First All-Grain Brew (Belgian Dubbel)

Beer, ,

We had one of the first cool days of Fall yesterday, cool enough to justify real shoes — with socks!  It probably won’t last, but we’ve been pining for cooler weather and the darker, heavier beers that go with them.  Beers that could plausibly go with shepherd’s pie.  So we took advantage of the nice weather and spent the whole day inside slaving over a hot stove, brewing a batch of abbey ale, using a recipe based on Westmalle Dubbel.

We had (almost) all of our equipment ready, and took the plunge and did our first all-grain batch.  This was also our first liquid yeast, and between those two things, it went about as well as could be expected:

  • Apparently, liquid yeast needs to come out of the fridge 3-6 hours before you can pitch it.  Luckily, I remembered to check just in time.
  • 5 gallons of sparge water took a long time to bring up to temp — roughly an hour.  And I thought I was being clever when I remembered to start heating it 20 minutes before the mash was supposed to be done…
  • It took roughly 8½ hours from starting to heat the water for the mash, to getting the fermenter tucked away in the pantry.  Mashing, collecting wort and the boil combined took 4½ hours, so the other 4 hours was spent waiting for water to heat up (or cool down), filtering wort into the fermenter, etc.
  • Our fancy new kitchen faucets don’t have a standard tap that the wort chiller can screw into.  So I ran a garden hose into the kitchen and hooked it up.  Of course, the hose had a leak and sprayed water everywhere.  Even with copious duct-taping, it still leaked a trickle.  Eventually, I had the hose angled down into a dish pan, collecting the runoff.  But that took a surprisingly long time to get right.

Unlike some previous batches, I actually remembered to take gravity readings at several points.  With the help of a handy little tool for temperature-correcting gravity readings, we got exactly the gravity called for in the recipe.  So we’ve got high hopes.

Resume spinning

Spinning,

After a brief, frustration-related hiatus, I have returned to spinning. Everything was going so well with my beginner roving, but when I tried to pretend I could really spin it all fell apart. (Literally.) Luckily, my friend and fellow spinning novice could see what the problem was: I was trying to spin roving that was too thick. Turns out beginner roving is already thin enough to spin, but grown-up roving is meant for people who know enough to pull apart the roving into thinner strips. People who were not me, but now are me, because now I know to do this!

And the magical process by which stringy fluff becomes yarn can continue…

So, I’m now figuring out how to spin steadily, instead of parking the spindle to twist the fiber. While it is more of a juggling act (and so I’m sure much more entertaining to watch), the quality of the yarn is surprisingly better – my width is a lot more consistent and I over-spin much less.

Also, my friend now has a spinning wheel. As I told Redbeard about this, I made to sure to reassure him that I’m not ready for a wheel yet. He replied that he has already “resigned” himself to making room for one. So…. does that mean I can have one now? Because I think I really am ready.

 

Just Tapped A Keg of Big Nose IPA

Beer

We knew our last keg was going to kick soon, so I called our local beer store to see what kegs they had in stock.  They were out of our first choice, so I found myself talking my wife into getting a keg of Big Nose IPA.

Now, saying that I’m not an IPA fan is a bit of an understatement.  I generally compare IPAs to sandpaper, bleach, or some kind of tongue-stripping assault.  But for whatever reason, I really like Big Nose.  It’s not really pale (more of an amber, in fact), so maybe there’s enough malt in it that I don’t mind the hops so much.  And I think, as the name suggests, that they’ve focused on the aromatic hops, not so much the tongue-violence-bittering hops.

Anyway, in goes the new keg, and the hissing sound I normally expect when tapping a new keg doesn’t stop — it just tapers off to a steady hiss.  So I turned everything off, pulled the release valve on the keg, and turned the gas back on — still hissing.  I’d loosened the CO2 line on the keg coupler, so I retightened that, retapped the keg and turned the gas back on — still hissing.  It was dinnertime by now, so I let it sit, rechecked everything and turned the CO2 back on — still hissing.

By now, I was getting pretty frustrated and starting to worry that my regulator was broken.  So I ran my fingers around all the seals in the regulator, and found the problem: the regulator wasn’t screwed in to the CO2 cylinder securely (maybe it got bumped?).  So I tightened that and the hissing stopped.  So, score one for the check-everything-twice school of troubleshooting.

I know what a LOT of people are getting for Christmas this year…

knitting, , , ,

I am trying my best to show a little restraint when it comes to this hat pattern a friend gave me. But, oh sweet knitting gods, it is hard.

