New Recipe in the Can

Today is a brew day.

My last brew was an ale somewhat like an IPA. I ordinarily use a German Braumeister brewing machine, but I lost an O-ring, so while I wait for a new one (and possibly forever), I am doing brew-in-a-bag, or BIAB. This means I put a mesh bag in my kettle, heat water in it, dump in my grain, and mash in the bag. When it’s done, I pull the bag out and wring the wort out of it. Very simple.

I’m making an imperial stout.

Everyone knows what stout is. The “imperial” in “imperial stout” refers to the Russian imperial court.

For some reason I do not know, Russians used to buy British beer instead of brewing their own. They liked stout. Because beer had to be shipped a long way to get to Russia, the beer had to be tough enough to take the heat and bouncing without degrading. The British found that extremely strong, thick beers held up well. They made very strong stout and shipped it to Russia.

It’s an interesting beverage. It tends to be sweet. It has a ton of aroma from the roasted grains that make it dark, as well as the hops. In terms of alcohol, it’s around twice as strong as most beers. That’s a generalization. Some imperial stouts are a lot stronger.

The stout I’m trying to make is my own recipe. I took my recipe for ordinary stout, which is fantastic, and I simply increased the amounts of everything.

Some people advise brewers not to increase the hopping along with everything else, but others disagree. I asked for advice, and homebrewing celebrity Denny Conn, who is known for making heavy beers, was in favor of jacking everything up together.

I think that’s the right approach. In an experiment, you should limit the variables you change. If I increase everything, the stout may not be what I want, but it should be easy to figure out what I need to change. And it may be perfect without changes.

I’m using East Kent Goldings hops, which are very popular for stouts. I’m going to try Lutra Kveik yeast.

My understanding is that “kveik” means “quick” in Norwegian. Kveik comes from Norway. It’s a yeast that has traditionally been used by rural Norwegians. I guess if you pronounce “quick” like a Norwegian, it probably sounds like “kveik,” which, I am told, rhymes with “shake.” Lutra is just a strain of kveik.

Kveik is, indeed, quick. That’s one thing people like about it. You can make a beer in maybe three days. It also ferments cleanly at high temperatures, so you don’t get toxic heavy alcohols and fruit flavors. Brewers like to use kveik to make beers that are pretty much like traditional lagers. Lagers are generally fermented cold, and they take forever. Kveik lets brewers speed things up, and it obviates the need for fermenter cooling. A regular lager might ferment at 50, but Kveik goes up to 90.

I generally use a yeast called US-05 for stout, but it’s very slow. It’s supposed to be the yeast they use in Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, which is an okay but not really fantastic beer. US-05 is supposed to ferment cleanly at 68.

I am tired of waiting a long time for stouts, and since I’m not looking for yeast flavors, any clean-fermenting yeast will do. If kveik is what they say it is, it ought to be great.

People say you need a ton of yeast for heavy beers. I have only made one heavy beer, and it went like crazy using one packet of dry yeast. I didn’t rehydrate it. I just dumped it in the fermenter. It was done in maybe 4 days. The yeast I used is Abbaye, a yeast taken from Belgian ales. It seems to me that if one vigorous yeast will work in heavy beers without pampering, others will also work.

I think I’ll rehydrate the kveik, but that’s all the work I’m willing to do.

The ale I made a week ago is probably done. It went from 1.056 to 1.013. I fermented at 63 in hopes of reducing the banana flavors the yeast gives off, and I think it worked. The gas coming out of the keg doesn’t smell like bananas. Last night I moved it to 68 to speed things up and get it over with. My understanding is that fruity flavors develop at the beginning of fermentation, so raising the temperature should be safe now.

I used Crystal as my aroma hop. It usually smells spicy. This time, it smells citrusy, which it’s not supposed to do. The samples I took tasted great, however.

UPDATE

The stout turned out to be a job. It did not want to come through the bag. I had to squeeze it ruthlessly. Then I put it on an oven grate on a cooler and pour about half a gallon of hot water through it.

I found myself at 1.115 after the boil, so I had to add a lot of water. I got to 1.085. I believe I have right around 5 gallons.

Now I know how to deal with a big stout and my brewing bag, so next time, the job will go faster. It will also help if my wife doesn’t come in while I’m working and demand a trip to get barbecue.

The fermenting keg is full, and it’s in the pool, chilling. I plan to leave it outdoors tonight because the temperature will be good for fermentation. Maybe I’ll move it inside tomorrow.

I look forward to seeing what kveik can do. It would be neat to have a good imperial stout kegged and carbed in under a week.

Trust the Germans to Overcomplicate

I’m brewing today. I was not satisfied with the last batch of Disaster Management Ale I brewed, so I am replacing it.

Ordinarily, I use a Braumeister 20-liter electric brewing machine, made in Germany. I bought it a year ago, when I went back to brewing. Today I’m doing BIAB, or “Brew In A Bag.”

When I started brewing in 2002, I did it the hard way, like everyone else. I mashed in a big pot. I moved the mash to an Igloo cooler with a screen in the bottom. I poured hot water over the mash to get all the sugar out. I moved the wort back to the pot to boil it. I used so many things, the cleaning was worse than the brewing.

I have no idea how I got the boiled wort into the fermenter. I think I picked up the 40-gallon pot with hot wort in it and poured, hoping for the best. I’m not sure.

When I started brewing again, I thought I’d take the easy way out, so I bought the Braumeister. It has a computer, a pump, and a heater. It does all the mashing and boiling for you, but you still have to lift the wet grain out before the boil, which is a pain.

I figured it had to be the best way, since it was the most expensive. I bought my machine used, but a new one runs $3,000. I paid less than a third of that.

A Braumeister is a stainless pot on legs with a heating element and a pump in it. The element and pump are connected to a computer in the bottom. There is a foot-wide stainless tube you stand up in the machine, in the water, and you dump your grain in it. The pump pushes the water through the grain continuously, and the computer keeps the heat where you want it.

It’s a real pain to wash, and you have to have a 220 circuit. It only works for beers under starting specific gravities of maybe 1.085. You have to play tricks on it to get that high.

I thought it would be great, and it works very well, but it has a lot of parts that have to be removed and washed every time I use it. On top of that, the Speidel company, which makes these machines, has a small presence in the US, and they do a poor job of supplying parts.

To brew in a bag, you need…a bag. You get a nylon bag that fits the inside of your pot. You put the bag in, with the mouth fastened to the rim of the pot. You heat water in the pot. You dump the grain in. You control the temperature however you can to mash it, and then you pull the bag out. You put an oven rack on top of the pot. You put the bag on the rack. It sits there and drains the wort back into the pot. You move the rack. You set the bag aside. Then you boil.

It’s a real cinch. That’s what I learned today.

When I was done brewing tonight, the kitchen was less messed up than it is when I make barbecue. Cleaning was quick and simple. I wish I had never fooled with the Braumeister.

Today I brewed Disaster Management Ale. It’s a lot like an IPA in terms of grain, but I use Nugget hops for bittering and Crystal for aroma. My understanding is that this combination is considered classic now, but I was using it 18 years ago.

This stuff should be ready to keg in a week. After that, I may make a stout, to prevent me from running out when the current keg dries up.

Living on Charity

I feel so blessed.

Far from crowds. Far from turmoil. Best wife possible. Two prayer sessions a day, with my wife and the most wonderful God anyone could ask for. Funny little bird by my side watching me type. Excellent strong wheat ale from a recipe I wrote in 2004, improved by using Bergamot hops.

I hope everyone reading this gets close to God and receives the desires of their hearts.

Troll Poo on my Shoe

The Internet is like a beautiful bipolar girlfriend who also has borderline personality and perpetual PMS.

I have a problem with my well water; it may affect the quality of the beer I brew. I had the water tested, and it has 0.68 parts per million of iron in some form or other. This is something like a hundredth of the calcium level, but beer likes calcium and hates iron. I have read that iron levels above 0.1 are bad, and I’m around 7 times that.

I started trying to decide what to do. It’s not simple, and I overthink things anyway, so it’s a puzzle.

1. Buy distilled water. This will actually work, but I don’t like the thought of paying $30 for 5 gallons of beer instead of $20. I have a really great homebrew store, so my grain is very cheap. If I buy distilled water, I will have to buy chemicals to add to it, because beer needs certain chemicals normally present in tap water. I plan to get some of those chemicals anyway, and I already have one of them: salt. My well water needs a little salt, epsom salt, and gypsum. I could buy a still and make my own distilled water, but it would be slow, and it would take maybe 20 batches of beer to make it pay for itself.

2. Get a reverse osmosis (RO) filter. This will suck iron out of my water while not harming the other mineral levels all that much. It’s a can of worms, however. I would have to decide whether to mount it under my sink, turning that area into a bigger maintenance and repair nightmare than it is already, mounting it under my laundry room sink, where it will not be much use for anything but brewing, and having some kind of mobile filter I can put away. RO filters often break, and I don’t want to have water gushing out into my cabinets in the middle of the night or while I’m on vacation.

3. Brewtan B. I plan to try this first. It’s some kind of tannic acid product. It’s made for brewers. The maker claims 1/4 teaspoon in 5 gallons of beer will chelate enough iron to protect the beer from off tastes and other issues related to iron. They claim it will not chelate the good metals enough to cause trouble. You can only use it in beers that are supposed to be clear. It will interfere with the production of cloudy beers.

