Brewer's Corner - Gruit Ale

Hello folks. This is an installment of an occasional brew post series that will occur at Camera Trapping Campus.

As Jake mentioned, he focuses on the West Coast Ales with his UCSC lab chums, while I apparently dabble in the "hipster" side of brewing.

A mixture of herbs, Gruit Ale was a popular beverage in Europe until the 16th century (the theories behind its fading glory are rather interesting).  I was introduced to the drink at the great Workshop in San Francisco's Western Addition, which was offering classes in brewing Ginger Beer. These were led by a fellow named Scott Mansfield, who in addition to teaching us how to make the traditional, alcoholic Ginger Beer, brought along a baby keg of Gruit for us to sample. Also, as a class attendee, I walked home with a bag of herbs to make my own Gruit: yarrow, St. John's Wort, mugwort and a pinch of wormwood. These herbs are known for their psychoactive qualities and for you ladies out there --  regulating cycles.


It took several months, but an attempt at the Gruit finally occurred. Together with my brewing chum, M., this would be the first true brewing experience.

First the herb mixture sat steeping in a simmering pot.

Then poured into a gleaming new carboy, "Bubbles".

Yeast and malt syrup were added and Bubbles was locked up for about 7 days.

After a week of fermenting, a tablespoon of corn sugar was added to 12 oz. bottles, along with the Gruit and the ale was given time to carbonate and mellow out.

Served in a frosty glass, the ale proved to be exceedingly smooth and tasty. A great success for a first attempt at brewing!

the psycho-regulator

Sierra Valley Foxes Continued

About a month ago I posted about some gray foxes in the Sierra Valley.  We got pretty good shots of mom and pup.  Well, I had also set an IR camera up on video at the same set, that I only now downloaded.  I had forgotten it was set to video and thought it was on still image so I was not all that excited about looking at IR stills when I had the nice color homebrew pics.  See I have a ScoutGuard model that has the programmer and image viewer on a remote control.  I don't have a clue where my remote control is, hence how I did not know whether it was set to video or still.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I downloaded the files and realized they were videos.

But first a still shot from the next morning to set the scene a bit in your mind while you watch the videos.

These first couple of videos do a great job of showing just how little the gray foxes care about the homebrew white-flash.  The homebrew gives a couple of early flashes (red-eye reduction mode) and then gives the big flash and takes the image.







I thought we had a mom and her pup. But in this video (88) it appears there are three maybe four individuals.  You never see more than two at a time, but unless exits the scene at the bottom one circles back around and re-enters the scene from the top in a matter of seconds mom may have had more than one pup.




In this video one fox finds the camera and moves it around a bit.

Link Dump

A couple of rattlers, Crotalus oreganus, from the Peninsula.

Stem cell technology might be necessary to save the White Rhino with only two females left. Black Rhinos would make very suitable surrogates.

Wired.com is all over camera trapping the last 6 months. This time a study out of Indonesia using videos.  This compilation came from just one month of trapping, but 10 cameras. The water monitor, Varanus salvator, was unexpected. Are more studies using camera traps or are these studies just getting more press? When is Wired doing a story on the Codger?

Black Bear scat reported in Marin -- Camera Trapping Campus in on the case

Is that 12 hummingbirds in your pants or are you just happy to see me?

Tool using FISH!

Next week is one of my favorite weeks of the year. Yes Nobel Prize week.  I have four old instructors on this betting list for chemistry, best odds being Scheckman at 19:1 Not seeing odds on Physiology & Medicine yet. If you are super nerd check this Nobel Prize watch 2011 blog.

And just as good as the Nobels, the Ig Nobels, where friend of the Codger Dave Rentz won this year. Dr Rentz's blog BunyipCo is over in the blogroll. CTC was into him before he was famous.

L'shana tova, my friends.

Bobcats in the Mist

The great camera trap bloggers don't post their mistakes often.  They may make a few, but not many and have so many great shots that they just don't have the time to post misadventures. CTC is not quite there yet, so I present a misadventure.

Yes, that is a roadkill brush rabbit placed in front of the camera. I happened to have a plastic bag in the car on my way to camera trap when I saw the smashed little rabbit in the middle of the road. So of course, like a good Codger student, I pulled over and grabbed it, making sure no one was watching and jumped back into the car and headed on to the reserve.

This set is not necessarily a brain fart mistake, but the set has some obvious problems that are exacerbated in foggy, coastal Santa Cruz County, and made even worse when the camera is 100 feet from Monterey Bay.

A fogged up homebrew camera.  Woulda been, shoulda been, great shots.

I have tried silica packets but they don't seem to help all that much.

I was thinking Rain-X.  It might put a slight film on the glass, but has anyone tried putting Rain-X on the inside glass of their homebrew? It works pretty great on my windshield, water just flows right off of it.  I think I may give it a try on one of my homebrews. Any other thoughts on combating condensation?

Brew Blogging

I know Beer has little to do with camera trapping outside of being pretty much the best thing ever after a long day of trapping. That being said we are going to do a bit of brew blogging here at CTC if there are no objections.  If you really don't want to see non-camera trapping or wildlife posts let us know and we will consider moving it over to a separate blog, but I think many of our readers will enjoy the once a month or so brew post.

I have been doing some all-grain beer brewing so I will be writing about your more traditional West Coast homebrewing.

Christian is doing some hipster brewing (things you have probably never heard of) and will write a bit about that.

We won't turn this into a beer blog, just some posts on our own stuff.  I will be brewing a new batch on Saturday and kegging a modified recipe of what someone was calling a Mojave Red that we brewed about a month ago. Yeah I liked the name too.

Welcome to the Fermentation Zone