Black Butte Clone Batch Number 2

Posted on 2011 November 5, Saturday by JamesIsIn

Batch: 2

Recipe:

  • 3 lbs Maris Otter Pale
  • .5 lbs English Chocolate Malt
  • .75 lbs American Caramel 60*L [Crystal]
  • 4 lbs Dry Light (malt extract)
  • .33 oz Galena (Pellets 13.00 %AA) boiled 60 min
  • .75 oz Cascade (Pellets 5.50 %AA) boiled 30 min
  • 1 oz Tettnanger (Pellets 4.50 %AA) boiled 5 min
  • yeast: White Labs WLP002 English Ale [used wyeast 1338]

Original Gravity: 1.052

Notes:

I don’t know what we may have done differently but the beer seems much darker than the first batch.  Was the first batch short on the dark malts?  Did our (longer/more efficient) mash/sparge bring out more color?  This mash smelled more toasted (burnt) and the color of the brew is noticeably darker than the previous batch.

I broke a carboy by missing the protective carpet I had put down by about an inch.  It shattered on the concrete sending five gallons of sterile solution and glass all over the basement.  At least I didn’t lose any beer.

For whatever reason running the oxygen tank was troublesome as bubbles tended to bubble over the carboy.

I made a mark on the propane valve at what I hope will remain the perfect boiling BTU for future batches.  We shall see how that plays.

Fermentation:

(All ambient temperatures are a little more than 2 f shy if I compare my white thermometer with Matt’s Fluke device.)

  • Sat 5 Nov — 57.9 ? (in shop)

I moved the beer into theater where it will receive periodic (morning and evening) influxes of heat and the temps ought to range 62~68.

  • Sun 6 Nov — 64.9 f ambient; bubbles near exactly 3 seconds (perhaps increasing)
  • Sun 6 Nov — bubbles under 2 seconds
  • Mon 7 Nov 8:48 — 71 f ambient; bubbles are < 1 second
  • Mon 7 Nov 21:27 — 63.4 f ambient; blow-off tube more than one third full of ick
  • Mon 7 Nov 22:38 — 67.4 f ambient; vigorous bubbles up to several per second
  • Tue 8 Nov 7:14 — 66.0 f ambient; bubbles back to around 1 second
  • Tue 8 Nov 19:35 — 63.5 f ambient; bubbles ~4 seconds
  • Wed 9 Nov 7:42 — 65.7 f ambient; bubbles ~4.5 seconds
  • Wed 9 Nov 18:52 — 65.8 f ambient; bubbles ~7 seconds

I changed the airlock even though it got a little melty when I boiled it; I need to buy a new one; there is about 1/8″ of dough in the bottom of the blow-off bucket; with the airlock bubbles are under 4 seconds.

  • Thu 10 Nov 7:14 — 67.6 f ambient; bubbles ~4 seconds
  • Thu 10 Nov 21:19 — 67.1 f ambient; bubbles ~5.5 seconds
  • Fri 11 Nov 7:22 — 67.5 f ambient; bubbles ~5 seconds
  • Sat 12 Nov 15:59 — 67.8 f ambient; bubbles <7 seconds
  • Sun 13 Nov 9:19 — 65.7 f ambient; bubbles ~8 seconds
  • Mon 14 Nov 12:51 — 68.0 f ambient; bubbles <10 seconds
  • Tue 15 Nov 19:47 — 69.4 f ambient; bubbles ~10 seconds
  • Fri 18 Nov 6:37 — 70.2 f ambient; bubbles ~13 seconds
  • Fri 18 Nov 23:52 — 64.0 f ambient; bubbles 24.09 seconds
  • Sat 19 Nov 8:17 — 68.9 f ambient; bubbles 19.37 seconds
  • Sat 19 Nov 17:58 — 69.6 f ambient; bubbles 18.18 seconds
  • Sun 20 Nov 3:19 — 57.9 f ambient; bubbles 1:40.47 minutes
  • Sun 20 Nov 22:23 — 65.5 f ambient; bubbles 31.02 seconds
  • Mon 21 Nov 21:15 — 63.9 f ambient; bubbles 1:09.72 minutes
  • Tue 22 Nov 21:33 — 68.0 f ambient; bubbles too infrequent to bother measuring
  • Wed 23 Nov 20:27 — 63.1 f ambient; bubbles too infrequent to bother measuring

While there are still new bubbles forming at the froth line I am aiming to bottle Saturday.