If I use Brewtan B or RO water, I will have to go through the aggravation of testing again. I will need to know what’s in water that has been treated with Brewtan B or filtered. With distilled water, I would know the water only contained minerals I added.

I thought about this yesterday, and I went to the laundry room to look at the cabinet under the utility sink. I wanted to see how much room I had. When I looked, I found a wet cabinet floor with places where the Chinese melamine film had disappeared. There was some swelling, and the sawdust and boogers the fake wood was made from were escaping into the cabinet, making a mess.

I found out the cheap modern plastic pipes were the problem. The genius who installed the sink appears to have put some kind of sticky substance on the joints, and I think he also used a big wrench to tighten the collars. You’re not supposed to do any of that. The joints should be clean and hand-tight.

I had to take the P trap out, clean off the pipes, reinstall them correctly, and clean the cabinet floor. Then I left the cabinet open to dry, and I put a stainless bowl on a folded towel under the P trap. It still leaks maybe 10 drops an hour, but it will be fine until I get pipes that haven’t been abused. It only leaks when I’m using the sink, so it probably doesn’t leak enough to overcome evaporation.

My cabinets are very nice, for modern cabinets. They have wood exteriors, and they look good. The sawdust-product sides, bottoms, and shelves are sad signs of the times, but the cabinets are what would be considered relatively high end. They would not be cheap to replace.

I now have a water-damaged cabinet floor, and the sawdust will continue to get loose and cause problems if I don’t seal it in. Also, I have zero protection from future leaks. I want to fix the floor so it’s tough and waterproof.

I thought I would get some epoxy paint made for garage floors, but I wasn’t sure it would work well in a sawdust-and-melamine cabinet, so I went to a home repair forum to ask what people thought.

Of course, the thing that always happens happened. I was pounced on by a keyboard-raging numbskull.

If you frequent forums or make comments on the web, you will run into keyboard-ragers all the time, and they will be boring as well as annoying, because the stupid things they say all fall into certain well-known categories. It’s like there is one predictable guy out there, making all the stupid remarks, trying to prove his mental superiority but succeeding only in publicizing a screaming case of Dunning-Kruger.

They’re too hostile to leave people alone. They’re too dishonest to admit it when they’re wrong. They’re too stupid to know it.

I got some good suggestions from helpful people, but one guy said I should just get a piece of 1/2″ plywood. He didn’t explain how this would help. I don’t think he understood the situation.

I explained that installing plywood would mean replacing the whole cabinet, and that would mean replacing all the cabinets, and I didn’t want to spend thousands.

This ought to be obvious to anyone. You can’t just turn three screws, remove the bottom from a modern cabinet, slide a new bottom in, and replace the screws. They’re not made to be disassembled.

If I put plywood in the cabinet, I would have to remove the sink, counter, and doors. I’d have to remove the drawers and sides of the cabinet. If, by some miracle, the bottom of the cabinet was still intact and could be removed in one piece, I would have to take it out, cut the plywood to fit, install the plywood, sand the plywood, and seal the plywood with some kind of plastic coating like the garage paint I described above. If I managed to put it all back together, I would then have a cabinet fit for Ted Kaczynski’s Unabomber shack. It would be a monstrosity. I would have to remove it entirely and replace it. Then I’d need a new counter and wall cabinets to match. I’d have to paint the whole room.

It’s just a stupid idea. I was nice to the guy who offered it, but it was a really stupid idea, and it’s obviously stupid. This is a nice house. You don’t mend expensive cabinets with Home Depot plywood unless there is some way to conceal the repairs. That’s not possible in this case.

Epoxy paint would be invisible when the cabinet was closed, and it would look good when they were opened. It would look better than a new cabinet. A big slab of plywood would be right out there in view, making the house look like Jethro Bodine’s double-naught spy bachelor pad.

The keyboard-rager could not let it go. He asked how buying a cheap piece of plywood was like buying a new cabinet. Everyone else in the thread understood completely. It’s like saying, “Why would you repaint your car if all you need is a new clear coat?”

If you can’t understand why you would need to repaint the car, you should never try to tell anyone anything about body work, because you don’t know anything.

I think he understood, too, but keyboard-ragers have to do their thing. He wanted me to spend the day arguing with him, so he could dismiss a long series of proofs he was wrong, anoint himself victor, and congratulate himself on his imaginary brilliance.

I told him he was wasting everyone’s time, and I offered no explanation. I should have ignored him, but this stuff has a way of wearing on you.

He picked the wrong day. Earlier in the day, I actually thanked God for creating hell, because I was thinking of all the stupid, dishonest, arrogant, cruel people in the world. Like the people who lie about Israel and defend the Hamas baboons. There are millions or billions of people who are simply intolerable in the long term. I thanked God for creating hell so the rest of us would eventually get a break.

I don’t know if the keyboard-rager lives in a converted chicken coop or what, but he seriously wanted me to write an essay explaining why you don’t use plywood to make a new bottom for an expensive cabinet. I refused to engage. I had a surface I could restore and improve pretty easily. If I went insane and tried to replace it with plywood, I would have a major eyesore, and it would have to be sealed up, just like the surface I have now.

The Internet is as frustrating as the world that created it. The more you engage, the more abuse you have to swallow, for no good reason at all.

Nobody defended the keyboard-rager, even though he has been on the forum longer than I have. That shows what they thought of him. Traditionally, Internet forum members have always attacked newer guys, regardless of who was right. When they let the newer guy win, it means they already think the other guy is a jerk.

I use forums all the time to get good information and save myself research. Sometimes I have good experiences, but every once in a while, I rattle a troll’s cage simply by walking by. One of the great things about heaven is that there will be no Internet there and no trolls.

I learned some good stuff from the forum. They now make silicone mats you can put under sinks. They have vertical edges so a mat will hold a couple of gallons of water if there’s a leak. Some have little gadgets on the front sides that let water run out onto the floor outside the cabinet. This lets you know you have a problem. It’s supposed to keep the water off the bottom of the cabinet, but I don’t think it will work, because it will run down the side of the mat and go under it. Depends on the geometry of the little hole where the water is supposed to come out. It has to project past the bottom of the cabinet without interfering with the door.

Anyway, a silicone mat will probably take care of nearly all leaks your sink develops. The problem, other than the poor protection from really big leaks, is that they start at about $20. I would need 8 of them, I think.

At present, I think it’s a bad idea. I could order a mat and see what it’s like.

Independently, I and a forum guy came up with a great idea: vinyl flooring. It’s easier than applying epoxy. You cut a sheet of vinyl to fit the cabinet perfectly. You stick it to the bottom of the cabinet with 3M 77. You use silicone to seal the corners where the vinyl meets the sides of the cabinet. When water leaks, it can’t get into the sides. It will run out the front, onto the floor. The vinyl will look great and last for eternity. I use vinyl flooring to hold up heavy, oily CA-sized lathe tooling, and it looks new after maybe 10 years.

I think I should put vinyl under all my sinks, and I should also put it in my drawers and on my shelves. I could do the whole house for maybe $150. Beats the snot out of shelf paper, which is worthless and a scam. Home Depot sells vinyl for a dollar a square foot.

Epoxy would work. I’m sure of it. But it would be a pain to apply.

But for the brewing water problem, my sink would still be leaking, so it wasn’t just a curse. I got a blessing out of it.

I have some Brewtan B on the way. Hoping for the best.

My Palate is Being Microaggressed

My wife is still not here. My latest beer, however, is in the keg and ready to party. I call it Wheat Privilege Ale. I keep it at 17 psi and 35 degrees, so it should contain around 3.22 volumes of CO2, meaning it’s pretty fizzy but not as fizzy as pop.

Guess I didn’t pay enough attention to making sure the phone’s camera was focused.

This is a cloudy wheat beer I came up with in around 2005. I started out with Amarillo hops, which provide a lemony flavor. This latest batch uses a new hop: Bergamot. It is named for the bergamot, a weird citrus fruit used to flavor Earl Grey tea and give scent to candles.

The names of many, if not all, hops are capitalized. I think some are even patented.

It is common for hops to taste and smell like citrus. A long time ago, the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company made a splash with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, an amber ale brewed with Cascade hops, which are said to provide grapefruit flavors and aromas. Cascade hops became very popular with professional and amateur brewers. Now there are other citrusy hops. Some examples: Mandarina Bavaria, Amarillo, Centennial, Lotus, and Citra. Bergamot must be pretty new because it’s hard to find information from people who have used it.

To me, Amarillo hops are lemony and Centennials lean toward orange. I decided to try Bergamot because some people said the orange or tangerine flavor was really heavy.

Wheat beer is great on its own, but it also takes additions well. Germans put raspberry syrup in finished weissbier. They also put some other syrup in it. Don’t know much about it. It’s green. Belgians put orange peel in their cloudy wheat beer during the brewing process. I figured it would be better to find a hop to give me oranges.

This beer seems to have a tangeriney scent and flavor, with a little hint of zest from the rind.

I really like it, but I just bought some Citra and Mandarina Bavaria hops for future experiments.

I wonder what would happen if I put a little tangerine juice in this beer.

Well, I just got up and tried it. Really nice. Ordinarily, I think it’s kind of effeminate to put stuff in beer, but wheat is its own little world.

It’s like a beer mimosa. I guess I put an ounce and a half of juice in 16 ounces of beer, and it’s superb.

Now I’m going to feel like I can’t drink this beer unless I have tangerines.

This one is going to go great with food. It will pair with anything. I could even drink this with pizza, and I hate beer with tomato sauce.

