It’s getting cold here in Weedwolf’s Shitcago. In fact, today the lake front was shut down and manned by Escalades. I saw snow fall from the sky. I pulled the long underwear from my lingerie drawer.

All this means that my previous method of cooling our wort with a displacement chiller spitting upwards of 75 gallons of water out into the alley is no longer sustainable. Bummer.

Our first attempt at solving this problem was clunky and kind of retarded. Especially when I tell you how simple our solution was.

See, initially we thought we would daisy chain 2 displacement chillers together. We’d put one in the HLT with a bunch of ice and then run it through the pump, into the wort and then back to the ice to re-cool the water. The problem with this was that we had to introduce the garden hose to initiate the flow and without a T hookup this wasn’t going to happen.

While I was procrastinating getting the T I began wondering why we couldn’t just get rid of one of those displacement chillers and just pump out of the HLT full of ice water, into the wort and then dump the water back into the HLT. Which is exactly what we’re doing now.

The one pain in the neck is that we have to pull the chiller out of the wort and hold it below the pump initially to get it primed. Once primed, we pop the chiller into the wort and everything is fantastic and cooled to 70* in less than 30 minutes.

Now I just need to get one of those Blichmann plate chillers and all my life’s problems would be solved.

I’ve slowly come to realize while building our brew system that the tools and techniques compiled to create our beer are as much a part of us and our creation as the finished beverage that comes out of it. And, like every good work of art, this one, too, will never be finished. Transcended, maybe – most likely abandoned – but definitely never finished.

It will also never be pretty.

I spent a lot of time before we built this beast looking at really sharp, elegant systems on line, fantasizing that that is what our set up would someday look like. Lots of polished stainless, clean enclosures for electronics, switches, blinky lights and maybe even some finishing wood that could compensate for so many generations of this scotch-irish curse. Thumbing through all that beer nerd porn I bedazzled my foggy head into believing those shallow lies about my fleeting attention to aesthetics.

Now, working out of a garage that’s got surge protectors for switches and air-exposed pumps half-bolted to rusting metal that sets below huge volumes of open and hot liquid, honesty about my approach is a bit easier to come by. My system won’t ever win a beauty contest – or instill much confidence in the unimaginative – but, I wouldn’t fuck a Howitzer either and that seems to do just fine.

We got most of the parts for our kettles from weldlessfittings.com. And for the most part I’m very happy with what they have provided. The high-heat washers and bulkheads stand up as promoted and the construction was remarkably simple. Their instructions weren’t always the best, but the guys at weldlessfittings.com were always quick to answer emails when the instructions were a bit lax.

One hole in the plan came in trying to get our diptube to set aligned and through the false bottom on our mash/lauter tun. We got our false bottom from Climax Homebrew (wait, what?) at a great price for the piece, but we cut our hole in our kegs just a bit higher than we really wanted to in order to get it to go through the false bottom. Not a big deal, I just cut about a 4″ piece of 1/2″ hose and slid it onto the diptube. This added an easily telescoping end to the tube which allowed us to get as close or as far away from the bottom of the kettle as we like.

Unfortunately, this didn’t solve the problem of keeping grains out of our sweet liquor when we moved it to the boil kettle. To solve that problem we started buying 3 packs of stainless steel brilo pads and wrapping one around the tube every time we brewed. This worked OK for the first half dozen or so brews, but we could see that the half-life on this jury-rigged hack job was not very long.

With each brew we started having more and more issue with our prime and saw more and more air moving into the hose during recirculation. Finally, last week when I had to dig around in 155* water to try and reset our lame ass filter during the mash, only to get my rubber gloves full of hot water over and over, I made a serious commitment to upgrading our mash/lauter tun’s filtering capabilities.

Enter the mash/boil screen, or, as I’ve mostly seen it referred to, the Bazooka Cage. This thing screwed right into the bulkhead and, with no issue at all, made my life and my brewing time so much easier. No air, no grains, no pain or issue at all and it uses the grain bed like a straw to help you get every last bit of sweet liquor into your boil kettle.

I love a simple solution to a problem and this little bastard is just that.

Because I need this incredible Kraftwerk sweater.

It appears Jake Burton has testicular cancer. If you follow this link you’ll read his rather stoic and inspiring letter to his employees. I think it says a lot about the guy and, clearly, it says just as much about the culture he has created at Burton Snowboards over the years.

