Author Archives: Michael McIntosh

Birthday brew

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With the mother-in-law’s birthday coming up, I decided to brew a batch of pale ale for the party. I was pretty excited about this because it was the first batch I made with my newly ordered equipment. Most of the equipment was all ready to go, with the exception of being sanitized that is. The fermenting buckets were the only thing that had to be moderated. I had to drill 1″ holes in them. Two holes in each bucket. One on the top for the airlock, and one on the bottom of the side for the spigot. The best way I could find on the internet, short of actually having a 1″ hole drill, was to use a small drill bit and drill hundreds of little holes in a circle. After drilling two holes I decided that it was way too laborious and wouldn’t actually give me a perfect circle like I needed. So I improvised. As it turns out, a hammer has a 1″ diameter head on it. Add an electric stove top and a plastic bucket and you have yourself a beautiful hole and a good looking fermenter. Unfortunately, this was discovered just after cracking the top of the first fermenter lid. Good thing I have two buckets. This mistake was corrected later by connecting a spare spigot to the cracked hole and melting a new hole for the airlock.

Following the assembly of the fermenters, I began the sterilizing and brewing process. The first step in this was the roasting of some malt grain. That was simple. The not so simple part came when I had to crack them. Not pulverize them or blend them, but crush them. I borrowed a food processor which did a fairly decent job. It wasn’t the best, but it was the best I could do. Next time, if I use this same all-grain process, I’ll order all my malts and barleys pre-crushed.

The rest of the process was fairly simple, involving lots of boiling, cooling and pitching of yeast. After all was said and done, I placed the bucket in my usual fermenting spot and hoped for the best.

More Beer Equipment

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Following the  explosion of the last fermentor, I was left without beer supplies and for a short while, beer. Thankfully, that batch was not tainted and solved the no beer issue, but it still left me with a lack of equipment. As a result, I googled homebrew supplies and found many dubious looking websites that sell beer supplies. There was the option, of course, of calling Homebrew in Paradise  (a Honolulu based supply shop) and ordering my supplies from them. It probably would not cost me much more than ordering online and would most certainly cost me less in shipping. Yet for some reason, I feel compelled to use them for ingredients only. Part of that might be due to the fact that the owner of the place has this way of making one feel slightly amateurish upon entering the store. But maybe that is just because I am an amateur.  At any rate, after searching around I found a place called William’s Brewing that had comparable prices and cheap shipping. That is to say that they shipped USPS and didn’t shun PO boxes where most other sites shipped UPS or FedEx at a rate of around $30 – $40 and seem to despise PO boxes. I only ended up paying $8 shipping. Woot.

So here is a list of the supplies I ordered in order to keep up my beer making hobby.

The Trouble With Hefeweizen

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I’ve long awaited this night. Well. I’ve waited a week for this night. For tonight is the night I pop the top on my recently brewed hefeweizen beer.  I was excited to brew my hefeweizen. This is the third beer I’ve brewed so far;  the first pale beer I’ve brewed. 

I found the recipe at the home brew store on Oahu. I’ve not yet to follow a recipe to-the-T. For this recipe, I made a mistake and added twice as many hops as I was supposed to add, but managed to follow the rest of the recipe quite well. Not worried about the hops, I added the wort to the fermenter, added the yeast and placed it under the cupboard to do it’s business. 

Two days later the top blew off the fermenter. I skimmed the foam and resealed the fermenter using a make shift lid of a plastic container and baby bottle nipple, which seemed to do the job. I was worried about contamination, of course. 

Too long a time later, I tasted and bottled the beer hoping for the best. With all bottles primed and filled, I stored the bottles for their last week of fermentation. 

So tonight is the night. I’ve opened a beer and this is what I found: my beer was surprisingly not contaminated. It’s darker than it’s supposed to be, but it’s quite tasty. It seems to have good head. I bottled it a little late – bottled a bit sooner, it would have been more bubbly I think. Not that it’s flat, but ideally it would be more carbonated. Although the color is not ideal, the flavor is pretty good. There is a definite hefeweizen flavor to it, but I think the addition of double hops has altered the overall flavor. 

The following recipe is what resulted in my beer. For the original recipe, reduce the hops by half.

Recipe:

1/2  lb. Light Crystal Malt 10?L  Grain

1/2 lb. Wheat Malt Grain

7  lbs. of Wheat syrup malt extract

Liquid Hefeweizen Ale Yeast WLP300

2 oz. New Zealand Hallertau Aroma/O Hops

Bottled Hefeweizen beer.