I received a water test report today. A company called Ward Labs sends people bottles and prepaid labels, and they email reports. I found out I have almost no sulphate or magnesium. Other than that, things are okay. It turns out my water is well-suited to stouts, which I could have guessed, because my stout is what they drink in heaven. It’s not perfect for light-colored lagers, but I can buy a couple of chemicals and fix it.

I would like to learn more about beer, but I’m only one person, and I can only go through so many kegs per year at my leisurely pace. I have 6 recipes I really like, and I only have space for 5 serving kegs. I want to keep at least 4 of my favorites on tap at all times, so that doesn’t leave much room for R&D.

First world problems. Everyone should have them.

Bliss in a Glass

Thought I would put up a representative photo of my new fake Belgian ale, which I call Happy Halfwit. Sadly, a considerable portion of the head broke down before I got the shot.

This is truly amazing beer. It has a perfect balance of malt flavor, yeast esters, CO2 tingle, alcohol heat, and the weird aromas and flavors that come from Sabro hops. My brew software thinks it has a bitterness level of 33 IBU’s, which is fairly strong, but I used crystal malt to give it unfermentable sugar for sweetness, so it’s almost a dessert beer. Maybe it is a dessert beer. I could see drinking this with hot apple pie and vanilla ice cream.

I call it Happy Halfwit because the grain bill is around 37% wheat. Belgians call wheat beer “witbier” because apparently they stubbornly insist on speaking some foreign language or other. Why does everyone have to be a smartass?

The software thinks the alcohol level is 8.6%, which is fairly high. Bud comes in at 5.5%. Bud is stronger than people think, and it has to be, because if it were not, no one would buy it and gag it down.

Guinness claims 4.2%.

I got the weird glass in the picture just for heavy beers. It’s called a tulip glass because the profile is sort of like a tulip shape. The stem is supposed to help you swirl the beer to get aroma moving, and it prevents you from warming the beer with your hand. Not quite sure why the glass is so wide, but I know a wide glass will produce more aroma, since aroma is related to surface area. The glass curves in at the top to shape the head. I like a lot of head on strong ales and stouts.

You can use a brandy snifter for smaller doses. The glass in the photo holds about 16 ounces. I brewed this beer to hold a decent head, so you may really get 12 ounces once the foam is gone. That’s all you need when the beer is strong. When you drink 12 ounces of this, your face feels warm.

I serve most beers with around 12 psi of CO2. This is about like the bottle of, say, Heineken you get at a convenience store. Strong ales like more gas. I have this one at about 20.

Beer fizziness is measured in volumes. One volume means you dissolve one liter of CO2 in one liter of liquid. As I understand it, volumes are a better guide to beer fizz than pressure, because the pressure in a keg of beer will vary with the temperature. Gas tends to come out of liquid as the temperature goes up. To get the same fizziness at a higher temperatures, you need more pressure.

To have a fizzy beer that tingles your tongue, you want the CO2 to be in the beer, not the foam, when you have the beer in your glass. Obviously, you want some foam, but you have to make sure the CO2 is divided correctly between foam and beer.

It’s possible to have a glass of nearly-flat beer with a huge head on it, and it’s really disappointing.

I keep all my beers at 35 degrees because I don’t want 5 beer freezers in my kitchen. To get enough fizz from Happy Halfwit at 35, I go to 20 psi to get about 3.5 volumes of CO2. That’s a lot. A typical lager might be served at 2.5 volumes, which is around 10 psi at 35 degrees.

More than you wanted to know.

Anyway, it came out great. Not sure why it’s so dark, but this is how it looked the first time I brewed it, so not a surprise.

This one came out perfect. I can imagine making changes for fun, but this beer tastes exactly as I hoped it would.

I have an idea for a darker beer that tastes almost like a fruitcake. Like raisins and dates and cloves.

I kegged my weaker wheat beer, Wheat Privilege Ale, today. Looking forward to enjoying it over the winter. I drank a little today even though it’s still slightly flat. It’s beautiful. It could stand a little more hop flavor, but a magnificent brew. I set it to 17 psi.

Happy Halfwit is really, really nice. I’m afraid it will discourage me from writing new recipes for heavy beers.

Just Give her That Green Card

In case anyone is wondering, my wife is still in Africa.

She had her visa interview week before last, and they asked for more evidence that we were really married. We emailed it the same day, but it arrived after working hours because of the time difference. They told us they needed 5 working days. I thought this meant they would finish last week, but we now think they don’t count the day they first see the stuff in their email box. So we should be seeing a response tomorrow, by God’s grace.

The word says, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.” We remember this in prayer. Consulate employees are not kings, but the principle applies.

My wife is nervous because she has been rejected so many times by other countries. It’s not the same thing, however. America is legally obligated to take her, and I have the right and the means to burden the system by pursuing legal remedies if the consulate blows it. They’re going to let her in. They want this application out of their pipeline. People in government jobs love getting problems off their desks.

It’s not like applying for a tourist visa to Italy, where they lie to you and verbally abuse you at the embassy and then go back on their word, knowing there is no accountability.

They wanted more proof I had been supporting her. Not hard to supply. They already had bank documents from her end. They wanted to see what I received from my bank, so I sent examples. Barring contributions from a new husband, it would be hard to explain how an unemployed woman went from living in poverty to owning a car and living in a nice rental house almost overnight, and the foreign trips would also be unlikely in the extreme without help, but they want to be sure.

They also wanted to check into the type of wedding we had. We were married online by the only county in the US that will marry a citizen to a foreign national who isn’t present in America. The embassy lady was not familiar with Zoom marriages, which is surprising, since they became very popular during the pandemic. It’s weird, but it’s 100% binding in every state.

The lady was very nice and seemed to have no doubts. I’m sure she can tell the difference between scammers and bona fide applicants, having seen many of both.

I am hoping I won’t have to buy a weekend ticket. The choices are limited, they cost more, and flights are crowded. We would really like to move her out by Thursday.

I think I’m fairly well prepared on this end. I bought 4 containers of Haagen-Dazs, and I have frozen ribs plus a beef rib roast. I have a set of large creme brulee dishes, too.

Thanksgiving will be upon us very quickly, so we will have to get ready. I’m thinking boneless turkey with cornbread stuffing and gravy, as always. Mashed potatoes with tons of garlic and butter. Cranberry relish. Yams blended with pineapple, butter, and brown sugar, with pecans on top glazed with more butter and brown sugar. One pecan pie. One pumpkin pie. Some other stuff.

The local Publix had BOGO Miracle Whip this week, so we are all set for turkey sandwiches.

I don’t know if I will be able to make her understand that you don’t eat creme brulee on Thanksgiving.

We are still planning to hit White Castle on the day she arrives.

I don’t know if her relatives fully understand their situation. They are less resourceful than she is, and she has helped them with a lot of their problems. She’s about to leave them behind, so she is having to tell them to get it together. I don’t know what will become of them. Because she will be here, her ability to help will be curtailed.

She may never see any of them again. Getting them tourist visas is impossible, and I’m not shelling out 5 figures to bring them over anyway. I have no desire at all to go to Zambia, and I don’t think my wife does, either. She’s not all that close to her siblings. Her mother and father died many years ago, the family has been shaken up, and there are age differences.

She put me on the phone with 4 of my new nephews the other day. I can’t remember their ages, but I think they’re all under 10. They asked all sorts of questions. They seemed to think they would be coming to visit. Even if it was realistic to expect us to fund a $20,000 excursion, which it isn’t, Uncle Sam would not let them come. I didn’t explain this to them. They are too young to understand. Sad.

It’s frustrating having very poor in-laws who aren’t very capable. My wife is not much like them. She gets stuff done.

She’ll have to get a Florida phone number, so a lot of relations and acquaintances who now have her number will not have it in a month. She is looking forward to the peace.

While I wait, I fiddle with trivial endeavors. Today I kegged a wheat beer, and I made it with a new hop: bergamot. Supposed to have a lot of orange flavor.

Very happy with the name I came up with.

I hope I have something good to write tomorrow night.

Hamas Fans Protest Jewish Occupation of Manhattan

I’m brewing (wheat ale with bergamot hops), so I have to hang around indoors for a while. Might as well write.

We have a new thing in America. Jews cowering in terror in a university library in a major city while antisemites threaten them with big sticks, combined with an inability to get uniformed police to show up.

At first, the story was that the police refused to come, but now we are being told there were plainclothes detectives in the library.

A person called Chief of Patrol John Chell said, “There was no direct threats.”

The police must not be hearing the same things law students hear. When I was in law school, I was told that threatening a person with a weapon, while you were close enough to use it, was assault. A crime. If you look at video of the incident, you can see a moron with two big sticks, banging them together while staring at students protected only by glass and two doors the police say were not locked.

I know a little bit about Florida law. Here, if you make me mad while I’m driving, and I pick up my gun and hold it so you can see it, I commit a felony that carries a lot of prison time. I guess brandishing weapons that can easily crush skulls is no problem in New York.

People keep saying you can disagree with things Israel does without being antisemitic, and that is true. Protestors like to claim they’re against Israel, not Jews. If that’s the case, why did this herd of mouth-breathers go to NEW YORK and threaten AMERICAN Jews?

I’ll set the question apart in its own sentence.

If you’re against Israel but you have nothing against Jews, why wave weapons at Jews who are not Israelis, 5600 miles from Israel?