It will be 20 years this november 22nd that I was diagnosed with stage 4 Testicular Cancer. A harrowing day indeed, one my 17-year-old mind was far from ready for. One I am, in so many ways, still reconciling. But, while being diagnosed with cancer at age 17 posed some unique and soul starching moments in the immediate, that day, and the subsequent 8 months of surgeries and in-patient and out-patient chemotherapy that followed, would prove to be the most important of narratives in my life. From that moment in my pediatrician’s office to this moment stumbling away across my keyboard, I have been informed and engaged by a disease most people only understand as an enemy. But that didn’t have to be the case.

With super-human support from everyone in my family, and an equally strong support of friends and acquaintances, I was able to contextualize the emanation of my mortality in a way that was not only healthy but, as far as I can tell, deeply advantageous. I consider it a great gift of fortuitousness that, at a very young age, I was no longer blindfolded from the cold realities of the criminally short time I would be given on this planet and, with the help of a large group of friends who knew the proper techniques of the ancient and honored art of the belly-laugh, that the only currency that matters on this planet is Joy. How you get to Joy is a deeply personal and terribly complex pattern of actions and reactions, but, outside of specifics, if you work for any other goal aside from Joy, mark my words, you are a fool and a rube.

Life is too fucking short. You will die, hopefully peacefully, but if you waste any time not pursuing the highest aims of hilarious and terrifying achievements, you’re a dumb shit.

It’s clear from his letter that Jake Burton has already figured this out. I wish him the best as he ventures into his own, very personal, dark night of the soul. I hope it is short, but I hope, also, that it is resonant, challenging and mind-blowing.

And I hope the same for all of you.

Hiya.

Don’t worry, I still love you even though we don’t hang out as much anymore. Really, I do.

And don’t be so insecure, it’s making you seem fat.

Or maybe it’s the other way around.

Either way, knock it off.

While I’ve been traveling the finer end of the seasonal shifts and enjoying these waning days of humanity’s intrepid fuck show, I’ve discovered a few things. Yes, a few things have come to light those smug, little glow worms in the dark corners of my mind and I have every intention to make good on the oath I have made and relay them on to you. So pour yourself a beer, reheat that dungenness crab pancake in the back of your fridge and make yourself comfortable, it’s gonna be a long night.

Part of the reason I haven’t bloggered in so long and, when I have, have done it so infrequently, is because I’m kind of sick of writing about beer and brewing. I keep waiting for something else to come along and help me prove to this mirror I stare at all day that I have more than one method of expediting my death. But cigarettes aren’t that great to write about and this pill addiction has really hampered my motivation. So I guess I’ll write about this Freebord thing.

A friend turned me onto this video the other day and, while I’m skeptical that I’d be able to be so graceful or look so damn good riding it, I must admit that it does have me intrigued. After all, it was a need to hold over my snowboarding jones that got me back into hurting myself on a skateboard again and this seems right in that thick desire’s wheelhouse.

Yeah, that is pretty freaking sweet. Now if Chicago only had hills.

But Chicago is flat and full of fat, vacuous, whitebread, mouthbreathers so I’ll just write about beer. You like beer, right?

So I saw this fancy gizmo on morebeer.com the other day and was intrigued, the Speidel Braumeister, a kind of all-in-one electric brewer. The cost isn’t terrible at $2950 for a 13 gallon system considering I think we’ve got every bit of $2k in our home built weldless gas powered keggle system, not to mention time, frustration and more time. The main complaint I’ve been coming across is that it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to sparge on these things. To do so requires another vessel to heat the water in and some fandangling. Another equally valid point is that maybe these all-in-one systems take away some of the magic that is brewing, by over-simplifying the process. Maybe.

There’s another system like the Speidel Braumeister on the market from Brumas, a bit more elegant looking, but I think even less extensible.

But really the reason I got into brewing beer in the first place is because I’m a tinkerer. I require things to fuck around with to help keep me from really hurting myself. And there’s really nothing quite like homebrewing to sate an incessent need to be curious, solve problems, make messes and potentially blow something up or burn something out at any given moment. So that’s probably why the DIY all-in-one BrauBushka, as inspired by the Cebulon, seems so much sexier to me.

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing the hard way and the long way. Period.

There’s not a lot to these machines and, at their heart, they’re pretty brilliant. The most compelling thing to me about the Braumeister at this point is the grain tube that it uses. I’m already sick of cleaning out my mash/lauter tun and some kind of grain hopper seems like a brilliant way to solve that problem. Now I just need to figure out a way that a grain hopper will live nicely with my thermometer and swage tube. I see a stainless hose in my future. We’ll see, but I promise you, lover, you’ll be the first to know anything.

Check this nutty shit out! The Parker Brothers have built a Green Machine chopper.