This hat is so cute and knits up insanely fast because you knit flat and then sew it into shape. What’s not to love?

Oh, that’s right, here is what is not love:

Way down at the bottom of the pattern, looking innocent, is the instruction to “mattress” stitch the ends together. I’m not sure why it’s called mattress stitching, though my current theory is because it makes you want to go lie down after you try it. Good thing this first hat (because oh yes there will be more, bed-related stitching or not) is for my daughter, who is not yet discerning enough to care about what a complete hash her mother has made of the mattress stitching on her new hat.

Of course, it doesn’t help that this first attempt is on a diagonal (the tutorials only show horizontal and vertical… how dare they not envision every possible orientation?). I’m making my son one next… it will give me another chance to see if I can work out how to join these things together.

Quick side-scarf

knitting, ,

I have so much love for thick yarns. I had a sudden, birthday-related need for a scarf. Fast forward roughly 4 knitting-hours, and I’ve got a warm, wooly scarf.

The color on this picture is way, way off. It has a lot more red in it than is shown here, but otherwise I think this nicely shows off the seed stitch that I used. I just sort of winged this scarf, and decided on the fly to do something a little more fancy that a garter stitch.

Even though this was an easy project, I still learned something (2 things, in fact – how embarrassing!):

(1) This scarf is 21 stitches across, size 13 needles with “super bulky” yarn. I should never, ever make a scarf this wide again. I ended up having to run out and buy another skein because it would’ve been way too stubby with just the one I had. If I had had the time, I would’ve started over with maybe 15 stitches.

(2) In my head, here is the pattern I decided to make:

CO 21
Rows 1-4: K21
Rows 5-??: K3, [k1, p1]* repeat until three stitches left, k3
Knit last 4 rows then BO

Okay, so in my head, this would give me a 3-stitch garter border. In reality, this gave me a 4-stitch border because, duh, K3 then k1… yes, that is K4. Plus, because I correctly figured out that I needed an odd number of stitches, the seed [k1, p1] actually ends with just a k1, so… yep: K4 at the end of the row. To be fair, I got what I really wanted, which is being able to knit the same exact pattern every row and still get a seed stitch with a border. The border is just a little bigger than I planned.

A lovely side-effect of this project (because I can’t learn three things from a silly scarf that took a few hours) – I can know really tell the difference between how a single knit stitch and a single purl stitch looks. I am ridiculously proud of this.

Around the block

knitting, , ,

I’ve just finished a cute mini-wrap using the Citron pattern (LGT Ravelry). I used some of the lovely mocha-colored yarn that my grandmother gave me (spun from a blend of her alpacas’ wool, although sadly not by me – more on the spinning front in another post…).

The knitting on this one went really fast – I finished it in two otherwise pretty crazy weeks – and only involved a small amount of cursing (mostly limited to the time I accidentally pulled a ton of stitches off the needles). The pattern itself is pretty AND pretty straightforward, but does require blocking the project at the end. I’ve never blocked anything and was little daunted by the idea, but it had to be done.

But… how to do it? A quick search on Google reminded me (with apologies to Tolkien): Go not to the webs for council, for they will say both no and yes. Some people say hot water, some people say cold water. Some people say dunking, other people say spraying. Some people say special equipment, some people say a towel and straight pins.  In the end, I based my plan of action on this really helpful page at Yarn Harlot. I will add to the chorus of comments at the bottom of that page that the yarn-through-the-top thing is genius. Pure blocking genius.

Here are the before, middle, and after shots:

Surprisingly Like Mead

Mead, ,

We pulled the mead to second fermentation yesterday.  Since we only have one 1-gallon growler, we siphoned it to a 6-quart pot, washed the growler, and siphoned it back.  It all went pretty smoothly.

We actually remembered to check the gravity when we brewed and when we moved to second fermentation.  It started at 1.064, and was down to 1.010 (with a bunch of yeast messing up the sample) and 1.004 (with a clean sample).  By my math, that’s in the 7.5% – 8% ABV range.  Of course we sipped at the sample after checking the gravity, and it was surprisingly mead-like.  Definitely unfinished, just like beer coming out of the first week of fermentation.  But definitely promising.

Another ruffley success

knitting, ,

I’ve just finished another ruffle scarf, and I (obviously) love this pattern. The thing that I can’t get over is the transformation that happens between when it is on the needles and when it finally comes off. It basically looks like a lumpy snake to start with:

But, then the ruffles emerge stitch by stitch as you bind off, until you get this:

(Ugh – the colors are all over the place with these pictures – the first picture is the best match to the actual color!)

This particular pattern uses Yarn Overs to expand three times, going from 256 cast on stitches to 1024 bind off stitches in just a few rows. This also creates some very pretty, lace-like holes in the final scarf:

Despite carefully following the pattern’s guidelines about yardage and weight, I still had to run out to my LYS to get another skein of yarn half-way through the row just before binding off. Ugh. So I added a row with the sudden bounty of yarn at my disposal, which actually gives the outer edge a little more weight – a nice touch, I think. So, it was a blessing in disguise in the end, but still annoying that I simply can’t get the yardage right in my projects right now (more on the cursed market bag another time – let’s just say I was a little sheepish as I admitted I had not one but TWO skeins I needed to match dye lots on).

Belgian “Research” Project: First Round

Beer,

Between my local beer shop and a few other sources, I’ve managed to find several of the beers on my list.  Here are my impressions of the first batch:

Affligem Dubbel

I picked this up at the beer shop when I went without my list.  It’s wasn’t on a lot of top beer lists, but it does have a good rating on BeerAdvocate.  This beer is a lot like an English brown ale, with earthy overtones and a nice mild sweetness. It started out a little bland and underwhelming, but quickly grew on me. It’s sweet, but not cloying, with some fruitiness.  Solid.

Westmalle Dubbel

Giant sticky malt with lots of fruit, sugar, biscuit, etc. — much sweeter than the other abbey ales I’ve sampled.  A nutty body and a little darkness in the finish.  Didn’t like this as much as the Affligem.

La Trappe Quadrupel

This is the only Trappist brewery in the Netherlands.  Definitely one of the better heavy abbey beers I’ve had. Not too sickly or overwhelming. Definite subtleties with spiciness and nuttiness.

Rochefort 6/8/10

We picked up one bottle each of the 6, 8 and 10, and tasted them back-to-back. In a word, disappointing.  The 6 was very mild, with a lot of carbonation, and some mild earthy flavor, a little sweetness, but not much else.  The 8 and 10 definitely had a bigger alcohol kick, and a little more malt, but were pretty similar.  These are all very highly rated online, but we didn’t find much to justify that.

St. Bernardus Abt 12

Sweet and highly carbonated, with some caramel, toffee and light mineral notes. Very smooth and complex, with the typical fruitiness and spiciness.  Better than Affligem.  Made in a small town not far from Westvleteren, so maybe a day trip is in order.

DeuS (Brut des Flandres)

Sweet and very effervescent.  Lots of champagne flavor, but not dry like brut champagne (despite the name), more like a demi-sec.  Everything about this beer made me ready to love it.  It was definitely packaged and promoted as a special, one-of-a-kind experience.  But it managed to be just OK.  It was good, but not fantastic.  Not enough to justify the hefty price tag.

Westvleteren 12

Quite hard to get (the monks only make enough to support themselves and only sell it in limited quantities at the abbey), so I was hoping it wouldn’t live up to the hype. Alas, it was fantastic.  Lives up to the “best beer in the world” moniker quite well.

The Platonic ideal every other abbey ale I’ve had has been clustered around. Rich and earthy malt with fruity and spicy notes, plus some creamy chocolate and biscuit too. A little dry bitterness in the finish. Packs a decent kick at 10% ABV.  Exceptionally smooth and textured.

Belgian “Research” Project

Beer,

We’re going to be living in the Netherlands for a few months next year, so we’re planning on taking advantage of being next-door to Belgium to sample some hard-to-find brews and maybe visit an abbey or two.  Belgian beer is a domain roughly as complex as French wine (see e.g., A Beginner’s Guide to Belgian Beer).  So I thought I’d do some “research” before we went.

Background

I have had a couple of Belgian beers before:

  • Tripel Karmeliet and Maredsous 6/Blonde: I had both of these in Oakland on a business trip, and was really impressed by the complexity and maltiness.
  • Chimay Tripel: I picked up a bottle of this shortly thereafter (when I couldn’t find Tripel Karmeliet or Maredsous locally).  This has a lot in common with those, if maybe a little spicier.
  • Saison Dupont: I tried this after my not-so-gentle introduction to Saison, when I saw recommendations online to start with a milder variety like Saison Dupont.  This struck me as almost Champagne-like, with a ton of aroma and flavor I didn’t associate with beer at all.

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