This happened in New York, a place where Jews feel safe. After Israel, New York has more Jews than any place. Jews love New York. Many identify with it more than they do with Israel. This happened in what may be the favorite city of more Jews than any other. More than Jerusalem. And our government did nothing.

University president Laura Sparks, clearly a crazy lady, called the event a “peaceful protest.” Waving big sticks at defenseless minority members is now a peaceful activity. Try it at a Biden press conference and see if the Secret Service thinks it’s peaceful.

Sparks comes from the same wacky leftist segment of society that says words are violence. So words are violence, but big sticks aren’t. If I remind Dylan Mulvaney he’s a man, it’s a crime of violence, but if I wave a big stick at an elderly rabbi, it’s expression. It’s beautiful. It’s “my truth.”

Here you see the political suicide of Jews at work. They chose this. They are overwhelmingly leftist. They helped create a climate of antisemitism in the world, by supporting leftism. They helped make New York City what it is. A lot of them are still marching with the pro-Hamas nuts.

They helped create a city where a person who behaves more like an ape than a human being can threaten them with weapons, but they can be imprisoned for carrying firearms. And most of them want nothing to do with firearms to begin with. They think the state will protect them. Like all the other gentile governments that have been so loyal to them.

Yesterday I read that a poll said 48% of younger Americans support Hamas over Israel, and 26% think ending the Jewish state and giving it to Arabs is the way to solve the problem. This is what happens when you embrace leftism. It infects future generations. How can American Jews be leftists? It’s astounding.

The good news is that American Jews will vote conservative, overwhelmingly, in the future. They’ve come to their senses.

No, they haven’t! They’re going to keep feeding the hand that bites them. Some will come around, but generally, they’ll continue assisting in their own destruction and punishing their friends.

My wife and I intercede for Israel and the Jews every day, but because a lot depends on their cooperation, I have extremely low expectations. I expect a majority of Jews to go down with the leftist ship, while loudly defending their stubbornness.

I think we’re seeing the Thirties all over again, and the windows of escape are slamming shut, after precious few people used them.

Because things are getting so weird, I’m considering going back to keeping a rifle in the car, along with several loaded magazines. It’s legal, and these days, it’s smarter than ever. This is an era of mob crime, and mob crimes call for rifles and lots of ammunition, as lynching victim Kyle Rittenhouse could tell you.

I’m trying to catch up on AK technology. I would never rely on an AR-pattern gun for self-defense, except as an emergency backup. AR’s are not reliable, period, and they are inferior for use at distances typical for self-defense. If you’re shooting at people beyond the range where an AK-47 is sufficiently accurate, you’re almost certainly trying to commit murder. It would be pretty unusual to find yourself in a situation where you reasonably feared great bodily harm from someone that far away.

It would be good to have a short folding AK in the car. They have new variants now, though, and it’s confusing. They have a thing called an AK-103. My understanding is that it takes optics better.

In recent years, it became possible to put a rear stock on an AK pistol without committing a crime. That would be great for a vehicle gun. Sadly, Biden ordered the ATF to ban “pistol braces” on unregistered AK pistols. He says they’re short-barreled rifles, which have to be registered. Common sense says he’s right, but legally, he’s wrong. It’s bizarre.

A case is going through the federal courts, addressing the pistol brace question. There is already an injunction that prevents the ATF from going after certain owners of braced pistols. It looks like the ATF is going to lose, big time. We’re not there yet, however.

I want no part of the coming violence, but I would also prefer not to be dragged out of my car and beaten to death, and I would like to be able to protect my wife instead of crying and shaking and wondering why the government hasn’t sent anyone to help us. A lot of Jews have suffered that fate recently, and many would have been fine–and able to kill terrorists–had they been armed instead of relying on an unrealistic conception of their government’s abilities.

Look what happens in a world where people reject Yeshua and the Holy Spirit. You have to buy products made to harm other human beings, or you have to choose to risk martyrdom.

If people were praying in the Spirit every day, God would fill them with his thoughts, emotions, and desires, and he would rid them of the Satanic excrement that drives them now. If two people are aligned with God, they are also aligned with each other. It’s axiomatic. This is why Yeshua is called the Prince of Peace. He owns it. There is no other source.

Unfortunately, Islamists and Jews believe Christianity is idolatry, and leftists prefer self-worship, government-worship, and paganism, so the situation will continue to deteriorate.

Sliders and Concealed Carry: the Best America Has to Offer

The problem with brewing is that so few conclusions have been nailed down, even though homebrewers seem to know a great deal. Things that should be obvious by now are still unknown to a lot of us.

Example: which tubing to use to hook gas and beer up.

When you have a keezer, which is a freezer modified with taps and one or more tanks so you can dispense beer from it, you have to have a tank, kegs, and taps. You need tubing to get the gas from the tank to the gas regulator, from the regulator to the kegs, and from the kegs to the taps.

In the old days we used plain old vinyl from Home Depot.

After I quit brewing in ’07, people started getting anxious about oxygen.

When you brew your beer and put it in a fermenter, you want it to have oxygen in it. It makes the yeast happy. When fermentation is over, you want the oxygen gone. It interacts with beer and eventually ruins the flavor.

There are a lot of ways oxygen gets into beer. I used to run a tube from a fermenter into a keg with the lid off. That was how I got beer into the keg. Of course, oxygen got in. Wasn’t really a problem, but it could have become one if I let the beer sit long enough. Now I take a sanitized keg full of CO2 and I pump beer into it from the fermenter. Everything is sealed and pressurized.

Everything should be fine, right? No, because I have been using vinyl to get gas from the tanks to the regulators. At least I did this with one tank. I have two tanks in my keezer. One is CO2, for normal beers, and the other is a nitrogen/CO2 mix, for stout. As of a few days ago, I still had vinyl on the CO2 primary regulator.

What is a primary regulator?

I have 4 kegs of beer on one tank of CO2. The CO2’s pressure is hundreds of psi. It has to be stepped down so it doesn’t blow the kegs up. There is a gas regulator on the CO2 tank to get this done.

Most guys are happy with that. They will have the same pressure in all their kegs. Not me. Ales like more gas than lagers, and heavy beers may want a whole lot of gas. I bought a secondary regulator. This is 4 regulators in parallel. Each one can be adjusted to provide a pressure I like. Right now, three are at 12 psi, and one is at 18 psi, for my brutal fake Belgian ale.

Primary regulator on the tank. Secondary regulator between the primary and the kegs.

I had a fat vinyl tube going from the primary to the secondary.

It turns out vinyl lets oxygen in. The CO2 in the vinyl is at a minimum of 18 psi in order to get 18 psi in the fake Belgian, and atmospheric air is at 0 psi (gauge pressure), so how can oxygen get in? Doesn’t the CO2 keep it out? Apparently not. It’s sort of like osmosis. The tube sees 0 psi of oxygen inside itself, but our atmosphere is about 20% oxygen, so it sees oxygen pressure outside. The vinyl is not perfectly impermeable to oxygen, so some goes in.

This is the story, anyway.

An Australian company named Kegland makes all sorts of innovative products for brewers, and they created (or maybe found) EVAbarrier, a stiff tubing that is pretty good at keeping oxygen out. They also sell Duotight fittings to connect the tubing to beer and gas.

It’s really convenient. You don’t have to use hose clamps. You cut your tubing to the right length and shove it into the fittings. They bite down on it and seal it up.

As of night before last, my CO2 system has been connected with EVAbarrier. I was already using it for everything but the primary-secondary leg, so I only had to replace two fittings and one tube.

I resumed brewing at the end of December. I made some errors. Wrong mashing schedules. I accidentally shot lubricating oil into a batch of beer because I used a pellet gun CO2 cartridge instead of one made for beverages. Little things went wrong, but I still have one beer from early this year which is very good. As I get caught up with new technology, things get better.

I have one recipe I’m not planning to brew again. It’s just not great. Other than that, I can’t find factory beer I like as much as my own. If I had to go back to factory beer, I’d go back to my old drinking habits, meaning around a 12-pack per year.

I’m having a stout right now. It’s hard to imagine how this beer could be better.

I was thinking I should brew a wheat ale tomorrow. I have a couple of batches of grain, including a wheat recipe, and I don’t have any wheat beer except for the really heavy one I made last week. Today I realized that if I brew beer tomorrow, my wife may well be here before it’s ready to drink.

Her embassy appointment is finally upon us. She could be here 10 days from now, depending on the breaks and whether she is serious about getting her hair done before she comes.

It’s very weird, being this close. I go to the store and buy things, and I find myself thinking she may be here to eat them.

We spend a tremendous amount of time on the phone together. That’s all about to end. What will we do with our time when we suddenly find ourselves with days that aren’t broken up by calls? We’ll save at least three hours per day, and we will have nearly nothing to do.

I have to face the reality of not living like a single man. I have to get a kitchen table that doesn’t fold up. I need two real dressers instead of the awful, enormous dresser my mother got at an outlet store in the Carolinas in the Seventies. I’ll have to move my $80 Chinese Amazon headboard to a bed in a guest room.

I have talked about buying her a business class ticket. I’m looking into it. She will probably have a flight running around 35 hours. Airlines don’t have much interest in Zambia, so she will have to have a minimum of two stops.

Personally, I am an economy guy. I believe I’ve flown first class twice. I recall my dad upgrading the two of us with his endless points. That happened once. I also recall sitting in a first class seat next to a drunk who was some kind of prisoner. He cried a lot. As I recall, he was a black man in a red suit.