Holy crap. Some of my best and first memories of this world were formed while storming the west suburban streets on my green machine, slamming one bar forward and one back so i could flat spin like the bad mother fucker I was. Between my Green Machine and my super fly black satin Darth Vader baseball jacket I was the meanest 5 year old on the culdesac.

I wonder if you could enter this in the Monster Wheel Grand Prix?

Big Wheels have grown up! You may remember the excitement of Big Wheels bikes when you were a kid. There is nobody who wouldn’t like to experience the thrill again. It recaptures childhood, and offers simple, fast-paced fun.

Recognizing the growing number of Big Wheel enthusiasts, we are creating the Monster Wheel Grand Prix. It is a portable track designed by Chicago’s Creation Coalition. It takes Big Wheels into the realm of high art and sophistication. These are metal art pieces from the folks who brought you Hot Carla, Acid Tongue, and Velocipede Volitation.

Racers and their fans will experience an immersive art environment that is part sculpture, part competition, part excitement, part fire art and part theater. The setting will include shock-carnival barkers and an assortment of costumed folk to give the place just the right mix of “danger” and “atmosphere”.

Once participants meet stringent safety requirements, they are free to challenge friends and ride a monster wheel into glory and legend.

I got news yesterday that I’m going to the Bears game on Sunday with my pops.

Aside from this being pretty freaking sweet in the immediate heat of the moment, it’s also kind of a lovely, heart-warming story, too. You see, in 1986, when the Bears last won the Super Bowl, and I was just a young fat, freckled and excitable kid, my dad scored tickets to the final game of the NFC play offs between the L.A. Rams and the Bears. Unfortunately, through years of self-abuse, I’ve pretty much eradicated the entire experience from the cavernous hollows of my memories with two fair exceptions:

1. It was bloody cold out.
2. Some obligatory, sausage-stuffed and drunk fucker behind us hollered at one point when the announcer let the stadium know there was a flag on the field: “Hey, they’re playing L.A. there’s all kinds of fags on the field!”

Heh, heh. That shit is gold.

So, yeah, not only am I going to witness an ancient rivalry of amphetamine-fueled mutants beating the frozen piss out of one another, but I’m also enjoying a kind of experiential symmetry with my dad that is very, very rare.

And who knows, if the stars align and the mood is right, maybe, just maybe, I can carry on another fine tradition on Sunday. Perhaps, the Great and Golden Onion, who resides in the skies over our fair city of broad shoulders, in all it’s curmudgeonly benevolence and ambivalence for all, will shine down once again, casting me in it’s glorious, stinking pageantry, beckoning me to become more than myself, to rise as the next incarnation of that obligatory, sausage-stuffed, drunk Chicagoan and tonally embed a coyly, sculpted insult upon the deeper masts of a young fat kid’s mind forever.

At this point, only Jesus knows how this will play out.

But, while Jesus holds all the secrets, I can take the proper precautionary steps to insure that, should the opportunity show it’s self, I can bow and meet it’s presence with a burgeoning quiver of proper preparedness.

In service of that I will be picking up some provisions:

1. CO2 cartridges for my corny keg travel kit so we can bring my present batch of Moo’s Dry-Hopped Brown House Ale to the lot for proper imbibing before the game.
2. A small Weber grill and some charcoal.
3. I will be making some home-made veal brats with my Kitchen Aid so that we can properly stuff our bloated mugs with the flesh memory of several dead beasts before the big game.

I feel it only right to share this fine recipe for homemade brats so that others can play the at-home version of this ancient rite of antagonism. In service of something greater than myself, here it is:

Ingredients:
The recipe is based of one pound of meat. You can work out the ratio for larger quantities. (60%=(9.6oz) Pork, 40%=(6.4oz) Veal…………1 lb

1 tsp salt (pickling)
1/2 tsp Onion Salt
1/2 tsp Ground White Pepper
1/2 tsp Marjoram
1/2 tsp Parsley
1/4 tsp Nutmeg
1/4 tsp Celery Seed
1/8 tsp Ginger
1/8 tsp Mace
1/8 tsp Cardamon
2 oz Red Wine

Grind meat through 3/16″ plate.
Mix non-meat ingredients in bowl and add to ground meat and mix thoroughly.
Chill in freezer for 30 min.
Mix again and grind throu 1/4″ plate.
Stuff into sheep or hog casings and air dry for 30 min or until dry to the touch.
Refrigerate for at least a day before use.

Make sure to read up on my recommendations for stuffing sausages in my post about Biscuits & Gravy. And, umm, Go Bears!

