BrewMagician\’s Blog

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…

I fixed the Yeast Add / Delete routines.

 Still have:

1) Save Recipe not working
2) Import has mash temps off
3) Change Recalculate to Save and Continue
    -At this point I will go live. 
    (Or I may just disable recalculate….)
4) Allow Comments to be added

Very cool.  Looking to replace the Sanke spear pain in my ass with this.

 It is basically a 2″ end cap for a tri-clamp with connectors, tubes, and a PRV welded onto it.  Then, a gasket and 2″ clamp make a tight seal.  NICE.

 $95 for the cap and a gasket, $8 for the clamp.  Could be a winner for me….

Today I brewed with Chris Hunt over at Moccasin Bend Brewing company in the St. Elmo region of Chattanooga.  We made up a batch of Pumpkin Seed Pale Ale.  Maris Otter and Crystal with Fuggles and Simcoe.  I now understand Joe’s fascination with Simcoe.  They smelled like tangerines in pine trees.  Delicious.  I would love some of those in a nice tall glass of IPA.

 It’s good to brew with other brewers, because everyone does something different.

I learned a great deal from him about troubleshooting and emergency engineering.  Mainly because his gear kept falling apart.

I can’t jab at him, he has the capacity to mash a 5 barrel batch, and most of that they built themselves.  I wish I had a 5-barrel version of the Brew Magic.  It could have ladders and slides and such to get to all the levers.  Like an adult version of the child’s game, but twice as fun.

 Anywho, I’m sore and tired now, going to bed.

Trying to get the most out of the blogs.  I got some cool themes to update your blogs with.  Check it out!

Updated the Wiki on the Brew Magic site.  Added all the content from the manual and started organizing it.  Still need to get the recipe program up…

Working on upgrading Brewthology to run on PHP5, and maybe add some cool AJAX functionality.

I’m working with Bryan Peretto of the Knights of the Mashing Fork [http://www.kotmf.com] - He is the original author.

Interesting - I’m thinking about pooling together great homebrew club apps into one big package.  Just need some more willing developers…

I’m thinking the next thing I need to do is upgrade my Chiller to have a more compact footprint, or build a fermentation room. 

I think the Chiller will be better received by the wife…

Gave up Beer for Lent.  It’s hard to run a homebrew club when you’re not drinking.

 I think I’ll give up something else for Lent next year.  I have 18 gallons of Pale Ale (8 of which are I2PA) conditioning from before Lent started.  The hardest thing about giving up beer is having gallons of it at your fingertips.

 Next year I’m giving up something else.