I was probably in college. I don’t recall how I got into first class, and I have no idea why they chose me to sit next to a prisoner. I seem to recall him being handcuffed to an armrest. That can’t be right, can it? Maybe that’s how they did things back then.

I don’t recall having a cop anywhere near us.

If I’m going to spend thousands of dollars, I want something I can touch. A piece of jewelry. A new welding table. I don’t want to spend $200 an hour for a ticket upgrade so my butt can be slightly less sore the next day.

Let’s face it. While an upgrade may be nice for a short flight, there is no such thing as a nice long flight. Moving you to business class doesn’t help. I don’t care if they give you a stateroom with a bed. It’s still going to be a miserable experience. I’d rather have the money than the 10% decrease in suffering.

I brought up business class, however, and my wife liked the idea, so now I’m on the hook. I hope she enjoys it and takes pictures, because I don’t plan on buying any more business class tickets unless Elon Musk sees my blog and decides to send me one of his spare billions.

Finding my wife a business class ticket that costs less than a major operation is a challenge, mostly because everyone hates Africans. Flights that are low on the cost scale almost always involve self-transfers. That means she will have to get off the plane at least once, get her bags, go through customs and immigration, go through security again, and board. It’s not a big problem if you’re American, but if you’re African, many countries will force you to get a visa in order to walk across their airports and change planes.

It’s idiotic. Even if her brand-new green card will motivate a country to issue a visa, it will take forever to get the visa, so it’s not practical. I would have to pay her rent in Zambia the whole time, and then she might get turned down.

West Africans are the problem. Especially Nigerians. They go to other countries, refuse to leave, and start criminal enterprises.

I can’t route her through England. Forget that. Our best bet looks like Turkey. She might have to stop in Dubai on the way. She might have to land in two different African countries.

So what will we do when she gets here?

High on the list: White Castle. The family that owns the company sadistically refuses to expand in any meaningful way, but they opened a restaurant in Orlando. The biggest White Castle on Earth. We’ll be doing that.

Sonny’s. This is a Florida barbecue chain. Pretty good, even though Bidenflation now has them putting “Market Price” beside ribs on the menu.

She loves Italian food. There’s a really good place near me. Run by Mexicans. Go figure. It’s clean. The prices are reasonable. The food is great. The staff is polite.

I’ll have to get her a driver’s license ASAP, not to mention a carry permit. Permits are not required in Florida, but if she has one, she will be allowed to carry in other states. I already have a 9mm for her with a Crimson Trace.

After all this, the dentist. And we have to get medical insurance and a new phone plan for two.

We are not doing too bad for clothing and so on. We traveled to countries with good stores.

We need to get the pickup in shape so we will have two vehicles.

That’s all I can think of. I wanted to take her to Israel, but our timing has worked out poorly. There are no good winter destinations in the US.

Okay, maybe there are, but we have no interest in skiing or beaches, and we’re not going to places that look better with leaves on the trees.

I hope to have her out in the pasture shooting steel very soon. I can taste those sliders already.

Strange Brew Goes from Grain to Glass in One Week

My newest beer is now drinkable, way before it should have been. And I am delighted and confused.

Way back in 2004, I decided to brew something resembling a heavy Belgian beer. In my eyes, the Belgians are the kings of brewing. At least they were, before Americans and Australians became the world’s best homebrewers and craft brewers. Belgians make all kinds of nutty beers. Germans make BMW beer. Boring. All about hitting certain targets as accurately as possible, as though brewing were F-class shooting. They obey crusty old rules that are, sorry to say it, arbitrary. Belgians make beers that are full of weird flavors. Complex. Surprising. In many cases, strong.

I liked Chimay’s beers. Chimay is or was a Belgian company. I believe it now belongs to a multinational conglomerate. It started in a monastery, with Trappist monks. Let’s put this on the table: historically, monks have really enjoyed getting drunk and eating great food. The Chimay monks made beers I would describe as flamboyant. Tons of flavor. Tons of alcohol.

For some reason I no longer recall, I decided to see if I could make a wonderful beer that was sort of like what Chimay would make if it were me. I came up with a grain bill that was nearly half wheat. I added table sugar just to bump the ABV up, and I hoped it would add a cidery flavor, which sucrose supposedly does.

Belgians use something called candi sugar. I have no idea what it is, but experience brewers told me table sugar would have basically the same effect. There are dark candi sugars that color beer, but I wasn’t interested in that.

I came up with this, off the top of my head:

5 lbs Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM)
4 lbs Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.0 SRM)
2 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
1 lbs 8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt – 60L (60.0 SRM)
1 lbs Munich Malt (9.0 SRM)
1 lbs table sugar

That’s how the brewing program Beersmith describes my grain bill.

I used Nugget and Crystal hops, which give a wonderful, penetrating aroma.

The beer was fantastic, and like a lot of heavy beers, it got better with age. A lot of people age heavy beers for a year or more before drinking them.

When I got back into brewing this year, I decided to redo this beer, but I chose to use Sabro hops. This is a new hop, and it’s pretty weird. It’s extremely bitter, so you have to be careful how much you add when you’re boiling. Boiling brings out bitterness. When you steep it or use it for dry-hopping, you get other things. It supposedly produces coconut and pineapple flavors and aromas. I thought Sabro was perfect for this beer, which is pretty sweet even after fermentation is over.

I brewed my new batch one week ago today. I have a brewing machine called a Braumeister, and it is rated for up to 6 kg of grain. My recipe goes over 6.1, and it contains wheat, which tends to gum things up and require the addition of rice hulls to make water go through it.

I chose to dump this stuff in the Braumeister and see what happened. I was only going over the published limit by a small amount, and the Braumeister does a great job with wheat. If it worked, I would know the machine could handle it, so I would be able to make future batches without changing anything. If not, I would know different.

I was shooting for an unfermented (original) gravity of 1.084, and I hit 1.073, assuming my measurements were okay. I had some issues with my cheap refractometer. I added dehydrated malt extract, which is mainly sugar, to make up the difference.

I fermented using Abbaye yeast, which is supposedly derived from Trappist yeast. It has a reputation for giving off esters that produce spicy and fruity flavors. I fermented at 65° to reduce banana-flavored esters and push spicy esters.

This beer went from 1.084 to 1.017 in two days. My target was 1.018. Heavy beers often take over a week to ferment. Wheat beers ferment very quickly, so I guess that explains what happened.

I sampled the beer when fermentation was over, and it was harsh. It had a solvent taste, which is normal for heavy beers that aren’t aged. I felt a burn when I drank it. This beer should contain about 9% alcohol by volume, and you can feel that when you drink, especially when a beer is young.

Yesterday, I sampled the beer again, and it was still harsh. I moved it to a new keg, to get it away from the hops I used to dry-hop it and the yeast that grew while it fermented. I decided to age the beer at 55° to kill the harshness. I expected weeks to pass before the beer was worth drinking.

Having no patience, today I checked the beer again, and it was perfect. Sweet, tasty, and free from solvent flavors. It no longer burned in my mouth, but I felt the burn down in my esophagus.

This is not supposed to happen. It should have taken a long time to improve.

I don’t know what’s going on. I’m sure the beer is finished. I had a pretty small amount tonight, and I have to say that I felt it. It was nothing like my other beers, which are considerably weaker.

I moved it to my keezer, where it will reach 35° by tomorrow. I see no point in keeping it at 55° when it’s so good right now. I know that if there is any fermentable sugar left in it, the residual yeast will consume it in spite of the low temperature. Anyone who tells you beer stops fermenting when you chill it and get rid of the yeast cake is dreaming.

I can’t figure out what’s going on, but good beer is good beer. If it’s done fermenting and the gravity is low, and the harshness is gone, it’s finished. It may not be as good as it will become later, but it’s ready to drink, weeks before I thought it would be.

It’s Beaujolais beer.

It’s unbelievably good. I thought my stout was good, and it is, but this is better.

All Beer Should be This Good

Today I’m drinking my lovely Great Again Lager, brewed to an orange hue to honor the president who stood up for our right to great showerheads.

I brewed on October 2, and today is the 10th. I kegged at a gravity of 1.013, which should have been rock bottom, judging from other iterations. I pressure-fermented in a stainless 6-gallon keg and transferred the beer to a smaller keg without exposing it to the air. The day I kegged it, I shot a teaspoon and a half of hydrated Knox gelatin into it to clarify it.

It has been 4 days since kegging, and I have been watching the beer closely, taking samples. Until yesterday it was too cloudy and yeasty to really savor, but today it is nearly normal, so I am having a full pint.

I think this beer will be a monster when it’s fully clear and mature. Assuming there is any left by then. It has always been wonderful in the past.

While I was waiting for this beer to be ready, I opened a can of Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA. My favorite factory IPA is Snake Dog, but I can never find it. Dogfish Head is very nice. Lighter in color than my Great Again Lager. They dry hop it, which means they dump additional hops into it after brewing, so they’re not boiled. These hops add raw flavor and aroma, so you really get the value of all that breeding.

I started to think Dogfish Head was better than my lager, and I wondered if I should dry hop my next lager and stout, but then I had second thoughts. The dry hop aroma and flavor were wonderful, but I felt the aroma distracted me from the taste of the beer itself.

