“Now it seems to me that there are hop heads and then there are hop-oholics, from an outside observers point of view, Fool Circle you apear to be in the later category.
That just brings a smile to my face, experimental hop usage, just let us know how any future testing goes!!!”
Just a fun quote about me from the Beer, Beer & More Beer Forum after a discussion about using hops in coffee.
Harvested my hops today. Weighed in at 2 ounces prior to drying and 3/8ths of an ounce after drying. Not a big yield, but it was my first attempt. Plus these are MY HOPS!
Harvested a little later than I wanted to, but I was waiting to borrow a friends food dehydrator – that thing worked great. Anyway, here are a couple pics of me drying my hops. Can’t wait to use these as aroma hops in the next batch of ECPA!
Guess who get’s to brew at Iron Hill Wilmington tomorrow? You damn right!
Tomorrow morning at 7:30 A.M. your’s trully will be participating in the brewing of Iron Hill’s Iron Bound Ale (APA). Brian Finn will be brewing it up while I shadow him for the day.
(Afterward . . .)
That was some pretty cool stuff! I got there at 7:30 and we started to crack the grain to put into the grist hopper to send to the mash tun. When the grain began to enter the mash tun they asked if I wanted to be in charge of making sure everything went OK. Brian’s assistant, Wayne, was also there and he was very helpful and knowledgable through out the day. I think they asked me to stir-in the grain because it was hot and heavy work for about half an hour.
Later after we were done mashing in we had to get the spent grain out. So again they offered if I wanted to do it. Again, it was hot and heavy work, no wonder they offered. Then from there to the boil kettle, then lunch, then back to boiling. The whole process was very interesting to watch because basically it is the same thing I do with 5 gallons only a lot bigger and a lot more efficient.
The day ended at about 4:30 and with a beer tasting with the new staff (bummer). For me, it was an extremely long day. It was very hurry up and wait. When we were working I was working harder than I normally do, and when we were waiting, basically we were standing around looking at each other from 5 to 90 minutes. Waiting that long that many times in an unformilar environment with a bunch of nice “strangers” is a little wearing.
On the whole I had an amazing day. I thank Mark Edelson, Brian Finn, and Wayne very much for a great experience, a great day, and in the long run the great beer that we made together!!
August 14, 2004 – Coventry, VT – As a direct result of the severe weather conditions and serious flooding encountered over the past few days, the Vermont State Police and concert organizers, in the interest of public safety, have been forced to limit entry in to the COVENTRY festival this weekend. After exploring all possible options, Police and organizers have concluded that there is no conceivable way to park the remaining vehicles on or in the near vicinity of the concert site, due to the conditions of the grounds as a direct result of the persistent and torrential rains over the past several days.
Effective immediately, all vehicles bound for the concert site not already off Interstate 91 will be turned around and denied entrance to the festival. In addition, roadblocks at additional points of entry have been set up and State Police will be ensuring that people can turn around in a safe and efficient manner.
All ticket holders denied entry to the site will be granted a full refund. Ticket refunds will be refunded directly to credit card holders who have purchased tickets from Ticketmaster and from Phish’s online ticketing system. Further details on refunds will be announced in the coming days.
While Phish deeply regrets having to take this action, it is necessary to protect fans as well as residents of the greater Coventry area.
To the right are the Wedding Brew results – you voted, you’re results. I wonder if anyone was stacking the poll at all . . . ?
Some of the “others” that were mentioned were: E.C.P.A., Hunting MacRae, an apricot hefeweizen, a triple, and a lowest common denominator lawnmower light. Honestly, I don’t think that last one has a chance!
Hopefully we’ll have some DFH or Victory or something local and yummy avaiable too. Thanks for your thoughts
I’m planning on making a beer (or 2) for the/my wedding, any suggestions on what I should make? Here are the top three contenders:
1. Honey-Stout
2. Nut Brown Ale
3. Imperial Porter
Obviously, I’m open to suggestions too. Reply by voting in the survey to the right. This poll will be open from July 22nd – July 31st only!
