make a ninja hood

so Burning Man is coming up in about 3 weeks and i dont have that many costumes. Its way cooler if i modify or make my own stuff instead of just buying things. Ive been scouting for ideas and here is the list so far:

ninja masks made out of recycled Tshirts
Leg/arm warmers out of sweaters
sarongs
loin clothe
crazy jeans with suspenders
vests made out of recycled Tshirts
sprucing up old dress shirts with ruffles to make them kick ass

ive found alot of really cool websites on how to mod stuff, its really addictive. heres the link to the simplest and oddly enough the best looking ninja mask i found online:

Summer Drink! Kvass

So a guy I work with is Russian, and he has asked me to brew his favorite summer time drink, Kvass. For those of us in the US, kvass doesn't sounds appealing... It is basically a slightly carbonated drink made from a fermentation of rye bread, yeast, and sugar. Certain variations on the traditional recipe call for the addition of raisins, berries, or even mint leaves at the time of bottling.

My friend tells me that kvass is available in plastic bottles like any other soft drink. But, he says, these aren't worth the money. True kvass is sold from a barrel as seen below...

Well, I love a challenge, so I'll be using this recipe, but I'll be using better brewing techniques/equipment. One thing I am looking forward to.. getting back to brewing AND kvass is a quick turnaround, which is good because i am impatient.

Next post will include my experience in setting this brew up.

UPDATE:
Sunday afternoon, 7/11/2010 - Ok well I have moved through the first few steps and here are some thoughts.

First, the bread, i think, should be very dry... not just dry to the touch, but truly as dry as it would be if it were stale.

I say this because the recipe called for 3 quarts of initial water (the recipe is designed to yield a total of 2.5 quarts), but the bread soaked up and completely retained about 2 quarts of liquid. We strained the bread mush through a cheesecloth, but were unable to squeeze out any more than 1 quart of liquid without pulverizing the bread which would have at least made the kvass cloudy, and at worst would have made it undrinkable with all those bread solids in the final brew. My suspicion is that stale bread would not retain as much water and it would be possible to actually strain the majority of the liquid out of the bread without too much squeezing.

To bring the volume back up to the final volume of 2.5 quarts, I simply added tap water.

To recap where I am at, I have primed the yeast and added it and the sugar to the 2.5 quarts of water in a large pot. The recipe says to let this rest for 8-10 hours before bottling.

I will be approaching this more from a beer brewer's angle. I will actually be treating the 8-10 hours as a primary fermentation... so its going into a 1 gallon glass jug along with an airlock so I can monitor the yeast activity. In the end I plan to fill a couple of wine bottle to separate the kvass from the trub, or sediment.

More after a few days...

Update Sunday evening 7/11: Fermentation seems to be stuck going on 8 hours after leaving the wort to rest. Possibly due to old yeast. I have aerated the wort and added 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient to attempt to jolt the yeast into action.

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Update Monday afternoon 7/12: Success! Not sure if it was due to the aeration or yeast nutrient I added at the last update, but just got in from work and the yeast have started working their magic. There is definitely positive pressure and a froth at the top of the brew.

More in a few days...

Update Thursday afternoon 7/15: So, the fermentation is really moving now (and still). So much so that the yeast sediment is being kicked up into the brew... I will check tomorrow and if it has settled down I will bottle it, but it if the pace is still high I will wait. I will be away this weekend and the last thing I need to come home to is an exploded bottle of brew in the fridge.




Update Sunday Afternoon 7/25: Well fermentation finished up well and then i got busy so the kvass sat for about a week. But I have bottled it up with a bit of priming sugar to help build up some carbonation in the fridge.

Brew Time Again.... Again

Well its been way too long. The last thing I brewed was our St. Patrick's Day Savannah Special Green Witbier. Not a bad beer to end on for a while.

A lot has happened since those days of March. A long presidential campaign has recently come to an end and the landscape of American financial institutions has been profoundly altered, just to name a couple.

And what is a graphic designer who services the homebuilding industry to do? Drink heavily...

So in that spirit, I'm getting back to homebrewing in the holiday corridor (Nov 1st - Jan 1st) starting with a hard cider. Five gallons of good, slightly hard cider to act as a festive holiday drink for myself and fiancee and as handmade gifts for friends and family (which will remain a surprise in that I am the only one who reads this blog!)

I have been stocking up on wine bottles and bought tasting corks from the local homebrew supply shop. I am going to start with this basic recipe, making some modifications:

http://www.tastybrew.com/newrcp/detail/257

Thats all for now... I will post once I get actual ingredients.

