16 Liters of beer

Char and I Bottled Beer last night. I was a bit nervous when we opened up the fermentor but the Specific Gravity was right on the money. I snuck a taste and it tasted like warm stale beer which was awesome!!!!! I now have 16 Liters of beer that will be ready in about 2-3 weeks. Now what kind to brew next?

**The Miller Lite in the front row is for scale, those bottles are 1L each!!

Charleston, WV

Beer Update: Beer is still sitting in fermentation bucket not bubbling. I talked with a few beer gurus and they said that the yeast that I used is fairly fast acting and that that, in addition to the warm temperature could have caused a faster than normal fermentation. I'm going to bottle it this weekend and then in about 21 days well know for sure, although I plan to have a taste during the bottling process and if its ruined I should know for sure then.

This week I have been working in Charleston WV. Yesterday I came back to my hotel room and at 7:45 I decided to take a nap, I woke up at 4 in the morning with all the lights on, TV blaring and all my clothes on. My goal today is to make it until 10pm but that may be pushing it.

Today I walked around 6-7 miles pushing what is essentially a big orange cart (EM-61 MK2, do a Google image search and you'll see what I mean) and carrying a 35 pound backpack. Between Jonathan (a co-worker) and I we drank an entire case of bottled water (it was pretty hot and humid as hell). Jonathan and I had a 20 minute conversation whether or not water had a taste or it was the lack of any taste, as of now there has been no resolution.

Ill be back in MD tomorrow. Not sure what the weekend has in store for me but I hope that at some point it involves a kayak and a fishing pole.

This is Bad!!

The Bubbles have all but stopped. This is bad. The fermentation process should take 3-7 days to complete and mine has appeared to stop after two. My beer is a bit warmer than it should be and that would speed up the process but its still a bad situation. I know there are more sugars in there that need to be consumed and if I bottle prematurely the secondary fermentation that occurs in the bottles would be larger than I expected and would cause my beer bottles to explode. I think im going to wait it out for a few days and re-evaluate. Perhaps add some more yeast or check the specific gravity to see if it truly is done. This is bad!!

Its happening

Yesterday I finally got all my shit together to make this beer. It really was not the hardest thing that I have ever done but I was not sure if I had done everything properly. I was a bit concerned with keeping everything sterile but I think I did ok. The ultimate test was today when I came home from work, the beer should be fermenting which would cause air to be bubbling from the one way valve on top.







BAM!! Bubbles!! The beer is a bit warmer than it should be because your supposed to put in a basement which I don't have here, I have my fingers crossed.

Char and I only turn on the AC in extreme circumstances when its insanely hot outside. Today its not but dont worry the AC is on and the beer temperature is slowly falling. Ill keep you posted on any developements but really its just going to sit there for another week before it gets bottled and has to sit there for another 2 weeks. I dont know if I can wait.

Migration

Its almost as if we have things to do here in MD. Tuesday was dinner with my dad and step mom, Wednesday we went to a Modest Mouse/REM concert, Thursday went kayaking after work and Friday was the Orioles/Pirates game at Camden Yards.

This weekend we have a migration of parents coming down from PA to participate in some festivities. I also have to get new tires for Chars car and if possible squeeze in a little kayak fishing in the bay. I then may have a week relaxation (if you can call a week of working relaxation) followed by a weekend of fishing. Then likely a 10 day stint out in Sacramento immediately followed by a 3 day fishing and camping trip to Assateague Island.

Im chomping at the bit here to put my new beer brewing kit to work and ferment up a batch of sweet homebrew beer. Im a bit concerned though because I read the directions and the majority of the focus was on keeping everything sterile. Now those of you who know me also know that sterility is not my strong suit but Im hoping the outsourse that portion of the process to Char.

