BrewMagician\’s Blog

Holy cow.  I have a heck of a week ahead of me.  I brewed a Honey Cream Ale this morning, then a 3-gallon starter for my Oktoberfest I am brewing on Wednesday or Thursday (depending on starter activity) and the 2 gallon starter for my 15 gallons of my AM Wheat Ale that I will brew on Thursday or Wednesday. 

Probably do the Wheat on Wednesday, and the O-Fest on Thursday.  Let the lager yeast get it’s wheels spinning…

 I have 10 beers planned to enter into the Greenlife / Barley Mob homebrew competition on Oct. 11th.

1) TCP/IPA
2) Turtle-Nooga Rye Pale Ale
3) Oktoberfest - (Will be young, but it’s free to enter, so who cares? )
4) Honey Cream Ale
5) Apricot Wheat
6) Raspberry Wheat
7) Smoked Peat Stout
My porter - I forget what I called it.
9) AM Wheat
10) Signal Mountain Cider

Fun fun.  At the Oktoberfest Demo, I’m brewing an extract holiday spiced ale, and hopefully a mead.  Should be fun!

Tony

Hey guys,  great showing at the festival last night!  Thanks to everyone who helped to make it happen, and special thanks to Rich for his beers, and to Bret for his extensive time and effort on the Hitman draft system.  Also to Pete and Lee for their setup help, Cory and everyone for their help on Tuesday, and Courtney, C.D., and Kevin for helping to get the Hitman into the U-Haul. J  (Wish we had pictures of that…)  Thanks to Scottie for bringing the entertainment.

And major thanks to Moccasin Bend Brewing for their help in brewing the Big Brew ESB, and the loaning of equipment to make the Hitman possible.

Remember, funds from the SBF ticket sales helped fund the Hitman draft system, so thanks to everyone for that!

Sorry if I’ve forgotten anyone, I drink a lot.

I’ve uploaded pics to the Barley Mob website.  Email me pics if you want them uploaded to the system.

http://www.barleymob.net/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=1060

(Please note the rare sightings of Denver, Captain Homebrew, and Heriberto (Eddie)….)

Our total volume of beer was 145 Gallons, up from 107 Gallons in 2007.  Our goal for this year was 120 gallons, and we surpassed it by a mile.  I wouldn’t shoot for any  higher than 150 gallons, as that’s what the pros bring.  We don’t want to be the last ones with beer, or beer left over.

I’m setting the 2009 goal tentatively at 150 gallons, with the club brewing 80 gallons in two 40 gallon batches, or one massive batch with the help of Bend Brewing.  I figure if we can do a huge batch of something cheap and easy like a pale ale to end the night, and put the exciting, neat recipe stuff up front for the people who like to talk about the beer and ask questions.  By the end of the night, none of the patrons care about how many decoctions you did.

 COMING UP:

Sept. 26^th – Sept 28^th: Music City Brewoff: http://www.musiccitybrewers.com/brewoff.php

-Let’s start thinking about getting a big crew of judges, stewards, and support to head out to Nashville and help out the Music City Brewers this year.   We didn’t do a pub crawl this year, so this can be our out-of-town trip.  Also, I’d like to strengthen our ties to other Tennessee clubs, including the Smoky Mountain Brewers that Scottie and I met last night.  We will be inviting the MCB’s down to help judge with our competition at Greenlife, so it’s only fair for us to send a sizeable contingent.

 Oct. 11^th: Greenlife Homebrew Competition: 

-Bottle of your favorites before they’re gone!  The Homebrew Competition at Greenlife is ON!  I need judges and stewards to help with this, and I’d like to see full club participation.  Either brew, compete, judge, or steward.  Good experience for everyone.  If you’ve never done a competition, stewarding is an easy way to see how things happen behind the scenes, see how judging is done, and you get free beer!  Rich is donating beer for the staff, about 5 people have volunteered to judge, and Moccasin Bend Brewing has offered to brew a batch of the winner’s beer (with the winner) to be bottled and sold at Greenlife!  Very cool. 

-I also need people who can query beer companies (White Labs, Boscos, All Seasons, AHA, MoreBeer, etc…) for prizes, raffle items, etc…  Let me know if you’re interested.

-Bret, if you have the electronic format of our scoresheet and entry card, it would make my life easier if you could send those to me.  Thanks!

 Oct. 26^th: Oktoberfest at the Pavilion: 

-OKTOBERFEST!!!  Yeah, I know, it’s lame at the Pavilion…  But Homebrew demonstrations make it better!!!!  I’d like to do a beginner’s demo this year, and do an extract batch or two.  Any one interested?  Cory?  Patrick?  Best way to sharpen your skills is to teach….  Let me know if you are interested.

 1^st Week of November: Beer Dinner 

- Beer Dinner at Greenlife!  I’m still working out the details, but Charlie at Greenlife and I will hash out a menu, and get the courses paired with beers.  More info to come on that.  Any comments on price, menu requests, etc???  Kosher meal for Kevin R.???

 Beer and Cheese Pairings:  

-I will be sending out periodic messages when we will have Beer and Cheese pairings.  Also, I’ll send out messages for Wine and Cheese tastings if you like.  Get us some culture…

All for now!  Great job everyone!

