I kegged the Peanut Butter porter last night, and you can smell the peanut butter in the nose this time.
As for the taste - it seems to have an oddly light mouthfeel (not surprising given the lager yeast) but otherwise seems ok.
We'll all know for sure in 3 weeks.
Monday, October 24, 2005
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Sometimes it all goes horribly wrong
I have the beginnings of a great story of salvaging beer - but right now I'm just at the disaster part.
On Sunday I was making a second batch of my Peanut Butter Porter for Brewtopia - and everything was going poorly.
My new grain mill was making a mess, not cracking some kernels, turning others into flower, and doing it all very very slowly. As you might expect, all the bad milling resulted in a stuck sparger - after an hour I had about 1 gallon of wort. So I ended up having to stir the bucket nearly continuously for 3 hours, leaving me with a very cloudy brew.
I finally finish up at 2:30am, throw the brew kettle in the sink to cool and go to sleep.
At 5:00am something wakes me up. Not knowing why I had woken up I go to answer nature's call, and see a note being slipped under my door. It's from my downstairs neighbor informing me that my shower pipes are leaking onto her ceiling and I need to shut off my water until the plumber arrives.
That's when I see and smell the puddle of wort on the floor - I had left the sparger's tap open, and the mash had become unstuck and leaked a gallon or 2 of wort onto my floor, and apparently onto my neighbor's ceiling. By the time I finished cleaning that up I realized that there was no way to play dumb and let the plumber rip up my floor looking for non-existent leaks, so in the morning I left a note under my neighbor's door apologizing and offering to have her apartment cleaned.
And the final thing? 24 hours after pitching my yeast I see no activity, the surface of the wort is completely still, the yeast was dead. The only other yeasts I've got are Oktoberfest and Hefenweizen - which one of those do you think will make a better porter?
So, it is the beginning of a great beer disaster recovery story - if you want to taste how it ends you'll have to come to brewtopia and try the New York Noble Peanut Butter Porter - or whatever it turns out to be.
On Sunday I was making a second batch of my Peanut Butter Porter for Brewtopia - and everything was going poorly.
My new grain mill was making a mess, not cracking some kernels, turning others into flower, and doing it all very very slowly. As you might expect, all the bad milling resulted in a stuck sparger - after an hour I had about 1 gallon of wort. So I ended up having to stir the bucket nearly continuously for 3 hours, leaving me with a very cloudy brew.
I finally finish up at 2:30am, throw the brew kettle in the sink to cool and go to sleep.
At 5:00am something wakes me up. Not knowing why I had woken up I go to answer nature's call, and see a note being slipped under my door. It's from my downstairs neighbor informing me that my shower pipes are leaking onto her ceiling and I need to shut off my water until the plumber arrives.
That's when I see and smell the puddle of wort on the floor - I had left the sparger's tap open, and the mash had become unstuck and leaked a gallon or 2 of wort onto my floor, and apparently onto my neighbor's ceiling. By the time I finished cleaning that up I realized that there was no way to play dumb and let the plumber rip up my floor looking for non-existent leaks, so in the morning I left a note under my neighbor's door apologizing and offering to have her apartment cleaned.
And the final thing? 24 hours after pitching my yeast I see no activity, the surface of the wort is completely still, the yeast was dead. The only other yeasts I've got are Oktoberfest and Hefenweizen - which one of those do you think will make a better porter?
So, it is the beginning of a great beer disaster recovery story - if you want to taste how it ends you'll have to come to brewtopia and try the New York Noble Peanut Butter Porter - or whatever it turns out to be.
Thursday, October 6, 2005
So you want to ride the train…
I visited my brother in Boston last week, and picked up 3 more kegs from the local homebrew store. Because of the timing, I was going to have to take Amtrak home rather than the $15 Chinatown bus.
This was a problem because while the Chinatown bus is pretty relaxed - Amtrak has security guards. I got to the train station a little early expecting a hassle - but I walked right by 3 clusters of Boston police with my kegs, and they didn't say anything.
But you should have seen the private security guard's eyes light up when he saw me heading down the platform to actually get on the train. After a couple questions (what are those, why are you taking them on a train) I took the initiative of opening up the empty kegs to prove that they were empty (because I'm clearly so big and strong that I can swing 50lb full kegs around like they're 5lb empty kegs) - and I was allowed on the train.
This was a problem because while the Chinatown bus is pretty relaxed - Amtrak has security guards. I got to the train station a little early expecting a hassle - but I walked right by 3 clusters of Boston police with my kegs, and they didn't say anything.
But you should have seen the private security guard's eyes light up when he saw me heading down the platform to actually get on the train. After a couple questions (what are those, why are you taking them on a train) I took the initiative of opening up the empty kegs to prove that they were empty (because I'm clearly so big and strong that I can swing 50lb full kegs around like they're 5lb empty kegs) - and I was allowed on the train.
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