Brew #15 : Winter2006

The first in the lineage of my own custom spiced beers. I’m probably a week or two behind, but I figured the timeline into what kind of beer I made today. I’m hoping this to come out a well rounded brown ale spiced with the typical holiday spices like ginger, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg. If Santa Clause shows up at my house, he’ll end up staggering out.

Check out the new sticker on my mash vessel, thank you for the gift Dad and J!

Here’s a pic of the brew

And last but not least, for my beer geek friends (and so I don’t have to keep this in a paper journal somewhere!), the recipe:
Winter2006
———-
Brewer: Josh Gum
Style: American Brown Ale
Batch: 5.50 gal, Mashed

Characteristics
—————
Recipe Gravity: 1.049 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 15 IBU
Recipe Color: 15° SRM
Estimated FG: 1.012
Alcohol by Volume: 4.9%
Alcohol by Weight: 3.9%

Ingredients
———–
American two-row 8.00 lb, mashed
Crystal 60L 0.75 lb, mashed
Flaked oats 1.00 lb, mashed
British chocolate malt 0.25 lb, mashed

Chinook 0.25 oz, whole, 60 minutes
Kent Golding 0.25 oz, whole, 20 minutes
Hallertauer 0.25 oz, whole, 20 minutes
Kent Golding 0.25 oz, whole, 5 minutes
Hallertauer 0.25 oz, whole, 5 minutes

Ale yeast 1.00 unit, wpl001 white labs california ale
Irish Moss 1.00 unit, clarifying, 30 minutes

Notes
—–
Recipe Notes: I put together this recipe after doing a little research on other spice beer recipes and after reading about the method I’m using to adequately spice the beer. This is the first in my series of winter brews, each year will be a new custom brew.

Batch Notes:
10/28 : mash in with 3.3ga 164F water, grain bed at 151F mashed for 75min. Sparged with 4.75ga 168F water, total wort 6.75ga then cooled to 74F. Strained hops, filled primary fermenter with 5ga wort, pitched yeast, showing positive pressure immediately in fermentation chamber. Cooled to 66-68F for primary fermentation. OG 1.053
Next I will make a blend of spices, and add them to a bottle of vodka until bottling time. Add spice liquor to bottling bucket after calculating total dose per a taste testing of a known amount of beer.. this way I can be sure each beer has just the right amount of spices.

11/21 : I found that 1ml of spice extract for 8oz of beer was just right for spicing.. total spice extract added was 90ml. Bottled today. The base porter was damn good, I’ll be making that sometime soon.

Portland Go Tournament 2006

Yesterday, 10/21, was the first round of the 2006 Portland Go Tournament at Lewis and Clark College. As he has for the past several years, Peter Drake hosted and directed the tournament. Peter did a great job keeping tournament rounds going and doing the pairings, despite technical difficulties with the pairing software. It was a beautiful, and crisp typical Fall day in Oregon.. I couldn’t have asked for a better day! I played three games, won two and lost one.. this is a typical result for me in tournament play. I lost my first game to Cindy, then won the next two with Peter, and Ray. I made a frustrating mistake in my first game and Cindy seized the moment to take advantage.. All in all, everyone played very well and the games were all very enjoyable! I typically attend the first three rounds on day one and skip day two due to the 90 minute drive. Maybe next year we’ll get a room and stay the night. *shrug* Full results will likely be posted at www.oregongo.org.

Pictures of the where the tournament was held, at the Albany Quadrangle building at Lewis and Clark.

Another building on campus

Pictures of the players, and board 1 during round 2.

Mike, and another player (I didn’t catch his name!) playing a game of Go out in the courtyard outside of the Albany Quadrangle building. The weather was beautiful!

Along with the tournament, it was my birthday and Wendie and I went out and had an excellent italian dinner at Nona Emilias in Portland. Along the way to dinner, I called and spoke with my cousin Jeremia and had a chance to catch up to how he and his wife Billie are doing. Jeremia is a helicopter pilot and is just about done with his training and education at a Marine (or is it an Air Force?) base in Alabama. I can’t wait to see him in December! What a great day, the best birthday in many years!

WWED: What Would Earth Do?

So, I ran across this article on Slashdot and thought it was quite neat. The article discusses estimated timelines on what would happen should every human being be removed from the Earth and she is left to do her thing? Here are a couple of thoughts I have on the article:

1. It’s nice to know that Earth would fare pretty well within a relatively short period of time, with the exception of some particularly nasty things we’ve left behind like nuclear reactors.

2. Not directly related, it’s disturbing to think that the worlds super-power government is shying away from taking matters of global warming and how we treat the environment very seriously. I’m not well educated in everything they do, but from what I hear and read we are essentially closing our eyes, plugging our ears, and yelling “la la la la la la la la” in hopes that it will fix itself.

Anyhow, the article is a fairly quick read and I found it to be really interesting.. For example:

“America would have three times as many species of animals over 1,000 pounds as Africa does today,” he [Martin] says. An amazing megafaunal menagerie roamed the region: Giant armadillos resembling armor-plated autos; bears twice the size of grizzlies; the hoofed, herbivorous toxodon, big as a rhinoceros; and saber-toothed tigers. A dozen species of horses were here, as well as the camel-like litoptern, giant beavers, giant peccaries, woolly rhinos, mammoths, and mastodons.

 

My favorite time of the year!

Fall is totally here, it’s my favorite time of the year! The weather is crisp, we’ve just started to get some of that rain we’re known for, the leaves are all kinds of beautiful colors, it’s perfect weather for homebrewing beer, it’s that time of the year to celebrate Libra birthdays (mine too! I’m 27 on the 21st), and the Portland Go Tournament is in full effect! Along with all of the enjoyable things happening this time of year, I must remind myself that there are plenty of chores to be done… like cleaning up the yard, finishing our bathroom remodel, and preparing the house for winter!

As I mention above, the Portland Go Tournament is happening this weekend on the 21st and 22nd up at Lewis&Clark College! I’ve recently been reflecting on the past 3 years that I’ve been playing Go, meeting new people, making new friends, and participating in the Oregon tournaments. Even though my progress is not at the rate I wish it was, I’m slowly but surely becoming a stronger player. Having access to every game that I’ve ever played online (I think around 700 now) reminded me to go back and look at some of my first games. It’s so funny to look back and try to understand what the heck I was thinking back then, but that’s all part of the learning process. I’ve read (and reread) a number of books on Go but it’s always left up to the player to remember and integrate those topics into thier own game. I really am happy with where I’m at with this game, it takes a lot of energy and focus to continue to make progress..and it’s a heck of a lot of fun along the way! The two main Internet Go servers, IGS and KGS, have me ranked at a solid 5 kyu (beginner, almost intermediate). I’ve been playing a weekly game at work with my friend Bryant who is about 1 dan (much stronger) and I feel like I’ve been getting a lot out of our games and discussion.. Thanks a ton to Bryant for the great games! 

I’ll post a review with some pictures of the Go Tournament this weekend, win or lose I know its going to be a great time with a very cool group of people!