Garnet's Homemade Beer

To the tune of Barrett's Privateers by Stan Rogers, brother of the featured Garnet Rogers

Oh, the year was nineteen seventy-eight
How I wish I'd never tried it now
When a score of men were turned quite green
By the scummiest ale you've ever seen

Refrain
God damn them all, I was told
This beer was worth its weight in gold
We'd feel no pain, shed no tears
But it's a foolish man who shows no fear
At a glass of Garnet's home-made beer

Oh, Garnet Rogers cried the town / How I wish...
For twenty brave men, all masochists who
Would taste for him his homemade brew

{Refrain}

This motley crew was a sickening sight / How I wish...
There was caveman Dave with his eyes in bags
He'd a hard-boiled liver and the staggers and jags

{Refrain}

Well we hadn't been there but an hour or two / How I wish...
When a voice said: Gimme some homemade brew
And Steeleye Stan hove into view

{Refrain}

Now Steeleye Stan was a frightening man / How I wish...
He was eight feet tall and four feet wide
He said: Pass that jug or I'll tan your hide

{Refrain}

Stan took one sip and pitched on his side / How I wish...
Garnet was smashed with a gut full of dregs
And his breath set fire to both me legs

{Refrain}

So here I lay in me twenty-third beer / How I wish...
It's been ten years since I felt this way
On the night before my wedding day

{Refrain}

Brew Time Again

So it has been quite a bit since I have contributed to this blog, but here goes. I am going to make a simple 5 gallon batch of grape wine from juice concentrate. I found a website that I think has posted a fantastic recipe for just this.

I'm going to the brew shop tomorrow (i have the day off YEAH!!) and I am picking up a hydrometer, wine yeast, pectin and anything else i think might be needed for this batch. I am pretty sure this recipe is legit since this looks exactly like the recipe for wine from welch's juice concentrate i saw in Dr. Holme's lab book. The recipe claims the wine should be ready within about 35 days.

Savannah's brew league has a meeting this February the 6th. Josh and I are going to be going. I will take pics of steps taken with the wine, lookin forward to home brewing again.

Coffee Stout and Hard Cider

Hey guys,
Ok, so last night I got back on the horse and brewed a couple of beverages. Patrick and Tori came over about 7:00pm and we got to brewing basically the exact same stout you got a taste of. The only difference with this brew was that we left out the Acid malt since this adds a lot of sourness to the final product. We wanted this in the last stout because we were trying to clone Guiness, but since this will be a coffee stout, we left it out.

I have read that there are two camps when it comes to adding a coffee flavor to beer. Some brewers use heavily roasted grains which give the beer a toasted coffee flavor. These grains are steeped like tea at the beginning of the brewing process. I actually opted for the second method which is to simply add brewed coffee to the beer.

Then we had options as to when to add the coffee to the mix. You can add it in the initial fermentation, secondary fermentation, or drop it in literally as you go to bottle the whole mess. I will add it in at bottling time. Its the easiest way and you run a much smaller risk of losing the coffee flavors to high yeast activity.

So the stout is laid to rest for a few days. We finished that brew at about 10:30 so I thought I would whip up a test cider. I still had a one-gallon glass apple juice jug that mom gave me a few weeks ago. So I went to Tastybrew.com and looked up this recipe and scaled everything down for a one-gallon batch. This was pretty imperfect and required a good bit of judgement on my part. I added 1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves to the mix for spice. Unfortunately, I had to use baker's yeast because I keep forgetting to buy extra ale yeast packets when I'm at the homebrew shop. I'm not sure that this will be a problem as this brew is supposed to come in at about 4.9% ABV, and baker's yeast can hang out in up to 6%. Heres a quick run-down of my cider brew

Ingredients:
2 cans of frozen 100% apple juice
.5 cup of Sugar in the Raw (turbinado sugar)
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 tsp bakers yeast

Process:

• Combine frozen juice, sugar, cloves, and 1/2 gallon of water in pot and heat to 165 degrees farenheit for 5 minutes. (This is your wort)


• Remove from heat and cool to 80 degrees.


• Add cooled wort to primary fermenter and add cool spring water until the fermenter is full (NOTE: I left some space at the top of the jar so fermentation doesn't clog the neck.)


• Secure the airlock and place in a warm, dark place (NOTE: I wrapped a towel around the clear glass jug...fermentation hates light.)

