Trailer Trash Brewing

That’s my official title. I’ve been incredibly inconsistent with updating this thing lately. It’s not a surprise, as writing about myself and my exploits isn’t exactly my bag. I’m more of a talker, get a couple of beers in me and I’ll do my best to entertain you for the rest of the evening. Writing though always seems a bit pretentious to me (as if I have anything worth reading to say) and it’s difficult to want to do it. But I pay the bills for this website so I should occasionally update. (more…)

So, I’ll be doing a guest Firkin session at Old Capitol in about a month. Well, I’ll be brewing this weekend, and presenting in about a month. The beer? Why the Wheat IPA of course. Mark and I have both bugged Paul a few times about doing it, and he’s been fairly open to the idea.
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If you’ve read that post below you’ll notice my desire for experimentation. I love to drink a certain style of beer, and I love making it repeatedly. But the thing I think that draws me to brewing so much is the creativity afforded me. For a reasonable investment, I can try new things and fully unleash what little still remains of my creative side. This weekend I had several moments of just such inspiration and creativity.
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It’s been a while (yet again) since I last posted. I haven’t stopped brewing beer, but I haven’t been updating. The number of posts here over the last year show that well enough I suppose. Finding the time to brew and then subsequently post about brewing seems to be harder all the time. Without my roomate I am definitely drinking less beer, hence the need to brew as frequently is decreased. I need to keep thinking and writing about it though, hence this post.
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I’m probably the only person that actually reads this, but I thought I’d mention (to myself) that I’m back brewing again. After a six month layoff I’ve started brewing again. A lot of things went on in my personal life since my last (ill fated it seems) brew, but I’ve done it again. And really, what better way to return than with the next installment of my WooPAh brew?
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So, my friends have been grumbling that I don’t write often enough. Looking at the last entry (May!) they seem to be right. I’ve not done a lot of brewing due to the very warm summer we’ve had (and the propensity boiling 6 gallons of water has for heating up a 14x72 steel roofed trailer), and have been busy with work and life in general. But tonight I’m brewing, so I should at least say something!
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So, for the last couple of months things have been slightly slow around the trailer. While we worked our way through the backstock of homebrew, enjoyed the new micro-brewery in town, and generally tried to keep up with lives and work we’ve not done an awful lot of brewing. Last weekend we decided to make up for our downtime.;)
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As you can see, the site appears to be back in mostly functional order at this time. We’ve only got the one style up and working, and since my boss reads this, that’ll be the only thing fixed while I’m working today (Hi Steve!). Hopefully I can get the captcha installed, otherwise I think we’ll be looking at Poker run wild in no time. I also hope to get the style switcher functioning as quickly as possible too. That’ll be interesting, as the current codebase is some kind of bastardization of Wordpress 1.2 and Wordpress 1.5. Oh well, at least it looks right again. The admin side of 1.5 seems much nicer. If nothing else I no longer seem to get random white pages. That’s a positive. Ah well, back to the real job. Enjoy the corrected visage.
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Nothing new, as I’m currently awaiting a few different shipments from various places, but I wanted to pass this along to anyone that reads this. Good until 5pm CDT Sunday, anything in the store is 10% off. Good stuff. I’ve taken the opportunity to order a Kolsch and a Wheat kit to brew up. As always, increasing the fermentables and adding to the hops should improve the end result.
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This Friday is the deadline for submission to the 1st round of the AHA National Homebrew Competition. Now, I’ve only been brewing for a few months, but I like to think I’m getting the hang of this thing (most people seem to like my stuff). As I’d previously mentioned, I took a comment from my dear friend Aaron to heart, and felt that I needed to prove my hop-mettle once and for all. To that end, I brewed a rather potent concoction.
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I recognize it’s been a while, but I’ve returned with some gusto. Or at least I think so. We here at the trailer realized with summer coming, the brewing closet wasn’t going to quite work for us. The temperatures have been steadily climbing, and once they passed 50 degrees it was time for something new. We needed a keg fridge.
