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Brewing continues

Costco trip count for January: 17

Transferred my beer from primary to secondary fermentor a week ago today, which means I should be bottling next week, and a total of 3-4 weeks away from actually drinking the beer.

Siphoning away...

From Brewing

And...complete!

From Brewing

Waffle follow-up

To update, I'd say the waffle competition was a success. I was kind of surprised when my competitor showed up with an identical waffle iron! Though there was no formal voting, I believe I won both rounds. First round was my chocolate stout/chocolate chip against her bacon, cheese, and green onion waffles. Second round was my hefeweizen/butterscotch against her chocolate chip with caramelized bananas. The bananas were actually fantastic and really made the whole thing good, but both of her waffles were on the softer side, compared to my crispier waffles. Personal preference I suppose, but I think more people had the same preference as me. :-P

Waffle-a-thon

One of my friends has been hyping me up as some kind of waffle king (his logic was "anyone who has two waffle irons must be good at making waffles"). The result of this undeserved hype is that I've now been challenged to a Waffle-Off this Friday!

Well, I can't very well start my career in competitive waffling with just a standard mix and following the directions on the container. Last night was my first practice batch. The usual waffle mix, but replacing water with Rogue Chocolate Stout, and adding a couple handfuls of chocolate chips. The end result was fantastic. It was great even by itself (though butter and syrup didn't hurt it at all). I ate half of the first waffle before the second one was even complete.

Tonight I'm going to try a different beer, Paulaner Hefeweizen, with caramel chips instead of chocolate chips. I expect it to be pretty good, but hard to say if it can top last night's chocolate waffle. Either way, I think I'll make a good showing.

First attempt at brewing

Costco trip count for January: 4

After picking up a box of ingredients at my local brew store on Sunday, I decided I was going to be brewing on Monday. All I needed to pick up was a big metal pot (16qt+), a big metal spoon, and 5 gallons of water. Easy, right?

I started out by leaving work at 4 and heading over to Harbor Freight, as they had a big aluminum pot in their catalog for cheap. No luck, but I picked up some wobble extensions I wanted to try. :-P On to Pay n Save next, a similar type of store, and similar lack of a pot. Fry's grocery store was next - no pot to be found, but they had the water. Next up was Sur la Table, a kitchen gadget type store. They actually had two things that would work, an 18qt steel pot and a 24qt aluminum pot, both marked at $60. I wanted aluminum, but I thought the price was a bit high, plus it was way bigger than I needed. The salesperson suggested trying Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, or even a sporting goods store. All of these were located right across the freeway on Ray, so that's where I went.

JC Penny was on the way to Target, but nothing there. Get to Target, check it out, nothing there either. While I'm at Target, Evan calls me up to tell me about a kitchen supply store. I call them, they have a 20qt aluminum pot for $27! Computer says they have it in stock. They close at 6, it's 5:30 now, and they're near 32nd st and McDowell, while I'm at Ray & I-10. I make my way up there, and show up 5 minutes before closing. Ask the guy behind the counter where I can find this pot, and he says "I'm sorry, but after you hung up we went to check in the back, and we don't have any." >:-O Great. So now I need to had back south at 6pm, just about the worst possible time.

On my way back I take a short detour to the Smart and Final. They had large pots, but way too expensive. At that point I resigned myself to going back to Sur la Table for the big aluminum pot. It rings up as $45 though, not $60...probably cheap enough I would have bought it the first time I was there. :-P I finally get home at 7pm, three hours after I left work, having finally purchased the pot at a store five minutes from home. Nice.

And here it is:

On with the brewing!

The bucket with parts being sanitized, and the plastic carboy ("Better Bottle") where primary fermentation takes place.

Evan helping.

Evan helping, for real this time.

Ingredients for an Irish Stout:

Go beer go!

The cooling wort, waiting to be added to the rest of the water in the carboy.

Evidence of fermentation! The airlock is bubbling away. There was no activity Tuesday morning when I left for work, and I came home to this. :-)

The last time I checked, that foam was coming up out of the airlock. :-O I might have added to much water to make up for losses from boiling, I don't know. I made the mistake of not checking to see where the 5 gallon mark would be in the carboy. It should be in the primary fermetor until next Monday or so, then moved to a secondary fermentor (a 5 gallon carboy) for two weeks, then into bottles to carbonate for three weeks.

Even if this batch doesn't turn out that great, I learned a number of things and found out that I made several mistakes.

The first step is to put the grains in a grain bag, let them sit in hot water for 20-30 minutes, then remove them. Here I actually did two things wrong. First, I didn't realize that it was supposed to be 160° water at a maximum, and I put it in right after it had started boiling (though off the heat, so it was cooling for those 20-30 minutes). Apparently getting the grains too hot is a bad thing, though that wasn't in my instructions. Two, I squeezed water out of the grain bag, and I guess you're not supposed to do that either!

