We ran into some troubles because of a bone-headed screw up a few batches of beer ago and needed to find out if we had wrecked our beer with an inappropriate temperature too early in the process. If we had failed to exract fermentable sugars, or enough fermentable sugars we didn’t want to waste another 3+ hours monkeying with our brew. To find out whether we had screwed up our mash we performed an iodine test.

The procedure is simple. Get a small container and put a simple of your mash liquid in there (no grains!). Put a drop or two of Iodopher in there. If it turns black or blue you still have starches to convert. If there is no color reaction you’ve maximized the attenuation of your wort and you’re ready to sparge. It’s that easy and a best practice for good brewing.

Check out the homebrewing wiki’s page on the iodine test.

So we made our 3rd and what appears to be our most successful batch of our IPA on Monday evening. The entire process went incredibly smoothly, from mash to sparge to pitching and it seems the few variables we shifted were the right ones producing a yield we were hoping for.

Our 2nd batch of IPA was decent in flavor though the yield fell about 2.5 gallons short producing just around 3 gallons. We underestimated how much the industrial burners we use would boil down our wort and came up short. The malt character was very nice, but frankly it just wasn’t quite as hoppy as I felt it should be. So we adjusted two things to solve these issues.

First, we added more water to the mashing process to bring our yield up, as opposed to adding more water for the sparge. I got the idea off the AHA forum where someone was inspired by some papers they read on BrauKaiser.com that more water at mash will yield an extraction with a larger amount of fermentable sugars. So instead of a 1qt/lb mash we upped it to a 1.5qt/lb mash, and reduced our sparge water equally.

The first time I noticed a significant difference was in the boil over. Our wort went crazy with it’s frothy head that seemed to not want to relent no mater how much I stirred it down. This cappucino like head continued for probably 10 minutes where in the past the boil over threatens for little more than 3 or 4 minutes.

Our second indication that something was quite different – an insanely active initial fermentation – was probably a result of two variables: the higher extraction of fermentable sugars from the diastatic activity in the mash and the fact that we used a dry yeast instead of a liquid yeast.

I was forced to use a dry yeast when I rolled up to Brew & Grow and found they were out of their American Pale Ale slap packs. I initially thought I would make a yeast starter but after some research I found that not only is a starter unnecessary with dry yeast you don’t even need to rehydrate the dry yeast to make it active. In addition, dry yeasts contain over twice the amount of yeast cells that liquid yeast packs do making the party that much more active.

About 30 minutes into the brewing I pulled a couple cups of wort out and put them in an erlenmeyer flask, let that cool and pitched in the 11.5g pack of yeast. In about 20 minutes there was a frothy head and it was clear my yeast was hungry. After chilling the rest of the wort I pitched this tastyness in and let those bad yeasties rape and pillage the beer like they so want to do. After one day our beer was in a frenzy, with a several inch kreausen on there and CO2 spitting out every second.

I added a bit more hops on the bittering end this time around in hopes of balancing out some of the maltiness, but other than that I think we should be good to go. One thing I screwed up was forgetting to take the OG, which, especially in this case of a such a strong and different reaction, is pretty disappointing.

I don’t know if I’ll use dry yeast again, but my interest is definitely piqued. It couldn’t have been easier and it’s been a ton of fun to watch the beer really lose it’s mind a bit. I feel like we’ve finally found out how to tickle the demons inside that brew and get them to bloom more of the secrets they’ve got inside them. I shouldn’t speak too soon or claim success too early, but it certainly is enjoyable to see some new and strong reactions in the lab.

“Growlers have been around since Christ was a child,” Mr. Granger said. “We’re not doing anything new.”

In the late 19th century and the early 20th century, both The New York Times and The Brooklyn Eagle regularly published contentious stories about the containers, which then took the form of small galvanized pails. The articles cataloged the complaints of saloon keepers, who thought growlers cut into their profit, and those of temperance groups, who hoped to curb home drinking.

“Rushing the growler,” connoting children hustling pails of beer for adults from bar to table, was a common expression. The curious name is thought to be inspired by the rumbling noise escaping carbon dioxide made as the beer sloshed about in the pail.

In more modern times, growlers could be found at brew pubs like Heartland Brewery, which has served beer to go since opening in 1995. The jugs — which, according to the New York State Liquor Authority, have always been legal at both retail outlets and bars — have proliferated lately, said Heartland’s founder, Jon Bloostein, because there are more interesting beers to go in them.

Waxing your snowboard is a pretty enjoyable and brainless way to help stoke your excitement for your next trip.

Here’s what you need:

A Work Space
This gets a bit messy with shreds of wax turning your floor into a curling rink so make sure you’ve got a garage or basement or some place that can take some mess and clean up easy. I use my garage along with 2 saw horses. There’s a radio out there, plenty of light, all the tools I need and it sweeps out into the alley quick and easy.

An Iron
Pick one up used at a thrift store for a buck or two or buy one at Target for $15. Don’t waste your money on anything fancy (like this overpriced idiocy)
and don’t expect to use this to press your church clothes when you’re through.

Goo-Gone
You know the stuff, you can get it at just about any grocery store or pharmacy.

Wax
We used Cera Nova CH Wax 60g by Swix, it’s the medium grade or mid-temperature grade as we couldn’t get a good answer on what the temperature refers to, the ambient air temperature or the temperature of the snow. If somebody knows and could give a decent reason as to why the ambient air temperature would actually effect how your snowboard glides I’d love to hear it.