I am expecting this fermentation to take much longer mainly because of the preservatives in the apple juice concentrate... I checked both brews this morning and the beer is rocking and rolling while the cider seems unchanged. The recipe that I based this brew off of says that the primary fermentation takes about 2 weeks and then he put it into secondary fermentation for another two weeks... So I'll probably report back on the state of the brew in about 2 weeks when I move it to secondary. I am hopeful.. I checked the original gravity (OG) and its right in line with the OG from the original recipe. If all goes well, the cider will turn out to be around 4.5 - 4.9% ABV

I will detail how I cobbled together the airlock for the cider in another post.

Below are some pictures of the cider once it was all laid to rest... I always forget to take in-progress pictures.

Update on the Stout

Hey Guys,
Well, after trying a beer each night starting at about three days out from bottling, it's official. Stouts take much longer to condition and build carbonation that other beers. Some websites have said that it will take maybe 2 months. Bad news... I was hoping to be drinking a good stout by now.

The good news is that the flavor has been getting better each day, so I think I will let this one sit for a month or so. My next beer, I think, will be an Oktoberfest. This will need less time conditioning before its ready to drink.

In other news, I will be going to the November meeting of the Savannah Brewer's League on Wednesday. I'm really looking forward to it. I was hoping by now to have something good enough to take a few beers in for the after meeting tasting. But, unfortunately I think my end products have actually gone down since we brewed that Witbier. I'm not sure what the deal is... whether my tastes have become more discriminating, or I'm not keeping my eqipment clean enough. I'm going to try to get some advice from the guys at the Brewer's League.

I also looked into doing an all-grain brew (basically, soaking and creating my own batch of fermentables from crushed grains instaed of using the extract that I buy from the Brew store). It looks like more equipment and a greater investment of time in the brew, but you have more control and you avoid the cost of the extract which is the vast majority of the cost of ingredients per batch.

Well, I'll be in beer touch. Be well guys... talk to you later

Rack Idea

OK,
So I do all of my fermentation and storing of bottled beer in a cabinet under my kitchen counter. Its dimensions are roughly a cube 22" on all sides. Usually, the bottles are all stood up next to each other. This is pretty inefficient as I lose the ability to use vertical space which would allow me to store all the brewing equipment when the beer is conditioning in the bottle. It would also allow me to store the bottles when they are not in use. So I have designed a rack that I will be able to set in the back of the cabinet to hold the bottles so they are lined up on their sides left to right with the cap facing the door. The illustration to the right is a rough sketch.

I will let you know how it turns out. It only requires about $5 dollars worth of wood. I'll put it together one of the days this week before we bottle on Friday.

Sigh of relief

Well,
I just racked the beer to secondary and laid it to rest under the cabinet until Friday. It looks like a good brew. The final gravity measurement came in at 1.020 with our original gravity being around 1.050. So that gives us an ABV of around 4%. If any more fermentation takes place in secondary (which it certainly did with the witbier) we'll get somewhere around 4.5% or 5% ABV which is right in line with the Irish Stout style definition (anywhere between 4-5%).

And, as always, in the course of the siphoning, I got just a tiny taste of the beer and it definitely tastes like a Guiness-type Stout.

This wort left a HUGE amount of trub (pronounced "troob", I have found out). Not only was there a lot at the bottom, but there was a thick, green paste in a rim stuck to the side of the fermenter about 2-3 inches above the top of the beer itself. I think this was the result of the Irish Moss being present in the fermentation vessel. Judging from the aforementioned taste, it seems there were no ill effects from the inclusion of the hops and moss during fermentation

It does seem that all the hops and irish moss particulate matter fell out of the beer because it went into the secondary fermenter clean and clear.

So, it seems like a success so far.

Recent Tastes

Over the past month or two I've been previewing beers to both get a better idea what I like in a beer and to develop my ability to discern different tastes. So... the report so far is that almost all of the Rogue beers are good, especially, the Chocolate Stout.

The absolute worst beer I have ever had... period, and this includes a really caustic Pilzner from czechoslovakia, is this beer right here, imagine Heineken laced with hershey syrup and Nyquil.

Probably the best beer I have ever had would be the Black Mocha Stout from the Highland Brewing Company based in Asheville, NC. Its hearty and bold. I'd recommend it to any human. Every offering I have had from Highland is really good. I will probably try their Cold Mountain Winter Ale next.

Next time I'm in Greensboro, I want to go down to Natty Greens and get a taste of their dark brews to compare with some of these.

Anyway, if you guys try anything new or awesome post about it. Maybe we can start up the Dark Brown Beer Review. Regional publication to start, and quickly expanding to become the Nation's most important periodic literature for the connoisseur of spirits both fine and crude!

Cider?

So, it was great seeing you on our way back to Savannah, Alex. You said that you had come by a pretty good Cider brew using walmart juice/cider. We should definitely pursue that. Post the details when you can or take a shot at it and keep us posted on how it goes. I've got some wine bottles that are just waiting to hold something good. I know that cider would be a big hit with everyone for xmas/thanksgiving too.

Here are a few cider recipes from TastyBrew.com:

"First Cider" - This one does the trick real fast! ABV=8.8%
"Fiesta Cider" - cheap and easy from concentrate
"Siler Cider" - real light, for a wider audience (ABV=.9%)

Back again - Guiness Clone and Mini Kegs

Hey guys,
Well its been too long since we've posted to the blog so I'd thought I would let you guys know where I'm at in my brewing. Right now, I've got a Guiness clone (Irish Stout) sitting in the primary fermenter. I'll be moving it to secondary tonight. This will be my fourth beer and its definitely getting more routine. I am getting tired of bottling though... I can't seem to get all the bottles off my counter at one time. And storing and cleaning the things takes up a lot of time. I've looked into kegging the whole batch to a Cornelius Keg but the system ends up costing around $250-$300 once you buy the keg, the tap, the CO2 regulator, etc. But I have been seeing these little Heineken mini kegs at the store and I wondered if they could be reused to store homebrew. It turns out that the Heineken kegs can't be reused, but in searching I stumbled onto a system that uses similar mini kegs (5 liters). Basically it is composed of these 5L mini kegs (requires 4 minikegs for a 5 gallon batch of homebrew), a combination tap and CO2 regulator from the Tap-a-Draft system and an adaptor that goes between the keg and the tap/regulator. The Tap-a-draft system itself uses 6L plastic bottles to hold that beer that look like giant soda bottles. Personally, I think the minikeg option is better in terms of portability and long-term storage and the cost comes out to about the same. THe minikegs are around $7-$10 each and the tap/C02 regulator runs around $45. The neat thing about the tap/CO2 regulator is that it uses 2 CO2 cartridges (box of 12 is $7 and lasts about three homebrew batches). Since it uses 2 cartridges, you can substitute an N20 cartridge and have the necessary gas mixture for that characteristic Guiness Foam in your stouts. Anyway, I thought that this setup could really be used if we wanted to bring some seasonal ale up to the Mountain house or to Greensboro during the Holidays.

I've been brewing with a guy that Jenny works with, Patrick. He and his girlfriend are very much into brewing and this will be the second beer we've worked together on. This Guiness clone has been very different from the others. First off, its uses much darker roasted grains and a much thicker malt extract. In addition to the hops it also called for Irish Moss which acts as a clarifier during fermentation.

The brew was so thick, in fact, that the hops and Irish Moss particulates did not settle to the bottom during the cooling process after the boiling. In both the porters and the Witbier, simply siphoning the cooled wort into the fermenter and taking care not to let the hose suck from the bottom of the pot was all that was needed to avoid adding the boiled hops into the mix. But this time around, pretty much all of the hops and irish moss made it into the primary vessel. I am hoping that the addition of the spring water will have diluted the mix enough that that stuff settles out and I won't have to strain the beer into the secondary vessel. I am also hoping that the particulates won't make the beer too bitter.

Guiness is a really bitter beer and definitely has a touch of sourness to it (actually the sourness comes from a special "Acid Malt" that is steeped along with the other roasted barleys and malts ), but I'm curious to see if it is too bitter. I really hope not.

Anyway, I will be moving it to secondary tonight (Monday 10/22) and bottling (yes, unfortunately, the mini keg system will have to wait) it probably Friday. So in about a week or so, I will have a taste report for you.

Barebones Beer

So I guess the thing that amazes me is how forgiving the brewing process is. I stumbled upon this article in Mother Earth News a few weeks ago and just found it again. It gives a pretty basic DIY recipe and process for homebrewing. Its basically a hopless beer where the only ingredients are baker's yeast, malt extract, plain old sugar, and tap water.

This dude probably flavors his coffee with stump water!

Click here for the article... its bizarre. We should try it once to compare resutls

AHHHHH!!!!

OK, so after weeks of hemming and hawing over this or that and fretting over details..... I have finally purchased a brew kit and all the ingredients to brew a robust porter from scratch. EXCELLENT! So, I was going to tackle the task Sunday night (7/15), but got bogged down with other stuff. So, the backup day was today (7/16). The Kitchen is spotless and rearranged to make room for equipment. Dinner has been cooked, eaten, and cleaned away. All that is left is to buy spring water at the Kroger three blocks away.