I added all of the hops at once, rather than adding some at the beginning and some at the end. It's a minor point, but I'll fix that next time.

A strainer on the funnel is more than worthless. It got clogged up so quickly that it took me 10 minutes to transfer from the pot to the carboy. It would have been just fine for all of that stuff that clogged it up to go in the carboy, as it doesn't make it in to the final product, but whatever.

Finally, I was worried that I had somehow killed the yeast. I followed instructions for checking the yeast - add it to some 95-100° water, then add a small amount of sugar water to test it. If it foams up, then it's still good. I did all of that...and no foam. :-( I was not optimistic at all, and fully expected to not see any fermentation after a day or two. Of course, I was quite happy when I saw the above picture!

Now I wait. Six more weeks until a have a fridge full of beer. I think I'll be ordering up another kit to make as soon as my fermenting bottles are free.

As soon as is reasonable, I think I'd like to get my beer into kegs, rather than bottles. Five gallon kegs are readily available, and it's only one storage container to clean, rather than 50. ;-) It also cuts the carbonation time down from three weeks to about three days, so it can be enjoyed that much sooner.

Slightly larger photos than what are linked above can be found here.

Tiny pixels, tiny tires

Costco trip count for January: 2

The Vizio 47" 1080p LCD tv is finally in stock at the Tempe store, priced at $1899. It was set up right next to a Sony 46" 1080p LCD...and as uncalibrated as they may have been, the Sony did look better IMO. At $2899, I'm not sure if the amount it looks better is worth the extra $1000. Regardless, it's good to have a low cost option now.

I also noticed on my way out the door that their rack of tires for advertising has at least two sets worth of 13" tires in it. I doubt they sell two sets of 13" tires all year! But then, I suppose that might be why they're advertising pieces and not in the tire center.

Walking down the automotive aisle, I noticed some new Turtle Wax products that I haven't seen before, as well as a 3-pack of microfiber wash mitts with a mf drying towel for just under $11.

Finally, after advertising outside the store for so long, there's a little kiosk set up with information on their granite countertops. Too bad I don't know anything about countertops; I have no idea how good a deal these might be.

Been a while

Costco trip count for December (final): 23
Costco trip rate for December: 1 trip per 1.35 days

I'm kind of surprised I would get so many Costco trips in, despite the holiday crowds and everything.

Costco trip count for January: 1

Went today at lunch to see if they had any of the new Vizio 47" 1080p tvs in stock. I've heard the Chandler store had them, but not Tempe yet. They might be holding them back for the Jan 15th coupon that was sent out in the latest book, but who knows. The other Vizio news I read was the development of a 60" 1080p plasma some time in 2007. The more I think about it (so maybe I should stop thinking...), the more I'm interested in a plasma for my next tv. While I like my current tv just fine for bright stuff, dark scenes in movies and games are disappointing. I know a standard LCD would be better than what I have (LCD RP), but why not just go all the way to the high-contrast option.

Somewhat related to tvs, I've been hearing a lot of rumors about Costco changing their return policy on televisions some time this month. It would be unfortunate, but certainly understandable. With tvs falling in price and increasing performance at a similar rate to computer hardware (which already has a limited return policy), it would make sense.

A new item I saw at Costco today was the G-Floor (this looks to be a better-yet-unofficial site). It's basically a roll-out garage floor covering that's made of some kind of thick vinyl. In particular, Costco had 7.5' wide rolls of the diamond plate pattern in gray for $179. I haven't found any real reviews of it to see if it's any good. Obviously the installation would be a lot easier than a traditional epoxy flooring, there wouldn't be any potential issues with it being pulled up by tires in the summer, and you can take it with you if you move. On the other hand, in anything but a single car garage you're going to have a seam somewhere, and I don't know if the edges are going to get caught on things if you roll over it.

I got some nice stuff for Christmas this year. Teresa gave me a big toolbox from Sears, which is so much better than the little one I had before. I even have 3 empty drawers in the new one, so there's room for some expansion. I made some labels on old magnetic material I had laying around and loaded up the box, and I think it will work out well.

Teresa's dad gave me a great beer brewing kit, and I'm hoping to start my first batch soon. Came with pretty much everything but ingredients, and he even threw in some old 22oz bottles he had. One batch should make about 2 dozen 22oz bottles, and another 6-12 12oz bottles. I'm not sure what kind of beer I'll make first, but you can bet it'll be something with a reasonably short fermentation time. ;-)

I picked up three new 360 games over the holidays as well, Gears of War and Tiger Woods 2007 were gifts, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance was a post-xmas purchase. I finished up Marvel already, and a pretty good number of achievements to go with it. There are still a number of things I'd like to unlock though (for completion's sake), and I'd like to try some other characters. It was a pretty enjoyable game to run through IMO.