 10 clone-ish and it seems to be fermenting. Yay! With an OG of 1.120 – 1.130 it’s definitely going to be strong, and I had some concerns about there being enough yeast to get things going. However, I did a two-pint starter (first pint made, then a second pint of wort added later) and it seems to have taken. There are bubbles ~6 hours after pitching…

Anyway, if you’re interested in the recipe, it’s available here: http://www.nuxx.net/files/beer5_notes.txt

The original intention was Rochefort 10 clone, but due to available grains, slightly varying hops, and other iffyness, I’m going to call it a somewhat modified clone-ish beer. Hopefully it’ll be good… There’s a lot of aging in store for this batch, and I can see it taking up through autumn before it’s properly aged, but that’s fine. Something of this strength needs some time to settle down.

If you’re interested, a few pictures from today’s brew are available here: http://www.nuxx.net/gallery/rochefort10clone

Here’s links to some of the individual pictures that I find notable:
· Partial mash, right after the grains were added.
· Wrapped up pot to keep the heat in during mashing.
· Grains before sparging.
· Grains after sparging. (Note how much lighter they are…)
· High res shot of sparged grains, great for wallpaper.
· 11 lbs of DME and 1 2/3 lbs of amber Belgain candi sugar.
· Hydrometer showing a rather high OG.
· Before fermentation began.

So, yeah. That’s it… Enjoy. Hopefully you’ll like this beer if you try making it, as well…

beer moved from livejournal