cdh

Indeed. If you can boil water, you're 7/8 of the way there.

Walt- finally got morebeer's page back... three days of "Not Found" had me worried. and, btw, 1 Gallon = 3.78 liters... a 16L pot == 4.25 Gallons. Within the spec given for the project.

This particular nut brown is not one I've brewed before, but has been on my to-do list for a while. My last many batches have been alternating between wit, Belgian black, and abbey dubbel. (all a bit funky and off the beaten track for this particular project.) At the end of the summer I brewed something closely related to a nut brown (3 lbs of amber malt, 3 of pale malt, 1lb of Special B and an oz of Pearl hops with the Thames Valley Wyeast), but have not done a whole and proper nut brown for probably 8 or 9 years. I want to see what the toasted and the chocolate malts do to it. The ingredients list comes from my local homebrew shop, www.keystonehomebrew.com, who are extraordinarily talented at putting together good recipes. If we want to tweak it even further and create something truly original to eGullet I'd suggest maybe striking the toasted and adding a 1/4 lb of Special B to it b/c I happen to like that malt and not enough people use it... and I'd probably pick a wackier yeast too, but that is my particular taste rearing its head again. Come to think on it for a bit, I'm now intrigued by the idea of leaving one of the specialty malts slots open as a wild-card where each brewer gets to add a 1/2 lb of a malt of his/her choice. We'll then get to see just how much effect that little of a particular malt has on a 5 gallon batch of beer. So, for those purchasing ingredients, strike out the toasted malt and pick something that appeals to you. A very small personal touch to make each batch different and unique to its brewer. (And a great way to strike up a conversation with the staff/owners of your local homebrew shop to hit them up for recommendations... and for those ordering stuff from Northern Brewer or such, read the descriptions of their caramelized malts and pick what appeals.) Jan 10 sounds like a good day to brew.

MichaelKlein- Thanks for keeping up with the thread and chiiming in with such useful facts. As you were observing the court proceedings, did the US Trustee make any other specific indications about other restrictions that might affect the potential future of the place? I imagine Starr's lawyers must have gotten pretty deep into operational matters... did they do it on the record?

While I'm at it, we need a list of the required equipment that any prospective brewer should have handy for the purposes of taking part in this project. I'll brainstorm up a list starting with the first things that would be required and moving on chronologically. Feel free to chime in if I appear to have forgotten anything important. A large kettle, somewhere in the 4-5 gallon size range, at least. A big spoon for stirring the contents of the kettle (a hand blender doesn't do so bad for that purpose either). A can opener (or a scale if you're using dry malt extract rather than liquid) A large fine nylon (or cheesecloth) mesh bag that can hold 1.75 lb of crushed grain. The bigger the better. A thermometer. A timer Muslin hop socks. Antibacterial sanitizer- I'm partial to activated oxygen powder. A primary fermentor with a lid and airlock. 5 feet of surgical tubing and a racking cane. A bottling bucket. Priming sugar. A bottling attachment for your surgical tubing. Bottles and enclosures and a means of sanitizing and sealing them.

My humble recipe suggestion for the project-- a nut brown ale: Ingredients 6.6 lb. Amber Liquid Malt Extract ½ lb. Crystal Malt 60°L ½ lb. Carapils Malt 20°L ½ lb. Toasted Malt 25°L ¼ lb. Chocolate Malt 338°L 1 ½ oz. Kent Goldings U.K. Hops (Bittering) 1 oz. Fuggles Hops (Finishing) Wyeast # 1098 XL British Ale Yeast All of the above should be readily obtained through a quality homebrew shop... the °L notations should serve as a fairly universal indicator that any brew shop staffer should recognize and be able to get for you. The hop factor can be kicked up to each brewer's taste, insofar as the variety and the quantity are both easily variable, and the true hop-heads amongst us could, if the fancy took them, dry hop it at the end too.

Walt- I've purchased stuff from morebeer.com before and been pleased... Do you know what's going on w/ them lately? Their site has been down for the past couple of days. Are they still in business? Is this just a technical glitch?

I see what you mean about the cider getting a lot too dry. Glad that it was fine and tasty with enough residual sugar back on Thanksgiving when I poured off 1.5 gallons into my Tap-A-Draft wotzit. and brought it along to dinner. In the week and change since Thanksgiving, my cider has taken a downright acetic turn... hope there isn't any "mother of vinegar" in there accounting for it... Anyway, I freed up my bottling bucket and put the last of the cider into a gallon jug and left it sitting outside in the cold. Hopefully it will turn out fine. Or maybe I'll have to follow your lead and cut it with some fresh cider.

I think a $ 15 (excuse the spaces b/t the $ and the numbers, but funky symbols sometimes appear when the $xx appears as a string.) budget is a little optimistic. A 1.5 Kg can of malt syrup costs me 10.50 at my homebrew shop, and a packet of Wyeast is 5 or more. Doing this for $ 25, on the other hand could be a reasonable budget. I'm not opposed to picking a universal kit, but would suggest that the $ 10 cans one sees, i.e. are not the whole story. Those kits are about half the fermentables required to make a batch, and the directions usually make it sound OK to use white sugar for the second half of the fermentables. This is really sub-optimal . It destroys the body and mouthfeel the beer could have had and gives an off flavor as well that you should never taste in a quality beer. One of those kits would require the purchase of either dry malt extract or liquid malt extract to supplement its inadequacies... so the idea of steering clear of non-kit options just isn't workable. If you have to find and buy 3 pounds of malt extract, why not just get 6 and some hops and be done without ever thinking of a kit?

