Brew #40: Hef 1

Summer is just around the corner, so yesterday I cooked up a batch of hefeweizen! This is one of the easiest and fastest style of beer to make, so it should be ready to start drinking in about 2 weeks.

Hef 1
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Brewer: Josh Gum
Style: Weizen/Weissbier
Batch: 5.25 gal, Mashed

Characteristics
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Recipe Gravity: 1.055 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 11 IBU
Recipe Color: 3° SRM
Estimated FG: 1.014
Alcohol by Volume: 5.5%
Alcohol by Weight: 4.3%

Ingredients
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German wheat 5.00 lb, mashed
German pilsener 4.75 lb, mashed
CaraFoam 0.25 lb, mashed
Rice Hulls 0.75 lb, mashed

Perle 0.30 oz, whole, 60 minutes

Hefeweizen Yeast (WLP380) 1.00 unit, vial

Notes
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Recipe Notes:
Mash at 152f for 60 minutes
Pitch yeast 60f, let ferment rise to 64f

Batch Notes:
collected 5.25 ga, OG measured 1.050

Altbier wins in its category!

With a score of 38, my Altbier won 1st place in the Amber Hybrid Beer category this last weekend in the 26th Annual Oregon Homebrew competition. I felt this has been one of my best beers to date, and I’ve gotten quite a bit of feedback from friends about it as well, so it wasn’t a huge surprise that it did well in competition.. but to take first place was very cool!

Get to know your doctor[s] better.

In case you want to know the status of your doctors license restrictions in Oregon, check out http://www.bme.state.or.us/search.html.

I’m hoping there is a national search for doctors status/history. Let me tell you a quick story;

A friend of mine had a back surgery performed by a neurosurgeon in the area, his surgery went really well and he’s had great results for the past couple of years. I’ve been in the midst of medical tests and such trying to figure out what is wrong with my back (bulging discs, sciatica, coccydynia, etc) and recently met with a doctor to get another MRI. While in the office waiting to be seen, we had a short discussion with a lady who had a botched surgery and is in litigation against the surgeon who messed up her back. Long story short, it was the SAME guy who did my friends back surgery.. Now, I accept that statistically there are going to be a few bad experiences along with all of the good experiences. But we came to find out that this surgeon has since had his license revoked and is in drug rehab for methamphetamines…. if that’s not scary enough, we also came to find that he had the same thing happen 2 or 3 times in Arizona!

While I realize that he’s human like the rest of us and could get caught up in meth, I’m a bit shocked that he could lose his license 2 or 3 times in another state but still be able to practice somewhere else.. I’d like to think that maybe people in a position like this (having patients lives at stake) would get 1 warning, but to make this sort of mistake multiple times should be punishable by having his license revoked permanently. As a potential patient for surgery, I would like to think that if a surgeon is employed by a hospital and has a state license then you shouldn’t have to question thier standing or history.. but apparently I’m quite naive. In searching the Oregon Medical Board link I pasted above, I see no reference about his history in other states… and this is what led me to post this topic.

Is there a single place to search for this information (since it is public information!)? Should a patient have to search every state individually to find this information?

Brew #39: Witbier

Wendie and I spent an afternoon hanging out with our friends Lorrie, Buddy, and family! The weather was really nice, topping around 90f in the mid-afternoon.

Witbier
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Brewer: Josh Gum
Style: Witbier
Batch: 5.25 gal, Mashed

Characteristics
—————
Recipe Gravity: 1.050 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 15 IBU
Recipe Color: 3° SRM
Estimated FG: 1.012
Alcohol by Volume: 4.9%
Alcohol by Weight: 3.9%

Ingredients
———–
Belgian pilsener 4.00 lb, mashed
German wheat 4.25 lb, mashed
Flaked oats 1.00 lb, mashed
Rice Hulls 0.33 lb, mashed

Goldings 0.25 oz, whole, 60 minutes
Willamette 0.50 oz, whole, 60 minutes

Coriander (ground) 1.00 unit, .33oz @ 5min
Black Pepper 1.00 unit, 1/4tsp @ 5min
Orange zest 1.00 unit, 2med oranges @ 5min
WLP400 Belgian Wit Bier 1.00 unit, 600ml starter

Notes
—–
Recipe Notes:

Batch Notes:
mash @ 152f for 60 min
ferment at 69f for a week in primary

Collected just shy of 5ga in primary, my volumes were a little low but the gravity was great!

5/25: kegged and carbonating. FG 1.008. The beer seems to finish medium dry, tastes a lot of orange citrus but not sharp or bitter at all.. a little bit of a tart flavor in the finish as well. Pale straw cloudy colored, and should be highly carbonated. So far so good!

7/12: malty sweet and orange aroma, pours pale straw colored with a bit of haze. The head was tight white that sticks to the glass. I get a little bit of astringent puckering at the finish on the first sip, the rest are highly carbonated leaving the mouth tingling dry in the aftertaste. Mild bittering and some tartness with an orange/tangerine sort of flavor, alcohol heat is balanced if not masked..