Paste
We used Dakine Snowboard Paste.

Scraper
I’ve used a CD case in the past and a ruler, any kind of hard straight edge that’s not terribly sharp should be fine.

Steel Wool
The cheaper the better.

Beer
I like a nice cold sessionable beer, most recently that’s been Half Acre’s Daisy Cutter.

Here’s what you do:

In good light, put your board on a long workbench or a couple saw horses. I find the saw horses work well as the bindings, nose and tail drop below your work level and don’t interfere. Scrub off any old wax with your Goo-Gone, just wet a rag with it and scrub.

Once your board is nice a clean take a chunk of your wax and rub it on the hot part of the iron until it starts to drip, then move your wax and iron across your board so you can get full coverage. An alternative way to do this is to cover your board with the wax like it’s a big crayon. This can help get you a more even coverage at the outset and may save you some time later.

Once you’ve got a decent coverage of wax go ahead and use the iron to spread it evenly all over the bottom of your board. Make sure every inch of your board that will be in the snow is covered evenly.

Take your scraper and, at about a 60* angle to your board start scraping off the wax in long strokes. Move from the front of your board to the back. Continue this until nothing but the bottommost layer of wax remains and all inconsistancies are smoothed out. You should be able to run your hand over your board and have it feel smooth.

Take your steel wool and buff it out good.

Finally, rub on your paste in circular movements. Wipe down real good with a soft towel.

There you go, just like that and you’re ready to enjoy a gorgeous mountain!

I recently got back from a trip up to northern Michigan and on the way we drove through a few small towns built on the shores of lakes. It drifted me back across the frozen landscapes of my childhood, staring out at tiny little houses dotting a barren white expanse, hard water as they call it. In South Dakota and Minnesota, where I grew up, this time of year ushered in a whole new season of sports, not of the exciting alpine variety but more of the head shaking, why the hell would anyone do that variety. There was snowmobiling, which is fun and makes sense if your not drunk and its light out, guidelines when not followed result all too often in decapitation by barb wire fence. I’m not kidding, nearly happened to two kids in my high school but luckily they both lived to tell the story of the rakish scars across their neck.

Here’s a pretty rad video of a guy carving like crazy on a snowmobile:

There were other stranger sports like trapping, which could be quite frightening.

The traps are generally set in places that are hard to both see and reach and are often occupied by understandably upset woodland creatures. If their not, than your not a good trapper. The all to common result is that you end up lying on your belly in three feet of snow, reaching under a fallen tree on a frozen creek and running into a pissed off and dying skunk. Believe me it’s a bad scene and hard to understand what makes it worth it.

There was also ice racing. Something I never did but a lot of the burnouts who used to beat me up in high school swore by it.

Basically it’s just racing with real long spikes on your tires. I think it comes in all sorts of classes, motorcycle, ATV, snowmobile etc. I suppose it’s fun but it strikes me as absolutely nuts to be racing at top speeds on ice with what essentially amounts to little spears on your wheels.

Really the only sport I ever got into much was ice fishing, more on tht later.

Damn, this kid is as good as he is ginger ugly.

Well, almost as good.

Bacon, bacon, bacon, blah, blah, blah. Blirrr, blam, blatz. Farb, harr, flim, flim, flim. Bacon, bacon… Oh, what’s this? Bourbon? Cookies?

The New York Times of all places has a recipe for a bacon infused Old Fashion.

Here’s a few other ideas on how to use that delicious porky effluvia.

Yeah! What that subject line said!

A to-be-published meta-analysis in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition supports my view that animal fat is nowhere as bad as we’ve been told a thousand times. It says:

During 5–23 y of follow-up of 347,747 subjects, . . . intake of [more] saturated fat was not associated with an increased risk of CHD [coronary heart disease], stroke, or CVD [cardiovascular disease]. The pooled relative risk estimates that compared extreme quantiles of saturated fat intake were 1.07 (95% CI: 0.96, 1.19; P = 0.22) for CHD, 0.81 (95% CI: 0.62, 1.05; P = 0.11) for stroke, and 1.00 (95% CI: 0.89, 1.11; P = 0.95) for CVD.

Emphasis added. One aspect of the results suggested that studies that found an positive association (more fat, more disease) were more likely to be published than those that didn’t find an association or found a negative association. Which means these numbers may underestimate the good effects.

I scrubbed this from this dude Seth’s Blog.

I kinda want to celebrate by eating my neighbors dog!

Holy crappers I can’t wait to get back on a mountain!!! It looks like Heavenly will be my first victim for this season. Can I go now??????

Just finished watching this documentary “Beautiful Losers” about the group of artists that rose out of the Alleged Gallery on the lower east side in the early nineties.  Some of them I knew by name, Shepard Fairey, Harmony Korine etc., but I recognized the work of all of them.  It’s really good stuff and a reasonably interesting and inspiring documentary.  It chronicles how they grew out of the skate and graffiti scene to became influential artists and culture makers branching out into advertising, graphic design and film making.  Any way, check it out, it made me get excited about painting again. Incidentally, Beautiful Losers is also a beatnik novel written by a young Leonard Cohen, you can pick it up for $10 on Amazon, it’s been eighteen years since I read it but I remember liking it.

Oh and Beautiful Losers also led me to this pretty rad Mark Gonzales skate video, dig it: