Post Manuscript Submission Brew Day

Its still pretty quite here on the Western front. The weather is not quite so jealousy inducing (only mid 60s°F). I just haven't had the motivation to post some older, but fun, camera trap images, bird images, or very recent Spring herp images.

So if you don't mind a quick brew day post of cell phone cam pictures here you go. Two of us (re)submitted manuscripts and none of the three of us felt like working on our dissertations.

The goal was pretty simple: two beers

6 gallons of a coffee porter. We stole the idea from a local brewer at Sante Adarius Rustic Ales, made with locally roasted Verve Coffee. The SA version of this porter was one of the best beers, let alone porters, I have had in a long time. The trick is an overnight cold brew with much less coffee grounds than you might expect in the keg when the beer is mature.

The second brew changed mid-brew when yours truly did some bad simple arithmetic and added too much volume for the boil, but didn't realize the mistake until afterwards. So 6 gallons of a double Red Ale (~9%ABV) became a heavily hopped Red Ale (~6%ABV).

A few of the beers sampled during the day

A wonderful tart wheat from Rustic Ales that was bottled with a wine yeast if I remember correctly

The tower of power

Not my foot in a sandle. I learned my lesson once before

I'm too lazy to switch the order of these two photos so the finished product comes first

Grilling Fajita fixin's: Skirt steak, Pork ribs, onions and bell peppers

So we had a really good yeast starter going and carboys a little too full. Finished brewing and this was how our ferment was going the next morning. Made a mess, but those were some happy yeast. We are not too worried about any contamination here. The yeast will win any evolutionary arms race inside these brews.

Going to have to get the burner going and Tower of Power assembled in a couple of weeks to ensure that the current tragedy of an empty kegerator doesn't hit us again. I think I am going to have to try my hand at a Saison which will make a great Mojave Desert beer.

Brewer's Corner: To Grandmother's House We Go

I have a few of homebrew posts to write and get up here on this blog, but I have been spending more time drinking beer than writing about beer.

We will get started with a Red Ale that I brewed with my good friend Alex, aka onegoodarm.  This was a bit of a kitchen sink ale, where we threw a recipe together from the grain and hops we had left-over from a few other brews.  However, the brew crew had recently brewed both American and Irish Red Ales, so we had the material for another Red.  The American Red was the second beer I ever brewed. It was decent but was not awesome.  The real problem with it was that it kinda fell in between two different styles.  It was not malty and bready enough to be an Irish, but was not quite crisp and hoppy enough for an interesting West Coast American Red.

We decided to fix this with a new recipe and dry hopping the smack out of it.  4ozs total of dry hop went into it and a hoppy American Red Ale was born.  We christened her Little Red Hopping Hood. Probably the most clever beer name I have come up with to date. We dry hopped in the keg so as the keg matured and the keg got drank, the beer changed.  It was probably best at week two, T-minus 2 gallons when the hops gave off the perfect, albeit strong, floral, herb aroma.

Primary fermentation prior to transferring

Transferring to the soda keg

Yes, Little Red Hopping Hood was clever, but I have seen a few craft beers out there with great pun names that I really wish I had thought of first.

(1) Hoptimus Prime by Legacy Brewing: Reading, PA.
(2) Tricerahops Double IPA: Nikasi Brewing: Eugene, OR
(3) Hopacolypse: Drake's Brewing: San Leandro, CA (I am drinking this as I write this post and at 9.6% it is certainly a big boy beer, but has a very fresh hop flavor. Highly recommended)

Help a brother out with any good Hop puns that I can use for an upcoming IPA.

In the glass after 3 weeks of dry hopping

Brewer's Corner - Perry

Welcome back to the Brewer's Corner!

After success with Gruit Ale, there was an urge to try something different. My brewing partner, Martine, related that a pear tree at her family home in Calistoga was producing an amazing amount of pears.

Therefore it was decided. 

The next brew would be Perry, otherwise known as Pear Cider!

CALISTOGA PEARS

Sliced and Juiced

------------------------------------------------- zoom new kitchen ---------------------------------------------

adding the pectic enzyme

adding the tannins

yeast and yeast nutrient added (hands not shown)

ready to go

After about a week of fermentation, the Perry was carbonated and aged for six weeks before a bottle was opened for a sample.

crisp !

The Perry was another success. Crisp with distinct flavors and a hint of sweetness (pears have more sugar than apples, for those with apple cider experience), the Perry stands as an excellent drink to share with chums alongside an array of fine cheeses*.


*or crappy cheese, I'm not a huge cheese snob

In the Land of Chollas

I set this camera trap on a woodrat nest about 150 feet from our campsite in the Granite Mountains. This is a wonderful campsite in the Mojave National Preserve that we have used three years in a row now. However, this is the first time I have had a homebrew camera trap with me and thus my first Neotoma lepida camera trap photos.

After setting the trap I went back to my cot only to realize that there was an active nest 4 feet from where I would sleep and it was occupied by daring little rat that had no problem letting me watch it from a few feet away.  He must have known there was no way I was going through the cholla to grab him.

Photo by SPP

Desert woodrats often build a defense fence of dried cholla around their nests or build them at the bases of a living cholla plant.  This is stuff that will go right through your shoe sole and into your foot.  Flip flops fare no better, I promise.

The nest had another visitor that I will tell you about a little later

Bringing some creosote to the nest

Adventures and Misadventures in Hacking Cameras

The Codger, Sean P, Christian, Randomtruth feverishly hacking

On Monday we set about hacking some SonyS600 with the YetiCam board.  Christian, Sean P, Randomtruth, the Codger and I all met up at the California Academy of Sciences where the Codger is a research fellow.  We were kindly allowed use of the project room.  The project room is on the first floor and has one wall that is all glass and looks out onto the large atrium.  At least that is the view from the inside.  It is in fact built so that the viewing public can look in and see "Scientists at Work."  I guess I fit that description even if my science is of the molecular variety rather than wildlife biology.

The Living Roof  by ecov ottos. Taken at the Cal Academy of Sciences

Hacking and story telling commenced with the Codger leading the way, walking the newbies through the hack.  Each step seemed more daunting than the next as even taking the cameras apart was not the simplest task.  However, Randomtruth who has done a few hacks on his own, gave us additional pointers.  The key as the Codger suggested was keeping wires straight and creating a nice key for yourself before you start.  Soldering wires to very small pads to control the shutter for example was difficult but we eventually all got it.  Some of us quicker (Christian) than others (JK).  The other two wires for the grounds were simple in comparison.

Christian taking apart a Sony S600

After a bit we had the cameras all hacked and it was time to hook them up to the boards and test them.  Here we had to go through some trouble-shooting with one camera that had a short due to two wires on the camera jack making contact with each other.  The other cams eventual worked once we got our fast boards versus regular boards sorted out which we got distracted with early in the hack, but the trouble shooting really allowed each of us to learn where and how to check for problems.

Sean P, Christian, and JK with parts strewn across the table

At the end of the day Christian, Sean and I all had our first homebrews functional with only a little bit of arranging the parts in the case left to do.  I cannot wait to put it to use.

Thanks a ton to the Codger for his patient assistance and the very kind Jens Vindum and Jack Dumbacher for arranging the use of the project room for us.  It was quite the experience.