My new found hobby of home brewing came after a weekend of debacle during memorial day when we had nine people at my small house drinking and cooking out for 3 days in a row. It was a bit hazy but I remember that at one point their were six woman in the back yard sining 'Hotel California' as loud as they could at 1am. After everyone left I whipped up a batch of Salsa that I learned how to make from a guy out in California (thanks again Ed) and brought it over to the neighbors as a peace offering to compensate for the noise ( I think that neighbors do these kind of things right? I mean I see it on TV all the time). Anyhow they took the salsa and in return gave me two huge bottles of home brewed beer. Not the response I was looking for because now the salsa and the beer cancel each other out and I feel as though I'm still in the hole because of the noise but whatever. So anyhow I was then stuck with two home brewed beers. Now ordinarily this is not a bad thing but after a 3 day bender the last thing you want to do is consume any more beer, let alone beer that was so dark that it had the color of used motor oil. But as any good neighbor would do I cracked one to have a taste. An hour later I returned both empty bottles to the neighbor and the next day we owned a brewing kit. It was awesome.

You know how sometimes you have a bunch of things you need to get done in a small window of time but you just cant get motivated. Right now I have six people that will be here in an hour and the house is a wreck, the lawn needs mowed, theres a giant tree branch that blew down in a storm on Tuesday that has inundated my back yard that needs to be removed with saws and the like, the dishes need done and there are about 500 ant corpses on the kitchen floor laying in a pool of pesticide. I vaguely remember being asleep this morning hearing char say "Collin theres a ton of ants infesting the kitchen but don't worry because I took care of them", I came downstairs about an hour later and found the scene of the massacre, 500 dead ants and an empty bottle of some sort of ant killer that I didn't know we had and would have objected to the purchase of. Now instead of getting a jump start on all of this cleaning Im sitting on the couch in my pajamas writing a blog and reading internet articles about the proper techniques for launching a kayak through the ocean surf and another about Pine Cones.

I suppose its time for me to get to work here. Although there is one more cup of coffee left and I just found another article, this one about the life cycle of an earth worm.

Pics from Assateague Island

Have not posted in a while and I thought I would throw these on for you viewing enjoyment..
Char managed to capture these pics while she had her camera out. This is me running full speed afer getting a bite on one of our surf rods. Im not a fast guy but I will run for fish...




Radio Collared deer.

Late night visitor to the campsite.

When there's something Strange, in the Neighborhood, who you gonna call..

So Here I am in Fabulous Wisconsin. We are doing some Electro-Magnetic surveying and will be here until Friday. Its been a fairly interesting experience. I cant go into as much detail as I would like here on the old blog because I'm sure the Client that we are working for would not appreciate me spilling some beans and we are not supposed to be taking pictures but heres the jist of it (anyone who wants the full story can call me and Ill fill you in with all the details).

Basically we (Steve and I) are working in the middle of the woods. These woods however, have certain elements that require one to be somewhat aware of what one is doing. What you ask, well one that comes to mind are the tens of thousands of pounds of explosives that are all over the site and nobody knows where, the Bears that seam to be everywhere, the packs of wolves that are known to be in the area, the coyotes and coy dogs that are ramped and who's dens I continue to trip in while doing out surveys and the 74 zillion ticks that inhabit the area. In all seriousness the only things a fore mentioned that concern me in the least are the explosives and the wolves, explosives will blow you up and wolves will eat your face.

You may be asking yourselves 'man all those explosives and nobody knows where they are, what are they going to do about that', don't worry they have that covered.

Ha!! We have to wear these biological suits because there are so many Ticks that it is insane. As soon as you walk in the woods like 50 feet you look down and you already have 5 of them crawling all over you. The suits help but at the end of the day after walking miles and miles with these instrument the suits have scene some better days.

After work is done you would imagine that Steve and I tear up the town and mingle with the locals right? Wrong, we have a water park in our hotel with water slides and basketball hoops in the pool. The last two nights I found myself rebounding balls in the pool with the local ten year olds while sipping on the local beer, Beast Light. Last night before we went to the water park we found ourselves sitting in his room, each with laptop in hand writing blog posts in silence. We are cool guys!!!
You can read here if you would like to read Steve's account of what we are doing.