When you cook, you don’t always have to give people both barrels. If you throw everything you have at them, you can overpower subtle qualities they would otherwise appreciate. For example, putting anything other than salt and pepper on steak is dangerous unless it’s a cheap cut, because a good steak fried in butter already has all the flavor you need. I would make an exception for Bearnaise sauce, but I believe nothing but salt and pepper should be applied prior to cooking. I don’t even use pepper.

What’s my favorite kind of pizza? Cheese, AKA plain. I like pepperoni, and I like Hawaiian, but nothing impresses like a good cheese pizza. A monkey can make an okay pizza with 6 toppings. It takes a good cook to make an excellent cheese pizza. All the flaws are exposed.

A good beer without too much frippery is like a good cheese pizza or a really excellent biscuit. It stands on its own.

The world is full of brewkids now, and they are always doing too much. They make “juicy” IPA’s. That means they have lots of sweetening malts and not much bitterness. Like juice boxes. They make “milk stout,” which is stout sweetened with unfermentable sugar. It’s gross. I saw one guy making Cinnamon Toast Crunch beer, named for the cereal. No, thanks.

They seem to dry-hop everything. I would not go so far as the Germans, who seem to think flavor and aroma are embarrassing, but if you’ve got something good to start with, why cover it up?

I now think I’m going to dry hop my next beer, a wheat, but I don’t think I’ll touch my stout, which is perfect. I might add a tiny bit of raw Crystal hops to my orange lager next time, but just enough to draw your nose to the glass, not so much it punches you in the face.

I’m always behind the times. Today I joked that my orange beer was really an India Pale Lager. It has a robust flavor and lots of hops, somewhat like an IPA. Then I Googled and found out India Pale Lagers exist.

It seems like a stupid name for a beer. “India Pale Ale” got its name for good reason, long ago. The Wikipedia page on IPA is interesting. British brewers made an amber ale called October beer. In Britain, people cellared it for two years before drinking it. It was also shipped to India, and it was discovered that the conditions of the trip improved it. Eventually, it became known as India Pale Ale.

The phrase “India Pale Lager” is a modern thing invented by brewkids. It didn’t exist until recently. The British didn’t send amber lager to India and all that. I guess I understand why brewkids call it IPL, though, because it makes it pretty clear what it is.

I started brewing again at about the turn of the year, and it looks like I have a pretty good system going. I can keep 5 kegs going in the kitchen, using both beer gas and CO2. I can ferment two beers at once at whatever temperature I want. I have the brewing machine figured out. I haven’t had a single infected beer. I think the brewing future is bright here at the Heavily Armed Gated Northern Florida Compound.

What You Don’t Know You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

My latest beer, an orange lager, is nearly ready to keg, and I only started on Monday.

Brewing is like cooking, because it’s really a kind of cooking. It’s a culinary art. Beverages are part of every cuisine. I stand by that. Like all types of food and beverage preparation, brewing is full of myths and old wive’s tales. You know what I mean. “Steaks have to be rested.” “Dough has to be kneaded for 10 minutes.”

Traditional lager brewing takes a long time. Lagers are fermented at lower temperatures than ales, slowing the yeast down. Then they are “lagered,” which means they sit and age for weeks to kill the off flavors. How much of this stuff is really necessary? Not all of it.

There is a site called Brulosophy. The proprietor tests beer myths. For example, he may make two batches of the same beer, boiling one for 30 minutes and the other at 60. He then makes people taste the results and tell him whether they can tell a difference. He applies statistics to determine whether there really is a perceptible difference. He has brewed beers at different temperatures with excellent results. He has tested to see if lagering is needed. He has done all kinds of things to annoy traditionalists. There must be a bounty on him in Germany.

Also, homebrewing has changed over the last few years. For one thing, many people, myself included, now ferment some beers under pressure. The pressure suppresses off flavors that ordinarily arise when you ferment at higher temperatures. If you crank up the pressure, you can ferment faster and get the same results. Yeast likes heat.

I started pressure-fermenting as soon as I heard about it. I made the mistake of buying a plastic pressure fermenter called an All-Rounder. It’s made by Kegland, an Australian company. Actually, I think they’re Chinese, because they have a shop on Aliexpress, the guy who does their videos looks Chinese, and they have at least one product they can’t sell in the US because of patent problems.

The All-Rounder is just a huge plastic jug with a round bottom. The screw-on lid has fittings on it for disconnects, which are devices that let gas and liquid go in and out.

I got a decent lager out of my All-Rounder on the first try. I fermented at 75°, which was convenient. No fridge needed. It had a taste that reminded me of freshly-mown grass, but it wore off after a month.

I decided I did not like the All-Rounder. The jug is flimsy. It weakens with repeated use. You’re supposed to pressure-test it and eventually get rid of it. I don’t want a fermenter blowing up in my garage, and I don’t want to spend a lot of money on the same product, over and over. It’s like buying an inkjet printer for $50 and spending $5000 on ink.

I now use Torpedo Megamouth 6-gallon stainless kegs. These do not blow up if the pressure gets too high. Like ordinary homebrew kegs, they have pressure relief valves, and these valves release long before the pressure can hurt stainless steel. Plastic, not so much. Not if it’s old and weak.

I make 5 gallons of beer at a whack, so a 6-gallon keg will hold all the beer plus whatever foam grows on top. I add a product called Fermcap to prevent the foam from getting too thick.

I wondered if fermenting at 75° caused my off flavor. I also suspected oxygen, because I believe there was a point where I had to let a tiny bit of air into the All-Rounder. I decided to ferment this latest batch at 60° instead.

There are always a few little problems on brew day, but I got this thing into the fridge in the evening on Monday.

Of course, I always have to make a mistake, and this time, I failed to set the keg O-ring properly. As of yesterday, I thought the beer was doing nothing, because the pressure wasn’t building. I have a gauge on the fermenter, and it was stuck at zero.

Instead of doing the obvious thing and checking the seal with soapy water, I fiddled around for several hours. Finally, I got out the spray bottle, and I found the issue. I fixed it up and pumped 15 psi into the keg. While I was doing all this, I had to crack the keg lid open, and I saw all sorts of krausen, which means foaming yeast. The fermentation was flying.

Today when I checked, the pressure was way over 15. It was past the numbers. Maybe 25, if I had to guess. I adjusted it and tested the beer’s specific gravity, which drops as beer ferments. I got 1.013. That was a lot lower than what I expected. Things are going quickly.

I had some unusual problems measuring the gravity on Monday. Not sure what was happening. I was using a cheap refractometer which generally works fine. I have a theory that, because I was mixing boiled water into the wort to change the gravity, I got some samples which had more water in them than others. Or maybe stirring the crud on the bottom of the kettle up while mixing the water in increased the gravity for some readings. Anyway, my best guess is that the OG (original gravity) was 1.053, or 0.001 above the target. A bullseye, really, because refractometers and hydrometers aren’t as accurate as brewers like to think. This beer’s gravity plunged 40 points in under 60 hours.

My target FG (final gravity) is 1.012, so 1.013 means the beer is either finished or nearly so. If it was actually lighter than 1.053 to start, it’s done. If it was heavier, it may have some time to go.

It tastes fine, except for the harsh yeast bite every new beer has before the yeast drops out. Yeast is bitter. I’m not getting any grass flavor.

It looks like I can ferment a great lager in 4 days at 60°, which tells me there is no reason to go to 75°. I remember when people were keeping lagers in their fermenters for much longer. Four days will be fine.

Now I have to decide when to clarify and keg the beer.

Conventional wisdom says beer doesn’t ferment after kegging, but I know this is wrong. It may be true for factory beers, some of which are pasteurized, but I know at least one of my beers (stout) gets dryer after kegging, and that means yeast is at work.

I would like to have yeast on the job after kegging, to continue to improve the beer.

What about clarifying? I will be adding gelatin to the beer, and this makes all the floating stuff fall out, presumably including yeast. If I clarify before kegging, will that be too much for the yeast to handle?

Stout isn’t clarified, so I can’t really judge by what it does.

When I got started in brewing, they told me not to touch a lager for weeks after I kegged it. Should I listen to that advice now? I don’t think so. Many people question it, and not just people who don’t know good beer.

I think this beer will be very good as soon as I keg it, and it will be perfect a month later. The plan is to keg it and then put it in the keezer at 35°. I’m a slow drinker, so I will probably take 6 months to empty it. I think it will age perfectly well during that time, and I think the beer will stop improving after a month.

Brewers who do lagers often do “diacetyl rests.” This means heating your still-unkegged beer a few degrees and letting it sit until the diacetyl goes away.

Diacetyl is the chemical they put on fake buttered popcorn. Sometimes beer generates it during fermentation. I don’t plan to do a diacetyl rest. My understanding is that warm fermentations don’t produce diacetyl. This is one of the reasons people use pressure. I have also read that commercial brewers use pressure for this reason.

I think I’ll just shoot gelatin into this beer tomorrow and keg it using a closed, oxygen-free system. I should be drinking it on Saturday.

Tomorrow I’m making stout. I haven’t finished my last keg, but the thought of being without stout is terrifying. After that, I might go nuts and make a wheat-heavy Belgiany beer I made in the past. It’s very strong and full of flavor, and you can literally age it for years without ruining it.

By the middle of next week, I should have a keg of orange lager and a fresh keg of stout ready to drink. After that, I’ll feel safe enough to play with other things. I don’t want to run out of staples. They come first.

I wanted to call my orange lager Mar-a-Lager, for obvious reasons, but someone took the name a long time ago. Same for MAGA Lager. “Bigly” is taken. “Covfefe.” I call it Great Again Lager. Best I could do.