  • Fri 25 Nov 17:19 — 68.0 f ambient; bubbles 10.50 seconds

This morning I moved in a personal heater to make sure the yeast was really finished with the sugars; I’ll make more measurements later.

  • Fri 25 Nov 23:43 — 73.2 f ambient; bubbles 11.72 seconds
  • Sat 26 Nov 8:34 — 79.5 f ambient; bubbles 23.46 seconds
  • Sat 26 Nov 16:12 — 77.9 f ambient; bubbles 19.63 seconds
  • Sat 26 Nov 23:42 — 74.1 f ambient; bubbles 26.29 seconds
  • Sun 27 Nov — no discernible bubble activity all day

I am hoping I made a better estimate this time in my secondary sugars so this batch will not be quite so effervescent as the first batch.  We shall see.

Bottled:

Monday 28 November 21:41

  • 2 x 1 L
  • 18 x 16 oz
  • 10 x 22 oz

I had a hard time keeping any of the sediment from getting into the bottles.  Some of the bottles have visible sediment in them.  I guess this is from the hops and the fact I didn’t use bags.  There was a lot of sediment in the carboy (two inches?) and it seems unlikely it’s all yeast.

Final Gravity: 1.010

The final gravity sample tastes a bit thin.  We shall see how that comes together after the bubbles come to being.

ABV: 5.5125 %

End Notes:

JamesIsIn
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Taxes Are Confusing

Posted on 2011 October 23, Sunday by JamesIsIn

I worked for about three months for the IRS, in collections no less.  My second least favorite job.  I hated it and left.  The first worst was working in a sheet metal plant and it wins that contest by dint of being utterly filthy in the physical realm.  Telling crying taxpayers you are not going to sell their children into slavery for back taxes sucks.

Our tax system is really confusing.  There are all sorts of maneuvers one can make if one hires an astute accountant adept in taxes which will improve one’s tax position.  I would do this if I had money and I worked in that system.  You’d think I might have a clue but our system is really confusing.

One thing you will hear lauded from time to time is a flat tax rate.  They may even claim this will somehow make our tax system simpler.  That is not likely to happen because those who propose flat taxes rarely also propose removing the host of deductions which create the bulk of the confusion.

Flat taxes are not fair in any objective sense.  They are sold as fair by dint of being the same percentage.  Let’s be clear though.  Ten percent of ten thousand dollars is a thousand dollars.  When you are making ten grand a year and lose one of those grands things have suddenly become a lot less grand.  By contrast when you make ten million each year and you lose one of those million, meh, whatever.

Never mind that the very wealthy earn most of their money through rentier methods (non-labor related income) such as capital gains (which in turn is taxed much lower than labor-styled income—wages for instance).

I would like to see some major reforms (such as eliminating capital gains for single-home home owners where said home is valued at less than a million dollars tied to a capital gains tax increase), but I’m always pie-in-the-sky like that.

This excellent article came to my attention recently.   I highly recommend the article as it is a good read and the author does an excellent job of describing one of the many confusing aspects of our tax system.

 

JamesIsIn
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You Think My Backyard Is Cool, but John Elliott’s Backyards Rocks

Posted on 2011 August 10, Wednesday by JamesIsIn

My old friend Ian Parks moved to LA a few years back and set himself in a sweet little place with a cool courtyard.  He puts on music shows there calling it Frog Town.