Don't know what article you're talking about, but the one linked to in this thread mentioned none of the under $25 burgundies by name... the whole lot was dismissed out of hand. But he did go through 25 of them and claims not to have picked a winner in the bunch. That says something about how frequent the particular needles we're looking for occur within the haystack. Sure good sub$25 french pinot noirs exist... just be prepared to blow a lot of $$$ going through the haystack looking for the needles... assuming you have access to the whole haystack... which those of us in some ass-backward states most deinitely do not.

A brief delay is not a bad thing in my book either. I should just have enough bottles freed up for another batch by now, though my bottling bucket is doing douible duty as a secondary fermentor for some cider I've had going for a few weeks. By the time we get going, that should give the cider enough time to do its thing (or I'll have "sampled" it out of existence...) Cider, btw, is the easiest brew project I've ever done. Acquire several gallon jugs of really good fresh cider, pour into primary fermentor, add pound of honey, stir tiil frothy, add wine yeast, walk away.

I'm in total agreement that we need somebody who knows what's going on to lead this brigade. I know that there is a whole lot that I don't know about what's going on in brewing... The caramelization thing re grain is simple- when you roast something with sugar in it, some of the sugar caramelizes. Caramelized sugar is what darkens beer. Lovibond ratings express how much darkening a particular malt will contribute to a batch of beer. See this article for a good discussion of the issue. As to water chemistry, I know nothing whatsoever about the mechanics... only that it is generally reported to make a difference in the outcome. I've never tried to figure out what the water in my well is specifically suited to brewing, and have been reasonably pleased with everything I've brewed with it, so I've not ever tried to doctor the water chemistry by throwing gypsum or epsom salts or other such things into my brew kettle. It would be good to see if we can get a beer pro onto our project to act as moderator and one-man tasting panel.

Great thought, but would be cost prohibitive for me. Since a liter is a kilo (or slightly more), sending each liter (quite illegally, I believe) within the US would cost me more than $4... adding up to at least $80 in postage... not to mention ingredients. Were I to decide to blow that kind of dough on beer, my first inclination would be to go and pick up a case of Rochefort 10 or such for not terribly much more. Sending along a bottle or two to one person/place would be within the budget... legality be damned.

Have just looked over the Northern Brewer site... one issue I see for those of us with local homebrew shops is that their inventories specify the specialty grains by brand rather than by Lovibond rating... I know I can walk into my shop and get a pound of 10L crystal malt... I don't know whether they stock Simpson's or Dingemans or otherwise... So we run the risk of significant variation due to different levels of caramelization in whatever specialty grains we find ourselves using. Another variable I don't know how to control for is the differing chemistry of our water that we'll use to brew with. I know it makes a difference, but I don't know how to test for trace minerals in my water. Anybody know a cheap source of water analysis devices? We should all know and declare our water type in this project. One final issue comes to mind- if a bunch of us do brew the same recipe, then we should be distributing a bottle or two of our own product to the others so that the differences can be experienced... Or (considering the likely high cost of mailing a bottle of beer to a dozen different people) at least one person should be the designated taster and receive a bottle from everybody who brewed and then write up a critique of the range of beers received.

One thing to pay very careful attention to is that your boiling vessels are neither rusty nor capable of rust. I've got a batch of Wit in the basement that tastes horribly metallic since the enameled pot I'd boiled it in had apparently gotten a chip in it and exposed the beer to the metal. Stainless is the way to go.

Well, if we're going to do a project like this, I think that the kits (at least the pre-hopped ones) won't give us enough of a learning experience. The pre-hopped kits only really allow for creativity in the choice of yeast and the extra fermentables that you throw into the mix. The rest of the task is boiling water and pouring malt syrup into it. I'd much rather pick a simple recipe that uses well-distributed ingredients. I'd like to experiment with a simple and malty amber ale like this Bass knock-off. Everybody doing the project should report the brand and provenance of each ingredient they used. It will be fun to see the differences.

Indeed! Congrats Katie!

Low water temp is very important in brewing teas like whites... all sorts of delicate flavors would get killed by water too warm. So, get yourself a stopwatch, a mug, some warm (but not above 160) water, toss your tea in, pour your water over it, start the stopwatch, and begin sipping at 2 minutes and keep going until you find a flavor profile that you like. You'll note that the mouthfeel will change with time too...

