2008 travels

Somewhat for myself, a list of travel I (or Helen and I) did in 2008:

January: 

Lake Tahoe for a weekend of skiing

Mammoth Mountain for a week of skiing

February:

Disneyland for the company winter trip

Boston to see my Grandfather

Lake Tahoe for a weekend of skiing

March:

Lake Tahoe two weekends for skiing

NYC for Helen to go to the Opera, and me to hang out with Kacy and Kevin

April:

Boston for my Dad's 60th birthday

Lake Tahoe for one weekend of skiing

Pittsburgh for Carnegie Mellon's Carnival

May:

Qatar for the first graduation of Carnegie Mellon Qatar and a side jaunt to Jordan to see the Dead Sea and Petra

Los Angeles for Helen's grandmother's 80th birthday

San Francisco for my bachelor party (not exactly travel, but people traveling to see me!)

June:

Lake Tahoe for Jeremy's wedding

July:

No travel!

August:

Helen and my wedding in Burlingame (again, not travel but our favorite people came to us)

Maui for our honeymoon (Lahaina/Ka'anapali and Hana)

Boston and Maine for labor day

September:

No major travel

October:

No major travel

November:

Maine for the Maine Brewery Festival

Los Angeles for Thanksgiving

December:

Mendocino/Fort Bragg for beer tasting

LA for Christmas

Maine for Christmas

Miles flown in 2008:

58074

Holiday Ale postmortem (or How I accidentally started a lambic)

The holiday ale was just thrown down the drain.

Cause: bacterial growth

Symptoms: persistent "fermentation" (aka bubbling in the airlock), even far past the window it should happen, a weird sour apple smell out of the airlock.

Confirmation:

• Percent sugar recorded at ~3% by hydrometer after almost two weeks with consistent bubbling implies a "gusher infection" per How to Brew
  
• That sour lambic smell that shouldn't happen in a holiday ale.
  
• Wort tasted and confirmed un-sugary and un-alcoholy. And just plain wrong. Yes, I drank bacterially-contaminated wort.
  

Things to do better next time:

• Sanitize equipment better (we used unsanitized equipment to squeeze the hops bags outside the acceptable temperature range to do such a thing, and I can think of a couple other things we could sanitize better)
  
• Sanitize hands (hand sanitizer purchased)
  
• Take a specific gravity reading so I can earlier test when something seems wrong and pull the plug earlier, with more confidence.
  

Ok, that's all I got, folks. Scotch ale being brewed next week on an evening.

Current brewing projects

• In keg: Brewcraft Rogue Dead Guy kit with White Labs American Ale Yeast Blend. It's somewhat flat and possibly under-fermented, reminding me to not rush the fermentation process.
• In primary fermentor: MoreBeer's Holiday Ale kit with White Labs California Ale Yeast. This will be bottled, although right now the smell coming out of the airlock on the fermentor suggests it's not going to turn out well.
  
• To be brewed this week: MoreBeer's Scotch Ale kit with White Labs Edinburgh Scottish Ale yeast. This will also be bottled.

Back to brewing

For my twenty-first birthday, my parents bought me a True Brew beer brewing setup. I brewed two True Brew kits in college, and then moved to California.

When I brewed in college, I fermented beer in the basement. The apartment was also air conditioned, overall keeping the beer within the range of good fermentation temperatures (68-72 approximately for ales).

In the bay area, however, most people don't air condition. This presents a problem to trying to keep the beer within good fermentation temperatures. Our apartment doesn't have AC, and I never felt comfortable that we could keep the beer in a good fermentation range. I didn't try to solve the problem, I just left the equipment in the closet.

About 2 months ago, I saw a Brewcraft Rogue Dead Guy kit on Costco.com, and on an impulse, I purchased it! I got back into brewing!

During fermentation, it actually stayed at pretty much the right temperature in our back closet in November, and last weekend I kegged it (kegerator setup to follow in a subsequent post). Last night, we drank the first beer from the keg! Although a bit flat, it was pretty tasty and I will work on carbonating it a bit more.

More posts to follow, including:

• Kegerator setup
• Fermentation cooler setup (I can brew ales or lagers year round!)
• Current projects