Tony

This year, our club has exceeded our top goals from any year before.  Gordon Biersch and Big River took notice of that, and figured we’d be more profitable to them if they comped our tent and took tokens for our beer.

C’est La Vie.

 We lose control of our taps, but that’s not such a big deal.  There’s so much beer at that thing it’s ridiculous.  And, all the proceeds from VIP ticket sales are funding our 12-tap draft beer dispensing system, affectionately referred to as “The Hitman.”  “Killing Beers for Years…” and all that goodness.

Anyways, Bret and East Tech have begun production on it, and I hope to have it complete by the Fest.  It will be beautiful.  I’m really psyched about it.

Hopefully, it will gain us a foothold to holding our own festival in the spring.  From there, we can use it to raise funds for the club to build our own brewing rig to keep at Bend Brewing, if they will allow that…

Anyways, more later.  I’ll post pics of “The Hitman’s” construction soon…

Got myself an account at LinkedIn to network myself.  My brother works at GE and he told me about it.  Really this is just a post to add a button to my profile:

Just got my ridiculously strong magnets from ThinkGeek.com.

They are no joke.  They work like a champ.  I can get a 1/2 “tornado” in the water.  I think their full name is “Ridiculously Strong Magnets.”

Anywho, I will use them to build up the starter for our club’s 50 gallon batch next Saturday…

So I got my stir bar today, but the rare earth magnet just kind of bounces it around in the water in the flask…

I think I need something with more polarity…  Or more power… 

I’m going to see what there is to see on the web and Radio Shack…

Updated the “Save Recipe” function, as well as the OG Calculator and Carbonation functions.  Added a “Continue Editing” link after you save a recipe.

Still need: Add ingredients, and look into the import mash temps issue…

I’ve been planning to make one of these forever.  I’ve known where all my parts were, what I was planning to do, etc….  Just never got around to it.

 My original plan was to buy a switch, a potentiometer (Variable Resistor for controlling speed), and a project box from Radio Shack, then install those plus an old computer fan, magnet from a hard drive, and DC power supply from one of the many old and broken devices I own.

 So, I went to Lowe’s to get some plumbing for my keg topper, and figured I’d pick up the potentiometer and switch.

 My main concern was that most potentiometers have a power rating of 0.5 watts to 3 watts, then they get expensive.  My fan is 12 volts, with .45 A, giving me a 5.2 Watt power rating.  I didn’t want to have to keep replacing switches, so I wanted to get one rated for the power, or design a shunt resistor to wick away some of the current.

So Lowe’s only had 0.5 watt pots.  Bummer ’cause I really wanted to make this.  The guy there said I could use a dimmer switch because they are rated for 300 Watts.  I got excited and bought one for $8.  On the way home, my mind was racing on how to wire it up.  I realized that the dimmer switch had such a high power rating because it is an AC device.  I was planning on only having DC coming into the box….

So I rewired it for AC into the box, controlled by the dimmer switch, then that signal is converted to DC by the power supply hardware:

1) Computer cord
2) Dimmer Switch
3) Transformer, Full Wave Bridge circuit, and RC Pi Filter from a 12 volt, 1000 mA AC-to-DC power source
4) Fan (12 volt, 450 mA)
5) Rare Earth Magnet - Harvested from Maxtor 80 Gig HD - (Much nicer than the ones I got from 2 Western Digital drives.)

So, I cut the computer cord close to the female end and threw the female plug in the trash.  Then I soldered together:

1) Ground wires of plug and dimmer switch (Green wires)
2) Black wires of plug and dimmer switch together
(NOTE: Both switch leads on dimmer switch are black.  Polarity does not matter in this case.)
3) One of the Dimmer switch leads to the power IN leads on the step down transformer
4) White wire of plug to the other power IN lead on the step down transformer

5) Cut off connectors from RC filter and fan, and soldered DC wires together.

I tested that out and it worked!  So here I have a functioning circuit to run my stir plate.  For $8.

Now, other costs I will incur:

1) Project Box from Radio Shack: $7
2) Mountings (Tape or Screws): $2
3) Stir Bar: $7

So, $16 more dollars.  I can live with that.  Especially when these things cost upwards of $100.

I’ll post pictures soon.  My camera is out of batteries…

Brewed on Saturday with Rich, our resident gruit master.  I was amazed by how much beer he has fermenting in his cellar.  There were about 14 carboys fermenting as secondaries!  I don’t know where he finds the time or patience to brew, then give most of it away.  We brewed his 140 Shilling Ale, which has heather tips in it, and an OG over 1.100, and I had to leave before the second batch was done boiling, but it had Bog Myrtle and Heather Tips in it and it smelled great.

I’ll definitely be doing some more gruit brewing in the future…

I’ve discussed with some members changing up how my club accepts members.

We have a ton of inactive brewers who are still on the list.  Right now, there is no incentive to pay dues.  I need to make a “Members Only” section of the site, but for now I’m going to cull the list down to only dues-paying members.

It may make it more expensive to go to the Southern Brewer’s Fest for us, but we’ve never really had trouble getting people to go to that.  So, we could sell passes like we did last year to brewer’s who just want to go, but aren’t contributing any beer to the cause at a higher rate to offset the cost of the Big Brews.

I feel like it will make the club a more tight-knit group…