Bottled Hefeweizen beer.

A wonderfully poured "hefeweizen" beer.

A wonderfully poured "hefeweizen" beer.

Hefeweizen 4

Lost at Home Depot

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What a day. It’s the day before Mother’s day and we went to Kahului to do some grocery shopping as well as picking up a few Mother’s Day gifts. Gavin and I dropped Holly and Leif off at the fabric store so that the two of us could go find some gifts. We failed to get the specific thing we were looking for, but managed to pick up a little secondary gift along the way. It’s a good thing too. After picking up Holly and doing our Wal Mart run, we ran over to Home Depot to get  a maintenance item for the library. We spit up at the entrance so that I could change the baby’s diaper. Within 30 seconds of splitting up (Gavin with Holly, Leif with me), I lost my wallet. Within 30 seconds of losing my wallet, it was then stolen. So we spent a little longer in Home Depot than we planned. I looked all over the one isle I had been down and found nothing. The customer service person showed no interest in my problem short of taking my name and phone number and wishing me luck. I called my mom for comfort. She did just that and then told me to report all cards stolen and have them canceled and replaced. An hour of dealing with unconcerned employees, we left to finish our shopping. Or at least what we could on a budget that was immediately split in half. Which meant we shopped Costco, hit Krispy Kreme, pumped gas and headed home. Unfortunately I lost my wallet after my banks had all closed. Therefore, I could not just go to the bank and take out money to shop with. I could not buy the two main things I wanted to get Holly for Mother’s day. At least not to give her on Mother’s day. I will certainly pick up these items next week after receiving my new debit card. Now that I’m home and exhausted, I’ve called my CC companies and had my cards canceled as well as my bank card. I’ve had my cocktail to sooth me and made plans to visit dmv to replace my license as well as replacing other such cards as my Gordon Biersch card. We did manage to pick up a bbq ribs dinner for tomorrow. And we do have the little gift for Holly. So it’s not a complete bust. But dang, that sucks.

Oh, yeah. Haha. I mentioned that we hit Krispy Kreme to help soothe the mood. We certainly did. We walked out with 9 donuts and a cup of decaf. And then we tried to drive off with the leftover 6 donuts and Holly’s wallet on the roof of the car. Fortunately there was some crazy guy screaming at us the 3 donuts we did eat soothed us enough to keep us from yelling back at him and driving away. Could you imagine. Arriving at the gas station to find that neither of us had a wallet. OMG. Time to laugh in hysterics. Hahahahahhahhahahahahahhahahahahahahhaha. 

Hahahahhahhahahahahahhaha.

Haahahahha. Wooooooo. Yayayayayaya. Yoing yoing yoing. Zooooooooooo. Bababababab. 

Ahhhhhhhh.

Ok. Better now.

Before bed

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It’s later than it ought to be. I’m tired and wanted to go to bed an hour ago. Today was a long lonesome day. It was Holly’s long day. Meaning she started work at 10:30 am and finished work at 7:15 pm. My meeting today started at 8 and ended at 10 am. So I didn’t get to spend much time with her this morning. I dropped Gavin off at school this morning at 7:30. After school he went to his friends house. I didn’t pick him up until 7 pm. Other than Holly’s lunch break, I’ve been alone all day. Of course I have Leif though. He was really good today. He was a happy hungry child. I do enjoy him. But I missed my other two peoples. I loves them.

In other notes:

1. Sunday is Mother’s Day. Need to order stuffs.

2. Five more days until I find out if my latest batch of beer is drinkable.

3. Skeezy smoking neighbors just got a new kitten.

4. Skeezy smoking neighbors just acquired a Yamaha 300 keyboard.

5. Tomorrow is one of skeezy smoking neighbors birthday.

6. Tomorrow is May day.

7. It is 75? and breezy out.

8. My “esc” “~” and “tab” keys do not work anymore.

9. I had to look up “tilda character” so I could copy and paste it for #8.

10. Leif had three teeth now.

11. We are almost done with quilt number 2.

12. Sookie is back to her old (young) self again. Minus the girly bits.

13. I think a summer trip is in order.

14. I did 8 loads of laundry last week.

15. About 80% of Leif’s food is solids now.

16. I wish I had more time to knit.

17. I get to color illustrations for Holly’s next book.

18. I have a new sketchbook.

19. We actually got to spend some time in Pa’ia this past weekend.

20. The pizza in Pa’ia was delicious.

21. I’m happy and life is good.