Living in Seattle I’ve only been able to catch the bits that get posted to YouTube.  Regardless after I listened to a performance by John Elliott I was impressed.  When I found out he was putting together an album I got in touch with him so I could check it out and maybe write  a review for both of my dedicated if mildly retarded readers.

You like watching videos of live performances?  Ok.

So his new album is called Backyards and is published under John Elliott & the Hereafter.

Backyards

Backyards

If you are reading this early enough (and you are in the LA area), you can still catch the album release party (13 August).  If you want to get tickets for the release party you can do so here.  It’s a show for adults so become an adult before you go, eh?

Long story short, this is that review.  Let me just cut to the important part: this is good music and should be bought, posthaste.  Zoomzoom, amigos!  Buy it here.

The audio and recording quality throughout is excellent.  The same holds for the musicianship and the mixing.  Coincidentally, John shares my distaste for the ubiquitous mp3 and what it has done for the expectations of quality in musical recordings.  That’s a good thing.

I’ll just talk about a few tracks that stood out for me.  You might end up getting more deeply into different tracks.  I might change my affiliations over time.  Music is like that.

The first track, called The American West, reminds me of one of my favorite albums of recent years.  If One Fast Move or I’m Gone: Kerouac’s Big Sur isn’t already in your collection you are missing out, but American West both in musical feel and thematic scope would fit right into that set.  Good company, that.  (This is the same song as in the video above, but this version is with The Hereafter while the video is a solo performance with just John Elliott.)

The third track is a sweet up-tempo romp about winning and losing and the shape of life in sketches seen through timid fearless eyes.  It’s called “Daylight Saving”.  I like this song a lot and wonder if it’s going to be a hit one day.

“Losing Streak” is in the fourth slot and I don’t know what to say about it.  Is it a lamentation?  Could be.  Mellow for some I suppose but musically rich and in a way exciting.  Having listened to them several times now I have come to view these first three songs as a kind of trilogy: they each tell a different story but they have a commonality between and through them.

“I Think I Found a New Friend” (track five) has some nice backing vocals.  When I find out by whom I’ll update it here.

I thought “Over a Year” might have been influenced by The Edge (guitarist for U2), but even if it’s not it has some great guitar work and some punk influence, making it a nice lead into the next song.  As a side note, this seems to be the song from which the album title comes.

Track seven is a change of gears.  I’d maybe call it a punk jam calling upon the ghosts of The Clash and Joan Jett.  They called it “Cassius Clay”.

Now we come to quite a contrast to Cassius.  Track nine, called “So This Is When It Comes”, is what we might call a spacey ambient tribute to ambient space people everywhere.  Really shows the broad musical range of this album.

Eleven tracks in all.  A clandestine reference to Spinal Tap?  Who can say?

The final track, “Empty in the Heartland”, musically strikes me as a sort of reprise to the first track and thus makes for an excellent bookend for Backyards.  It’s the sort of song you can find yourself fading off into the land of dreams.  Sort of like at the end of a party.  When everyone else has already passed out and you’re looking around your own backyard yawning and thinking “look at all those fucking beer cans where’s my lawn chair?”.

If you’d like to follow The Hereafter, you can check out their site.  They are also on Facebook.  Oh, yeah; and buy it here.

Happy the end.

JamesIsIn
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The Great Black Hope and Disillusionment

Posted on 2011 August 3, Wednesday by JamesIsIn

I might own an arsenal of firearms and I might think giving money to beggars is wrong (a la Plato: you are building an economy for begging), but I’m also a(n aspiring) musician and living in Seattle; this affords me access to some of the most liberal folks in the United States.

There has been an alarming trend I have noticed where the most liberal folks I know (especially the radically liberals) are abandoning President Obama.  The reason seems to be that he just isn’t liberal enough.  I admit that for a Democrat he is pretty flexible around the middle.  Truth be told that’s probably a good thing.  Unfortunately there is this trend.

That wouldn’t be so terrible but on the flip side the conservatives (especially Republicans and Tea Baggers) don’t like him because he’s still black liberal.

