Hello boils and ghouls! errr… yeah.. Anyways, here’s a few pictures of the “Crypt” from which all the wonderful poisons are made! Note the red PSP on the right side – guess whats being played!

Gallery!

Overview	Left Side	Right Side
Immersion Chiller	The Boil - Note the Hop Bag!	Tools of the Trade

It’s hard to picture brewing quality beer out of what looks like a nasty garage with crap scattered about, but it is possible with attention to details.. Notice the excessive use of towels for example! I keep the fermenters in the blue bin to keep them off the garage floor. When I’m done I’ll chill the wort down to 75-80 degrees and then pour it into the fermenters. While traversing through the air they are getting hit with some colder air and then aerating as they funnel into the bucket/bottle. This gives the yeast oxygen to get cracking with. It’s a very delicate dance while for a good hour or so are spent simply making sure the house doesn’t burn down while I watch videos or listen to music from my PSP. That thing is irreplaceable when it comes to portable comfort!

Cleaning kegs has become one of those… things. It’s like when you have been up real late and you just ate the last bowl of chili. You know the crockpot needs to be cleaned out, but damn it you just want to go to bed! Well, you have to force yourself to clean it out otherwise it’ll dry, or grow, but you do the next best thing. You stick the pot under the sink and pour some dish soap in the pot and fill it with hot water and go to bed – WIN! That is the elaborate metaphor for what I accomplished to tackle the inevitable conflict of the keg, the kitchen faucet and sprayer, and me. I hate the kitchen sprayer because it doesn’t fully close off the faucet so I have water coming out of the sprayer, and more water still coming out of the faucet. UGH! I need hot water, but I don’t want to waste a ton of water in the process. Usually I stick a jug under the faucet and pour it in the keg after it is full while using the sprayer to fill the keg at the same time. As you can imagine, water usually ends up on the floor or myself as I will inevitably miss the narrow hole of the keg because the hose of the sprayer is just 3 inches shy of letting the faucet actually get inside the keg. If it hasn’t caught on by now, details like these are the largest contributors to pissing me off other than that guy who insists on picking the urinal next to me when there is plenty of other perfectly good urinals NOT next to me and then decides he wants to talk to me and THEN tries to make eye contact by leaning over while chatting it up. Moving on! Read the rest of this entry »

Alright.. so the citrusy/fruity character I originally thought wasn’t right is actually in style for this beer. Not quite what I had thought, but you know at least now I’m more educated – er hiccup. How about that color? Just need to work on getting it crystal clear. Over time, however, this beer WILL clear – I’m just drinking it before the yeast completely settles. I’ll take a pic as it clears out.