My grandmother passed away in September after a long life of 94 years. She was, as my wife has often described, a “piss-cutter”. All 5′ 1″ of her took no shit from anybody, and cottoned to zero nonsense. She was mowing her own yard until two years before she died. My understanding is that when she finally decided it was time to expire, she looked to my aunt and told her frankly, “I think I’m going to die now” and, within 30 minutes, she had moved on.

My folks stopped by for a visit yesterday and brought me the last two pieces of my grandmother’s material remains: an 8″ and 10″ cast iron skillet. Black with season and soot the outer sides of these weapons of war are textured up like an old, black tree stump. There’s over 50 years of breakfast, lunch, dinner and desserts on these things and they’re good and patinaed up ready to do the bidding of another generation of hungry krauts.

I poked around the internuts to find out proper care for a cast iron skillet as well as to dig up some recipe ideas. I wanted to make sure my season was fresh and that I wouldn’t wreck this half-century tool that has become it’s own work of art. What I’ve learned is that it’s not terribly easy to wreck a cast iron skillet and, if you do, you can scrape the bugger down and reseason once again. Perhaps the most important rule of maintaining a healthy cast iron skillet is to keep it away from water which can cause the season to diminish and the iron to rust.

Essentially, to maintain your skillet when you are done cooking, while the skillet is still warm, wash the bugger out with hot water and immediately wipe dry with a towel. Cover with a very, very fine layer of canola oil, lard or bacon fat and let cool. Once cooled, wipe off excess oil. While storing, just put a folded up paper towel to absorb any moisture that might get in there.

For deep cleaning, warm up about a 1/4″ deep oil in your skillet, add a 1/4 cup of kosher salt and scrub.

Once a year reseason your skillet. Cover your skillet in canola, lard or bacon fat, and heat your oven up to 400*. To keep from making a mess in your oven put some foil down on the bottom. Put your skillet in the oven and let it set in there for 45-60 minutes. Turn off the heat and let it cool back to room temperature inside the oven. Early in the life of your skillet you want to do this 3 or 4 times in a row, with an older skillet once a year should be fine.

It warms my heart to know that I’ll be contributing to a half century familial narrative of deep, delicious meals for many years ahead and carrying forward, even just a little bit, what my grandmother helped set into motion. Continuity seems too rare in life, I’m thrilled to participate in it whenever possible.

As for a proper initiatory run of these black beauties, I think I’ll make a batch of my murderous Biscuits & Gravy on Christmas morning for me and the bride. Thick and fresh shallot biscuits with a browned butter sausage gravy served with a robust chocolate coffee stout anyone?

I know my posts have been infrequent and hovering around the similar and predictable constellation of food and beer as of late. But it’s the holidays and I’ve been drunk, stuffed with food and preoccupied by things more compelling than coifing my blog. I’ve got a back log of info on events going on around the city and some sweet skateboarding videos, not to mention info on bicycle snow tires as well as some interesting eco-friendly snowboarding gear. But, right now, all you’re going to get is this awesome and simple instructional on how to make your own butter.

If you’re disappointed you need to reconsider your relationship to the virtues of fat.

Courtesy of our token senior citizen, Trevor:

I have recently updated my Deckcrafter Blood Diamond (reviewed here) with Tracker 184 trucks which, in my opinion, are the perfect truck for a pool board. The extra width of the 184s push my 60mm 99a Spitfire Classics to the exact outside edges of the 9 5/8″ board giving the deck much more stability and me a whole lot more confidence while dropping in and carving.

Much to my surprise, this upgrade freed up some “extra parts” that I couldn’t just let rot away in the toy box, so I made the ultimate sacrifice and bought myself a second deck for riding.

After some minor deliberation I opted for the 9″ Old Man Army Squid, purchased again from our friends at the Denver Skate Shop. This badass deck, with it’s slimmer body, tighter wheel base, but typical OMA nasty curviness, has my skateboard partner in crime (Brian) salivating and me a little nervous. I’ve grown real comfortable with the 17″ wheelbase on my Deckcrafter so I’m a bit apprehensive to bust the Squid’s tiny 16″ wheelbase out in the pools yet, but I can tell, when I finally get her completely out of the gates, this fucker is gonna hum around the banks with total abandon and, with that super concave shape and the crazy wrenched up nose and tail, I’ll have exactly zero reasons left not to bust out my ollies in public (right now, I’ve been holed up, perfecting them in my skateboarding lair).

In short, I’m pretty amped that this is going to be my deck of the future and will have plenty to look forward to during this excruciatingly long indoor skating season.