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Brew #43: Chile 4

Time for another chile beer…actually, its long overdue! I think its kind of hard to mess up a chile beer, what with all of the heat on it, so I decided now is the time to try a few new things on my brew system..

1. I’m fermenting in a 5ga. corny keg. Unfortunately that means I can’t see the beer fermenting any more, but there are several good things about doing this! There is 0% chance of light penetration which will damage the yeast during fermentation, I’m setup now to ferment 10ga in one shot.. so I can do a 10 gallon batch or two 5 gallon batches back to back, and most importantly I do not have to lug around a huge glass container with 5 gallons of beer in it.. while I’m really safe with glass, I’ve read about serious injuries of being cut while dropping or slipping a carboy in transportation.

2. I’m using foam control in my boil (no more boil overs!) and in fermentation so that I don’t have to worry about yeast blow off because my corny keg will barely fit 5 gallons of beer to ferment… more likely I’ll collect about 4.75 gallons per fermenter.

So, here’s the brew:

Chile 4
——
Brewer: Josh Gum
Style: American Pale Ale
Batch: 5.00 gal All Grain

Characteristics
—————
Recipe Gravity: 1.073 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 45 IBU
Recipe Color: 12° SRM
Estimated FG: 1.018
Alcohol by Volume: 7.0%
Alcohol by Weight: 5.5%

Ingredients
———–
Belgian aromatic malt 0.25 lb, Grain, Mashed
Cane sugar 0.25 lb, Sugar, Other
Crystal 20L 1.00 lb, Grain, Mashed
Crystal 60L 0.50 lb, Grain, Mashed
German vienna 0.75 lb, Grain, Mashed
Maris Otter Malt 10.00 lb, Grain, Mashed

Magnum 1.00 oz, Whole, 60 minutes
Amarillo 0.50 oz, Whole, 25 minutes
Special Blend (Cascade/Nugget) 0.50 oz, Whole, 10 minutes
Amarillo 0.50 oz, Whole, 0 minutes

Wyeast British Ale II activator pack

Notes
—–
Recipe Notes:

Batch Notes:
OG measured 1.055, tastes really spicy!

Bubbles at the clinic!

While Wendie was working some massage clients this afternoon, I hung out at the clinic outside in the sun and we busted out the bubble guns.. much fun was had by all! Wendie and I went to dinner afterwards and then met the Young family and we all watched Wall-E. We thought the movie was clever and funny at times, it kinda fell a little flat in parts.. I think I’d give it a 6 or 7 out of 10.

eleanor2rilee2taylor1

oh my god this is hilarious!

I’m still wiping tears from my eyes.

More technology to geek on..

I’ve been finding a surprising number of interesting and blogworthy things on “the information superhighway” lately..and here’s another!

I’ve got the geek syndrome full-on..and UMPC (ultra-mobile pc’s) have been something I’ve always wanted to get. Well, it appears that they are on the market now and actually worthwhile in regard to the 3 P’s (price, performance, and pimpness). Here’s a review from Cnet on the Top 10 either on the market now or soon-to-be. By the sound of it, the next generation of UMPC by HP should be a real winner.. the current generation (HP 2133 Mini-Note) is painfully slow (apparently).

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