So I pop over and spend longer than I wanted to in line (this would become the absolute least of my worries.) Head back home and pull out the strong sturdy keychain and WHAT?!? NO KEY?

Somehow the only key I need to get into my apartment is totally vanished from my keyring. The keyring, I will add, that I use SPECIFICALLY because it never opens enough for keys to be removed even when you want it to. I have broken hardened steel blades trying to pry that bitch open enough to slip a key on or off.

So now its 10:40pm and i've been inside the door maybe 10 minutes (thanks to our temporary neighbors who saved us by tossing down a keychain). The universe has won... I will not brew tonight.

But tomorrow... oh tomorrow it's on!

tastybrew.com post

I posted this last night to see if I can get some answers on an ale i want to make and to get us involved with this online community, cause I think they are a good resource. Watch to see if we get any posts. Subject: Ales arent they supposed to be without hops? [edit] Author: DarkBrownBrew

Jul 11th, 2007 12:18 am

So I am BRANDNEW to homebrewing and am actually studdying fermentation as part of an internship with the National Science Foundation at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Of course i'm am working with a bioluminescent bacteria, but fermentation applies to alcohol production too ... besides I also like to drink.

I have been doing some research and the KotMF brewing glossary put in its definition for ale a historical note;
"In historical times, the term ale referred to fermented malt beverages which were brewed without hops, with the term beer being used to refer to hopped malt beverages." so i am interested in try to make an ale.

But KotMF also adds in the definition that the name ale is loosely used now "In some states in the US, any beer over a certain strength must be labeled "ale" by law, regardless of whether it is technically an ale. Hence the odd practice of putting the word "ale" on the labels of strong lagers (e.g. Doppelbocks) intended for the US market.]"

I was hoping to make an ale like a Witbeir, which falls under the Belgian and French Ale BJCP style categorie giving some of the commercial examples as Blue Moon, Hoegaarden Wit etc.

I'm confused, my question is, is there something i'm not getting? how does one get a Witbeir with an IBU of 10-20% without using Hops? I have been drilling the calculators supplied on this website to no success. Do these ales actually use hops at some point in the process, meaning they aren't historically traditional ales, or is there something i havnt found yet in my research? ANY comments would help.

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Witbeir/Hefeweizen

The way we three are ontop of the same thing at the same thing... well it just has to be genetics. So u have a chocolate stout Josh, i'm in pursuit of a Hefeweizen. Dad is picking me up some malt extract and Hops, I'm also going to use some oatmeal as a portion of the fermentables. I used the calculators on Tastybrew.com to calculate my beer by plugging in ingredients and measurements into the formulas to come up with the beer i wanted and compared it to the style standard to make sure i was pulling off what i want (I LOVE HEFE'S!) here is a pic of my screen with the ingredients and factors computated together. The pic has to be up on its side or else the toolbar covers the info.

Off to see the wizard........

OK Guys. I'm probably going to get some beer brewing supplies and equipment in the next day or two from the Savannah Home Brew Shoppe. I spoke with the guy a few weeks ago and he said that he has a kit he has put together from his normal stock. It's more money than the Mr. Beer sets you can buy online, but my guess is that the equipment allows for a greater volume of beer per batch, plus the ingredients are almost certainly of a higher quality.... I am going to play it safe and make a standard, follow-the-recipe batch to begin with. Pretty quickly, though, I want to move on to something more complex (and hopefully rewarding). Check out some of the homebrew recipes on that excellent site Alex found, Cryptobrewology. I am particularly interested in the Coffee Oatmeal Stout. I will give a full report on the Savannah H.B. Shoppe and the attempts at our first beer. I am really going to try to take pictures and keep full notes.

I am also currently handbinding a book, specifically a leather-bound journal. I think we all three need matching brewlogs so we can keep notes and brew related information handy. I'll keep you guys posted.

homebrew supplies store list

so i was poking around on the internet and found a website that lists homebrew supply stores for each state. Here is the link.

future dates

alright so i was looking at the triad homebrew supplies store in Greensboro and i noticed on their website that they host a brew demo infront of the store every second saturday of the month 12pm to 3 pm. This could be a good field trip for DBB. Also on the page is a link for the battleground brewers guild which meets every 3rd Wednesday of the month, Dad i think that might be a good investment of time, not to mention fun as hell.

WE'S LEGIT!

alright dudes, i actually went ahead and registered us on tastybrew. We are registered as DarkBrownBrew, the password is my dogs name no space first and last no caps. Check the place out. I havnt figured out how to post a link for the blog though.