For bibliography, I'd point you to the writing of J. Norwood Pratt... the Tea Lover's Treasury came out a year or two ago in a new second edition (I've only got the first ed myself, and it was good... the 2nd is New & Improved, or so they say...) Available here... don't know if it is general distribution... Amazon doesn't seem to carry it. Good guide to tea and the stories and history behind it. Were they still doing it, I'd suggest subscribing to Adagio Teas Tea Horizons tea-of-the-month club... they used to send around a wonderful variety of really rare and unusual teas every month... they sent about 5 oz per month, one each of five different teas. They discontinued the club a year or so ago... don't know if they've restarted it. I'd certainly go in for something like that again if somebody out there were doing it. PS: I'm a coffee-home-roasting espresso fiend too... I see no fundamental clash in liking both tea and coffee... I just gravitiate to opposite extremes... I love light oolongs, pouchongs and white teas... the only coffee I drink regularly is espresso.

As another tea lover, I'd suggest your list of requirements only pertains to certain types of black teas. Assams and Ceylons really do require really hot water, and don't suffer from its effects. However... At least according to my palate, a lot of teas suffer from brewing in too-hot water. Darjeelings get horribly bitter and astringent if the water is above about 190F... and even at that temperature, DJs can only handle about 2 minutes of infusion before getting unpleasant. Dark oolongs can't handle much above 185, or the floral foresty notes get drowned in the astringent tanins. Light oolongs get bitter if the water is above 180... Greens and whites actually show their best flavor characteristics if brewed overnight in room temperature water (provided they're kept in an airtight environment to prevent oxidation) and then warmed to serving temp once the leaves have been strained out. So... demanding boiling water is a totally reasonable response to the variable requirements of your leaves... provided you've got a good feel for how long it takes for it to cool off to the temperature you need it to be.

Don't look back... homeroasting is much fun and an excellent way to get high quality coffee at a reasonable price. I generally only home-roast things I can't get at a reasonable price commercially, i.e. Papua New Guinea and some funky Ethiopian beans... My everyday espresso beans are actually commercial (sorta)... Zabar's Dark Espresso. Excellent, and very fairly priced. Another mail-order souce worth consideration is M. Rohr's House of Fine Teas and Coffees... their quality is top-notch as well.

Don't look back... homeroasting is much fun and an excellent way to get high quality coffee at a reasonable price. I generally only home-roast things I can't get at a reasonable price commercially, i.e. Papua New Guinea and some funky Ethiopian beans... My everyday espresso beans are actually commercial (sorta)... Zabar's Dark Espresso. Excellent, and very fairly priced. Another mail-order souce worth consideration is M. Rohr's House of Fine Teas and Coffees... their quality is top-notch as well.

I am much more comfortable with the 1337 H4X0r 5p33|< than I am with people who post here with all the instant messaging shortcuts. The phrase "Can u recommend a good wine 4w/ my burger ..." bugs me much more. The 'leet haxors are using geeky code speak in a geekily ironic sort of way... whereas "2 b w/ u 4ever" seems like lazy shorthand applied to an earnest thought... perfectly intelligible shorthand, but the connotations of expressing that thought in such a half-assed manner is jarring... similarly conversations here seem generally earnest and use of shorthand seems is similarly jarring...

Saku is a brewery located in Tallinn... they brew a number of germanically influenced beers... the Originaal is a pilsner-type lager with a very distinctive malt character... quite tasty. The Tume (TOO-may) is a dark lager... also malty, but roastier and less vegetal than the Originaal. All over the place in Tallinn, or at least it was when I spent a few months there back 10 years ago. Sorry for the failure to demand off-the-wall African beers... but I've never lived in Africa, never travelled to Africa, nor have I heard any appealing descriptions of African beers... mostly Evelyn Waugh-type snipes about millet beer which sound much less than appetizing. If I'm going to pay my beer's ticket to travel in the belly of a ship for a long period of time, I'm less likely to choose something that might be mediocre at best when it gets here. Is there good African beer? Where do they get their hops? Where do they get their barley? Neither seems suited to the climate there... What countries produce beers that are worth notice? Northern African wines are surprisingly good... but having been colonized by the Frinch had something to do with that. Did the Belgian colonization of the Congo leave an unrecognized legacy of funky brewing?

Yup... pugs are the ideal candidate for the name pork-dog. They've got the curly tail, they make the right noises, they go crazy for scraps and leftovers (and just about anything else edible). I could see issues with a young pug in a restaurant... mine (13 years old now) used to love to chase large moving things... dessert cart watch out! (she lost a front leg at 3 when she had delusions of grandeur and discovered that attacking a riding mower was a bad idea... also loved to stand in the middle of the road and challenge oncoming traffic... we always caught her before anything happened with that particular exuberance) Mine was also quite vocal when something interesting was beyond her reach... fine for outside in the country, but bad for inside. She develops convenient "itches" that occur (and require vocal yipping and yapping while scratching herself) when people around her have food and she doesn't... the show stops when food falls onto the floor near her. She was also quite pig-headed in the training context... would learn tricks, but only do them when the snacky reward was visible, no other time. And she would never, ever, reliably come when called. More often than not, she'd look at you, cock her head, and then run the other way. A lot of that has mellowed as she's gotten elderly, but now she's deaf and can't hear you call her name so the result is the same. Pugs are great dogs... they get along well with cats, they are cute attention getters in public, they are smart, but they are good at manipulating the people around them.