Because the beer I’m making now is already under pressure, carbonating it should be either easy or unnecessary. Another benefit. Carbonating a flat new beer is tricky, and you can end up with a long period of foamy beer.

It’s nice, having kind of a system worked out. I don’t wonder what equipment I need or what changes I have to make. The basic plan is in place. Everything else is small strokes.

Or Something

My wife had a funny revelation the other day. We were talking about the male fetishists who have decided they’re women, and we discussed the way they’re pushing women off the stage. My wife said it was “toxic femininity.”

Of course, that’s not really right. It’s toxic effeminacy. Males aren’t actually feminine. They mimic femininity.

Women are finally starting to speak up about the way trannies are mounting a hostile takeover. Too late, but at least it has started. Traditionally, women have been huge supporters of…I can’t think of a word…fruity men, I guess I’ll call them. Men are much, much sharper about fruity men. We can detect them easily, and we have a better understanding of their ability to do harm. We know they rape other males, for example. Women are often totally unable to detect fruitiness in men. They are so clueless, they often date or marry effeminate men everyone else knows are homosexual.

Liza Minnelli married three homosexuals and had no idea.

This is an example of what happens when women don’t listen to men. We were put on Earth to protect them, and they didn’t let us do it because they thought they knew better.

After decades of pushing the alphabet agenda, women are getting payback. Men are getting women’s awards. Men are ending women’s sports by making it impossible for women to win. Men are walking around naked in women’s locker rooms with female minors, with the law behind them. And women are just going to have to take it.

I saw something remarkable this week. Target now has a gay section, and they are selling women’s swimsuits for men. These suits have special flaps or something for men who want to hide their genitals. Sorry if this makes you gag, but they are called “tuck-friendly.” So there is more than one tucker in the news.

Adidas just put out a woman’s swimsuit ad featuring a man, and they had him stand with his side to the camera so his genitals push the suit out and announce their presence.

So where do women fit in now? Are they supposed to be like the chubby girl who goes to a bar with a beautiful friend, waiting for leftovers? Always Miss Congeniality, never Miss America?

This week people are talking about Miller Lite, a quasi-beer made with corn syrup and hop extract. Bud Light committed suicide by putting a famous tranny on its cans, and now people are upset because Miller Lite is shaming men…by shaming Miller. Insert question marks here.

Miller hired a completely talentless comedian named…I can’t remember because she’s so bad…I’m thinking…I gave up. I had to look her up again. Ilana Glazer. Miss Glazer did an ad in which she scolded the beer industry for using models in bikinis. As though commandos had kidnapped attractive girls and waterboarded them into putting on swimsuits.

I’m a Christian. I think lewd ads are a bad idea. But punishing the men you sold billions of cases of bad beer to, for liking ads you created without their input, is somewhat ridiculous.

Miss Glazer goes on to use profanity, with multiple ineffective bleeps, to describe what evil beer execs have foisted on women. She uses the S word over and over, and then she goes on a weird fantasy narrative about fictional women doing things with nonexistent manure in order to make beer.

It’s as crazy as it sounds.

She says women were involved in making beer when it was first discovered. As though this means something. Did someone claim women couldn’t make beer? Is that a sexist canard no one was aware of until now? Have women been battling unsuccessfully for the right to make beer? What man would ever tell anyone not to make beer?

Even Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby would have no problem allowing women to make beer. It’s not a real issue.

Now no one wants to buy Miller Lite, so if you go to your local store, you will probably see stacks of it alongside the cobwebbed towers of Anheuser-Busch products.

I’ll bet AB is telling drivers not to pile the cases up too high. Photos of unbought cases have filled the web.

Here’s an interesting fact Miller didn’t think about: women don’t like beer.

Okay, maybe when you were a kid, your mom greeted you every afternoon with her third Miller tall boy in her hand, and I am not claiming there is no woman who drinks beer, but men are over twice as likely to drink it, and, more germanely, to buy it.

Should I use the word “germanely” even though I’m male? Am I appropriating anything? I didn’t type “Germainely.”

Let me adjust my dreadlocks.

So Miller Coors decided to offend the very demographic that buys their awful and totally fungible product, in order to please a demographic that will never buy much of it no matter what they do.

Incidentally, “Miller Coors” is a hilarious name, because for years, people who like good beer have been referring to bad factory beer as “Budmilcoors.” Life parodies parody.

Here’s more weird information about Miller’s kamikaze advertising: the people who made the ad were chosen via affimative action. Miller hired an all-gal team.

Here’s another important generalization: women aren’t funny.

Yes, there are some funny women. Now, find me a woman who is as funny as Dave Chappelle. Find me a female W.C. Fields or Charlie Chaplin or Mike Meyers. If I name 50 really funny male comedians, can you name 50 female comics who are just as good? No way in heaven or Earth.

Ilana Glazer herself is about as funny as anaphylactic shock on a camping trip. She has appeared in a show called The Broad Show or Broadly Speaking or something, and maybe she’s a funny comic actress when reading other people’s material, but her standup show is as entertaining as watching Hannah Gadsby pass kidney stones.

There is a new crop of female comedians, and they are not like the old ones. When we watched the old ones, we laughed because they were funny. When we watch the new affirmative action beneficiaries, we listen in silence while captive audiences laugh because they’re supposed to.

Not laughing at bad female comedians is sexist.

“Are you an obese Indian lesbian? You are a gifted female comedian. Netflix is proud to have you.” “Do you cut yourself and hate your mother? We have a studio audience you can tell about it.”

I never liked Roseanne Barr’s personality much, but she was funny. Joan Rivers was funny. The girl who impersonates the Asian nail lady is funny. Merit used to mean something. Now you just have to have the right chromosomes.

Well, that was stupid. The chromosomes will actually put transvestites ahead of you in line. But you’ll still be privileged compared to normal men.

I mean men who admit they’re men and don’t have sex with men…who don’t admit they’re men. Or who do admit they’re men but..I give up.

By the way, when I say female comedians aren’t that good, I mean actual comedians, not comic actresses. If you can’t write material, you’re not a comedian. You’re a fake, like Lily Tomlin.

To get back to the ad, Miller hired an all-girl team to make an ad proving women are funny, and they made an ad that’s not funny at all. It’s just angry. “Shame on you for letting our company let women with free will exhibit themselves.” “Shame on you for denying women credit for brewing beer, which you didn’t actually do.”

Hasn’t anyone seen Laverne and Shirley?

Miller actually reinforced the notion that women need help.

You know what would have prevented this? They could have hired funny trannies. Men who claim to be women but still have male humor genes. That would have been perfect.

“We proved women are talented and funny by hiring women with male genitals.”

It brings me back to toxic effeminacy. The fairer sex is committing suicide in America.

The problem with women’s sports is more damaging than people are saying. Why do girls play sports? For fun? No. To get scholarships. They don’t keep playing field hockey or whatever after they leave college. A few go on to make $60,000 a year in the WNBA, a lot of which comes from charity dollars from the NBA, but the real purpose of women’s sports is to save families huge tuition bills and get mediocre students into good colleges. Having that taken away is devastating to a girl.

It can be the difference between Stanford Law and Red Lobster.

You know what I want to see? Dylan Mulvaney with a Best Actress Oscar. Maybe that will wake women up for real. At that point, the tranny conquest will be complete, and women will only be used to create new male babies.

Instead of becoming female impersonators, trannies will become female impersonator impersonators. Forget Cher and Dolly Parton. Let’s all be Dylan.

Why is “female impersonator” still a phrase? Seems transphobic to me. Someone hit the cancel button.

I don’t know it can be any clearer that the end of the age is here. We may have years, but I doubt we have decades. Maybe God is waiting for us to do animal sex acts during Super Bowl halftime.

Here’s a revelation I got today. My wife and I were talking, and we were discussing the fact that we don’t belong to our earthly nations. We are just visitors who are citizens of heaven. We are ambassadors, and our bodies are embassies. The Bible says these things.

I asked her what a country does when war breaks out. Answer: it calls its ambassadors home. We didn’t have diplomats in Berlin during World War Two. There is no point in keeping diplomats in a hostile alien area during a war. When you’re at war, diplomacy has failed.

God has been diplomatic for thousands of years. The time for diplomacy is over. It didn’t work. It’s almost time for us to go, and I can’t wait. I want to live in a world without leftists. My home world.

Guess it’s a good thing I started making my own beer this year. Not that I drank Bud Light or Miller Lite to begin with.

Now You Know Your Purpose

I just saw the news about California “reparations.” I’m thrilled. The boil came to a head, leftist politicians popped it, and now the hot pus is flowing over every citizen who voted for them.

According to Fox, payments can add up to a few thousand to over a million dollars for one “victim.” I wish it were more. I guess it will be, though, because as far as I can see, this is only the state version of “reparations.” I believe the local versions are yet to be announced. San Francisco is talking about payments that could add up to tens of millions for some individuals.

Do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it.

We need to see the appendix burst and the patient roll into the OR, only to find out the surgeon is on the side of the sepsis.

I like using quotation marks for “reparations,” because it’s a misnomer. Reparations are for actual victims, and they are paid by actual offenders. There are zero American former slaves alive today. There are zero American former slave owners alive today. I guess I’ll quit using quotation marks now, though, because typing them is a pain. Just pretend they’re still there.