I have NOT done this yet, but it sounds like fun! If anyone takes a chance on this before I do, let me know what kind of results you get.
All About Beer Magazine
Volume 23 Number 5
November 2002
HOW TO BREW BEER IN A COFFEE POT
Brewery tours are a golden opportunity for brewers to educate visitors about the art of brewing. But any brewery employee who has been assigned tour guide duty has seen the confusion on people’s faces when you describe the brewing process. To the visitor, brewing can sound like a return to high school chemistry-with some alchemy thrown in.
The process of brewing coffee, I discovered, was a good way to relate the brewing process to people who do not understand zymurgy, the technical term for making beer. This became more than a useful analogy: with familiar kitchen equipment, you can repeat the steps of the process that goes on in breweries large and small-and make a very small batch of beer.
For this mini-homebrew, you’ll need the following kitchen equipment:
An electric drip coffee maker with a water-heating compartment and a hot plate (Mine is a West Bend Quick Drip, and all the measurements here are based on that machine.)
A wooden rolling pin (marble is too heavy)
One coffee filter
A saucepan, larger than 2 quarts
2 1-quart canning jars with lids
2 6-inch squares of cheesecloth
Two rubber bands
1/2 gallon filtered-not distilled-water
Brewing ingredients, from a homebrew supply store: 1 1/4 cups malted barley. You can use all “base malt,” such as 2-row or pilsner. Base malt provides the sugar content for fermentation. Or use 1 cup of base malt and 1/4 cup specialty malt(s), such as crystal or chocolate malt, which will provide added color and flavor.
5 to 7 hop pellets, which are the cones of the hop plant compressed into little nuggets. Hops add bitterness to the flavor of beer, and help preserve it. The variety is your choice.
1/2 packet of champagne yeast (or you can even use baker’s yeast)
Before you begin: cleanliness is a huge concern with brewers, because any unwanted microorganisms or residual chemicals can taint the beer. Make sure everything you are using is as close to sanitary as possible. Use a dishwasher if you have one. Set the drying cycle to heat dry with no rinsing agent.
In brewing-whether coffee or beer-parts of a plant (coffee beans or grains of barley) are steeped in hot water to extract soluble material. To make this extraction more efficient, you grind the coffee beans, or you mill the barley grains.
Measure 1 1/4 cups of malted barley. Using the rolling pin, gently apply just enough pressure to the grains to crack them. You do not want to make flour.
Place the cracked grains into the coffee pot. Place 2 cups of filtered water into the coffee machine and turn it on. The temperatures of the water-heating chamber and hot plate-170 degrees F and 150 degrees F, respectively-are perfect for brewing! Let the coffee maker do its thing; it will keep the water/grain mix at a constant temperature for about an hour before it shuts off.
This is called “mashing-in.” Enzyme activity in the grain breaks down starches and complex sugars into simple, fermentable sugars.
Strain the liquid through the coffee filter, and place the filter full of grain into the filter basket. Pour the strained liquid back into the water-heating chamber. Add 1 cup of water to the strained liquid in the chamber and turn the machine back on. After the liquid flows into the coffee pot, turn off the machine and pour the liquid back into heating chamber. Repeat five times, adding another cup of water each time. Keep a close eye to make sure it does not overflow.
This is called “lautering.” Lautering is the process of washing hot water over the grain to extract the simple and complex sugars. The higher temperature stops the enzymes from breaking down the grain any further.
Now you have a sugar-rich liquid called “wort” (pronounced “wert”), or sweet liquor. Place the wort into the saucepan and get it to a rolling boil. After 20 minutes of boiling, add 5 to 7 pellets of hops, boil for an additional 30 minutes, then turn off the burner.
Stir until you have a whirlpool. This will pull leftover sediment into the center of the pot. Carefully pour the wort into the canning jar, pouring down the side of the jar without splashing. Splashing hot wort would allow unwanted air-borne organisms to get established.