I can’t say with certainty what history will have to say about the Obama administration, but I would like to make an appeal for re-measuring your valuation of this current president, President Obama.  Consider the depression/recession as it was inherited, consider the two wars (again as they were inherited), and consider the stupidity of both parties in both houses (Tea Baggers not withstanding) waging a partisan war largely measured in willy-wagging and posturizing rhetoric.  Sitting at the head of this you have one human, Barack Obama, our President.

Isn’t it about time we made this more fair measure of his progress?

JamesIsIn
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Alarmists Rally Against UnReason

Posted on 2011 August 3, Wednesday by JamesIsIn

Well well well… we meet again my slippery sloped sloppy companion.  Global Warming you will yield!  And your sidekick—Global Climate Change—you are going down down down.  A scientist told me.

Only problem is he’s the black sheep, red headed, retarded, step-child scientist of the scientific community.  A while back my friend Bill posted a link concerning some alleged alarmists.  You can read that article here.

The alarming thing for me in that article was the alarming use of the word alarmist.  I stopped counting at six alarms (excluding the alarming title) and alarmingly tossed the whole alarming thing into the biased alarm bin.

Happily today (no alarms required) I was presented with an article over at Discover that poked some holes in the alarming theory.

Further the Discover article includes a link to the much coveted original publication which I present to you here.

The Discover article also includes a number of other valuable links, the most acerbic of which I post here for your consideration.  (“The bottom line is that there is NO merit whatsoever in this paper.”)

Don’t believe hype!  Or do.  Just be rational about it.

JamesIsIn
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Dummy Is Polished Wood

Posted on 2011 May 16, Monday by JamesIsIn

I’ve been watching a lot of films with Adrien Brody of late (since a certain princess I know really likes him). I was surfing a film site and noticed that he stared in a film along side Milla Jovavich. I had never heard of the film, called Dummy, but I figured with those two in the lead roles I could do worse.

Dummy

Dummy

Very pleasantly I would have a hard time having done better. It’s a great and heart-felt movie worth every penny I doled out for the used DVD. Terrifically personal and passionate, it will make a fine edition to my permanent collection.

It’s one of those little gems we all love to discover: obscure, independent, and magnificent. Get thee to the video store!

Move your ass!

JamesIsIn
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Ode to a Bull Market

Posted on 2011 April 13, Wednesday by JamesIsIn

O sweet smell of success
the unmimicable aroma
sought by perfumeries in Paris
so strong the nose of noses
dies a little death
and the effluence of the shitting bull
dissipates in fog

JamesIsIn
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Recursive Prepending Script

Posted on 2011 April 1, Friday by JamesIsIn

I am migrating my technology posts to a new blog:

A High-Tech Blech!

Please update your links and bookmarks to reflect this new location for this post:

http://jamesisin.com/a_high-tech_blech/index.php/2011/04/recursive-prepending-script/

(If I have linked here in error, please let me know by writing to brokenlink@jamesisin.com keeping in mind that I don’t control the Internet only JamesIsIn.com and SoundUnReason.com.  Thanks.)

JamesIsIn
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Ruminations on Death

Posted on 2011 March 14, Monday by JamesIsIn

what have you done
speaking softly the old lies

I cannot abide
in my skin
while this sin
has come in

run I try and hide and seek relief
but your arms are my salvation
are my sovereign nation
my old elation

so Death in toothy grin
invites me in
to discuss our commonalities
to discuss what each man sees
when nothing but the blind world stands before his eyes

what have you done
speaking softly the old lies

JamesIsIn
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How to Defeat Fascism while Dancing

Posted on 2011 January 10, Monday by JamesIsIn

There was a bit of controversy surrounding this dance video according to NPR today.  I watched it and just saw some people helping an old man take back something that was taken from him years ago.

I believe the method is something like this:

  1. Experience/witness something horrible
  2. After the bad guys have been defeated go there again
  3. Dance

You tell me what you think.

Thanks for stopping.

JamesIsIn
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