Reparations have already been paid, over and over. Money and opportunities have been piled onto American blacks for many decades. People who had nothing to do with slavery were deprived in order to provide all this assistance. It’s time to let it go. But that won’t happen. Reparations will keep increasing. The apocalypse is here, and delusion that only escalates is one of the symptoms.

I want to see this world fixed. I’m tired of the mass psychosis. I’m tired of living in a broken world.

This place is a mess. Think about it. Think about all the passwords you know. Think about the locks you have to lock. Think about your antivirus software and the stupid puzzles you have to solve to get into websites. In a sane world, would criminals be out to get you every hour of every day?

Think about the suffering around you. If you’re used to the murders and rapes and so on that take place among humans, think of the animals. Think of the horrible suffering they endure due to predation and pointless intraspecies fights. None of this is normal.

I’m tired of it. I’m tired of solving Internet puzzles. I’m tired of being told I have to make up new passwords. I’m tired of knowing leftist lunatics are planning for a time when they can come to places like my county and do things that would shame the Japanese who invaded Nanking.

I’m tired of the hatred and childishness in the news. I’m sick of politics. I hate democracy. I want King Yeshua.

Is hating democracy and rooting for a thousand-year monarchy treason? No. There’s kind of a loophole. You can’t get in trouble for supporting a foreign monarch who lives in heaven. Only earthly enemies.

None of the world’s big problems will be fixed until this age ends, so bring it on. Let’s rip the Band-Aid off the festering scab. Reparations! Pronouns! Sodomy in the streets! Mass firings! Confiscation of property! Socialism! Censorship! War! Racism! Let’s do it.

Maybe the reparations storm will serve to wake a few leftists up and bring them into the family of God before the rapture. Maybe it will wake up other people who have been asleep.

The suffering of the apocalypse is going to happen anyway, and things are never going to get better than they are right now, so the quicker the end comes, the better off the world will be.

Am I the only one who is sick of this place? Am I the only one who has a great life yet wishes to spend the rest of it in a better world?

Most days, I talk to my buddy Mike, who has come around as the Holy Spirit has done his work. Mike always says the same thing: “It’s over.” The Air Force is using trannies to recruit airmen. “It’s over.” Bud Light used a tranny to attract customers. “It’s over.” Satanists are opening clubs in elementary schools. “It’s over.”

I saw a great video a couple of days back. It showed San Franciscans venting to the Board of Supervisors. This is the Board that wants to give millions to random black people. One lady said she was going to spend her microphone time screaming, and she did.

Instead of putting her in a padded room, the supervisors sat and took their punishment. A homelessexual with green hair appeared, and he yelled out his demands. He DEMANDED good housing and medical care, like someone owed it to him. He was furious. They took him completely seriously.

It reminded me of something I witnessed.

My sister is a drug addict, and she is beyond redemption. She is the incarnation of entitlement. She was mad at my elderly dad about something or other that was completely her fault.

I don’t know what she was mad about. He had paid for her rehab more than once, without telling me, even though she had money of her own and some sort of law practice. And equity in a house for which he paid most of the cost. I think she was upset about something related to more money, but I couldn’t tell you for sure. It was years ago. I haven’t had any communication with her in 8 years, I think.

She stomped into his house and slammed the door, and she barked, “I’m going to give you ONE more chance!!” I heard her footsteps as she marched across the hardwood.

She didn’t know I was there, a few feet away, in another room, with the door open.

After her warning cry, I heard her telling him not to touch her and generally venting her shock and anger. I heard their feet moving across the floor. Then I heard the front door slam again. She was outside. He had taken her by the arm and deposited her on the porch.

This is what the supervisors should have done to the nuts who lectured them. Unfortunately, the supervisors are apparently not much different, so if crazy people were going to be ejected from the room, the supervisors would have had to go, too.

Interesting side story: my sister called me a few minutes after she was expelled, threatening to have my dad arrested and disbarred. She had broken her arm in a kitchen fall weeks earlier, and she claimed my dad had re-broken it by escorting her out the door. She was furious.

While she was telling me this over the phone, she bought a Coke at a drive-through. I heard her paying and receiving a big cup. So was in terrible pain with a fresh disabling injury, but she still managed to drive to McDonald’s and buy a huge soda through a window.

As a witness, I knew the whole thing was nonsense, but I didn’t bother letting her know. I figured it would be best to provide that information after the police came, if indeed they did. They never showed.

She did call the cops on another occasion, and they took her about as seriously as you would expect. A middle-aged woman with a BMW 335i and few front teeth, making unsupported claims about an octogenarian who looked considerably less threatening than Wilford Brimley.

Not the Wilford Brimley from The Firm. The one from the oatmeal commercials.

Anyway, I know what entitlement and hatred of the truth look like, so when I saw the video, it was almost nostalgic.

The common thread is the inability to perceive one’s complete lack of leverage. In both cases, people attacked other people they depended on, made bizarre demands as though they had been cheated, and verbally abused the individuals they hoped would show them charity.

It’s not a good approach.

Government bodies and voters have become enablers, and what happens to enablers if they don’t stop? They die, consumed and defeated. Then their parasites move on to other hosts.

If you’re in God’s good graces, you have favor, and he makes you the head and not the tail. That means your enemies fail, and either he ejects them from your life, or you rule over them. You can’t have God’s favor and be an enabler. Enablers are losers.

A person who has favor will get victory over others, no matter how strong their enemies seem to be. As the Bible says, one will put a thousand to flight. If you don’t have favor, you’re the thousand, not the one. People who have no power and no leverage will push you around and eat you alive, no matter how big and strong you think you are. This is what happened to my late mother. My sister emptied her like a tube of toothpaste.

America has lost God’s favor. That’s why nuts can paint lying slogans on busy streets and throw Molotov cocktails at the police without getting in trouble. It’s why Californians are going to get some amazing tax bills in the future. They will lose and lose and lose. They turned on God, and now they’re enablers. Hosts. The parasites will eat them.

Every day, I pray for Yahweh to send Yeshua as soon as possible, to get us out. The days of revival are over. We are not going to see significant numbers of souls saved, but we will see many people lose their salvation.

Actually, there is a revival going on, and it’s huge. It’s global. It’s Satan’s revival. He has revivals, too. He lost a lot of souls in the flood and in God’s salvation campaigns. Now he’s winning again. His crusades are everywhere, and they are winning a staggering number of souls. You can see it in statistics. Now 40% of millennials identify as sexual degenerates, and Christianity has declined by about the same percentage in the US, since 2000. Those are horrific figures. Ten percent would be amazing, but we are looking at 40, and the next decade will be much worse than the last. We’re done.

It’s over.

Reparations for everyone. A global round of Bud Light. Let’s just do it. Sell drugs at McDonald’s. Let women go to malls and church naked. Take white people’s wealth. Open the prisons.

Do it do it do it. But I pray my wife and I will not be here to see it.

Little Beers are Okay

I guess it’s time to be open about my drinking problem.

It’s not the usual kind of drinking problem. The problem is that I did what everyone with a new hobby does. I overdid it. And the hobby was brewing beer. If you start fishing, you’ll fish every weekend. If you buy a wood lathe, you’ll make all your friends unwanted and useless wooden goblets for a couple of months. If you start making beer, you’ll want to have several beers every day.

There are two serious consequences of drinking several beers every day. For one, you get fat, and for another, you can never go anywhere. You’re always waiting for your blood alcohol level to be right before you get in the car. It doesn’t take a lot of drinking to get you in trouble if you have an accident. You may not be impaired, and the accident may be unrelated to drinking, but you can get a DUI off a couple of strong beers anyway.

For years, I barely drank at all. One reason was that I just wasn’t interested in it, but another was that I couldn’t get beer I really liked. When you make your own beer, you get exactly what you want. You pick the grain, yeast, hops, fermentation schedule, mashings schedule, carbonation level…everything just the way you like it. Then when you go back to factory beer, nearly every beer is at least a little disappointing.

I am now at the stage where I have 5 beers on tap. One is not quite perfect, but I still like it better than factory beer. One, my stout, is beyond belief. I actually get a little nervous when I consider the possibility that I may time my next brew wrong and end up with a stout hiatus.

I feel like I’ve been in beer jail since 2006. Now I’m enjoying all the things I missed out on.

When you have really good beer, you don’t want to have just one. You want to start with something relatively light and then have something with more impact. You’re not going to have one pint of lager and quit. You’ll want a stout or an ale next. So for a while, I was having several beers per day, most days.

I came up with an answer. Small glasses.

Early on, I got two sets of what people call pilsner glasses. These are tall, curvy glasses that are good for serving most beers. One set seemed a little small, so I got a set of glasses that hold 18.5 ounces, including foam. A beer that big is very satisfying, especially when you’re in the brewing honeymoon phase.

In order to be able to have more than one beer per sitting, I ordered myself some miniature pint glasses. I know “miniature pint” is an oxymoron. I’m not like Haagen-Daz, the company that pretends 14 ounces are a pint.

These things are shaped like English pub glasses, but they hold about 10 ounces. Now I can have a couple of beers without turning into Barney from The Simpsons.

It’s not easy to find decent beer glasses in this size range. Amazon offers about a billion different personalized glasses, which I don’t want, and it has a variety of huge glasses. It sells a lot of crystal, which gets destroyed in dishwashers. I had to search a long time to find plain old glass glasses that would work.

If you’re thinking about homebrewing, learn from my example. Get yourself some little glasses. You’ll get to have more than one kind of beer per day, and you might live to be 70.