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I’ve been pretty neglectful in keeping progress updated, so I thought I’d drop a note to say that we’ve got several new recipes onhand. The first (and most dear to my heart) is the first beer we brewed at the trailer, a clone of Victory’s Hop Devil Ale. You may be asking why we’d go back and do the clone over again, so let me explain. I love Victory Hop Devil. Some people love Jesus, some people love ice cream, others even love Hello Kitty, me, I love Victory’s Hop Devil Ale. One of the most amazing and delectable beers ever made on this planet. I’m stuck in Iowa though (hey, prohibition ended like 8 decades ago guys!), so no Victory for me. As well, the first time around, we seriously shortbrewed this delectable concoction, ending with only 3+ gallons instead of the full five.
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Here at the trailer we are reviled for keeping things cold. Our friends and guests are often aghast at the “comfort” levels we maintain. We keep the thermostat set for a temperature range of 62-65 throughout the winter, mostly because we prefer the cooler temperatures. This has an interesting side affect of keeping some rooms cooler than others (well, this and the fact that many of the vents are blocked off). In fact, the bathroom closet maintains an average temperature of 45 degrees throughout the winter! Obviously this is an opportunity, one that we can’t ignore!
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A few weeks back I decided to brew a “Mocha Porter”, obviously an attempt on my part to duplicate a wonderful concoction from the great guys at Rogue. I started with the Robust Porter partial-mash recipe kit from Austin Homebrew and decided to tweak it. Along came 2 ounces of Scharffen-Berger Cacao nibs and 8 ounces of a locally roasted Hawaii Kauai Reserve coffee.
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No real updates, as we haven’t done much brewing in the last few days, but I felt an update was necessary. We moved the cider to a secondary fermentation, and have superdoused it with campden tablets (15 all told). I believe the plan is to move the cider to the demi-john purchased this weekend and top off the demi with CO2 from our kegging outfit. Perhaps when we move it to the third we’ll get a better idea of the potency of the off-flavors/vinegar. Maybe the campden worked, though I’m doubtful.
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Last weekend we decided it would be kind of fun to make a “hard” cider. Given the overall simplicity of brewing a cider, we charged headlong into it. We already had some dry champagne yeast, and the ‘rick decided to to pick up some Apple Cider from the god-fearing grocery store and go to town. I cautioned that we should bring the entire mess to a boil before attempting to ferment, but like all good ideas I have the ‘rick choose to ignore me. (Sidenote, don’t the “intellectually superior” piss you off sometimes?) At any rate, five gallons of Apple Cider were dumped into the the carboy, along with the dry yeast and some spices we boiled into a pan of water, and we waited.
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So we saw the FermWrap on both the Northern Brewer and the Beer, Beer, & More Beer websites and thought it seemed like a great product. Here at the trailer we keep the temperature a balmy 63 degrees pretty much all winter long, and of course that causes some issues at the start of our fermentation cycle.
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We had a busy weekend here at the trailer, brewing three 5 gallon batches of beer. We also experimented with propagating the yeast cultures prior to primary fermentation, with explosive results. But we’ll get to that shortly. For this weekends brew cycle we did an Altbier, a Double IPA, and a Hoppy Ale (not sure how much difference we’ll notice between the last two, but it’ll be fun trying to find one!). The yeast starters were used on the Double IPA and the Altbier. We determined that because of some slow fermentation starts previously with high-gravity beers, and older yeast cultures, that it would be a good idea to try and get a good jump start on the process.
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We’ve been using the PolarWare 40 quart brewpot for the last few beers we’ve brewed here at the trailer, and for the most part are quite happy with it. The temperature probe and the ball-lock valve really make brewing with and draining the pot quite easy. We are able to easily monitor the temperature and overall find this to be a really nice investment. Solid, thick , heavy-duty stainless steel nicely welded fittings, overall I’m really happy. The only caveat I have is it’s pretty clear the false bottom is absolutely necessary if you want to use this kettle.
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Just a quick post to say welcome. We’ll be adding more content, pictures, and various things in the near future. For now though, I’ll leave these pictures of a couple of label attempts we’ve got “brewing”.