Next, you need to bring the temperature of the wort down to a level where yeast-the organisms you want in your wort-will thrive. The brewery uses a wort chiller or heat exchanger; you just place the jar into a sink filled with cold water.
Let it cool until the liquid reaches between 60 and 70 degrees F. Screw the top on the jar and shake vigorously; this aerates the wort. Take the top off the jar and add yeast.
The jar is now your fermentation tank. Place a piece of cheesecloth over the top of the jar and secure it with a rubber band; the cheesecloth will keep stuff from falling in your wort, and the carbon dioxide produced by fermentation should keep out other contaminants.
Place the jar in a cool, dark place. The sweet liquor will become beer in five to seven days. Wasn’t that easy?
The day began per usual around the Fool Circle “Pub”, bottling a new batch – a “Summer Ale.” From there it just became curiouser and curiouser. Things really got ready to roll when Richard showed up just before 6:00 and Robert was soon to follow. At a liesurly pace of almost 6:40 Dave finally arrived. With the five of six people who were going to attend there, Richard, Robert, Dave, Karen & myself began. This year I decided I would partake in the tasting not just the pouring, and Karen would be the designated pourer. The beers for the tasting included all the beers from July 2003 – June 2004: From the Wiezenbier to the new “Summer Ale” (still fresh.) To my surprise, the tasting was much more difficult then I had realized, I think if all the beers were not aged it may be easier – maybe. Out of the 14 beers we tried I think on the whole they only tasted like 8-10 in varying degrees. At the end of the tasting and all the score cards were tallied, Karen was the pourer so she had no score, Richard guessed 2 correct, Robert 4 correct, myself 7 correct & Dave also 7 correct – ‘Hangin’ with the Brewer.’ So, since I had previously excluded myself from winning this years trophy, the award (or pile of trash =)) went to Dave. It was actually a pretty sweet trophy made with two beer bottles as posts between two wooded bases, a Fool Circle logo and a golden cup atop. After the tasting/judging was through, it was time for the grub – grillin’! This year we had birds and brauts. Two beer-can chickens, one original style one marinated and accented with a home-made BBQ sauce, and brauts that were first grilled on the grill then cooked for 2 hours in 60 minute IPA, vidalia onion, sourkraut and butter. To accompany this feast we also had homestyle baked beans, cucumber salad, potato salad, tossed salad and potato chips. There was plenty of water, 60 minute IPA and Indian Brown Ale available too, but I think only water was drunk. After grillin’ came the chillin’! Unfortunately, and to my surprise, it was time for Dave to leave for he needed to leave the world of Fool Circle and return to reality, have a nice trip. So to set the pace for the chillin’ it was time for the de-cellaring of the Fall 2001 Big Bottle collection. I decided to chose these beere to de-cellar because I wanted to use the big bottles for another batch, plus they were taking up twice as much shelf space. We sampled from the Hogshead Porter to the NYE Bourbon Stout. Most of the beers tasted “fruity.” The best 2 were probably the Hunting MacRae Scottish Heavy Ale and the NYE Bourbon Stout. The worst was definetly the Chocolate Covered Cherries Porter – no one would even try it it looked and smelt so funky! Comingled along with the de-cellaring side of the tasting was interspursed with games of Cricket on the ol’ dart board. The night began to wind down at the early hour of 11ish when Karen went upstairs to begin to go to bed. Shortly after that Robert left, and a little while after that Richard did also. On the whole I would say the 2nd Annual Fool Circle Beer Tasting went well, can’t wait for next year already!! Check out the 2004 Pictures! Here are some comments: 2004: And here are some from 2003:
Better late than never . . . I didn’t place in this competition, but my beers still did pretty well. I entered 5 beers and the range of scores were from 24-34 Good to Very Good. Here’s a shortie style recap for all my monkeys:
I entered the Irish Dry in the Brown Porter and it did way better than it had in any other competition, I guess my stout wasn’t stouty enough for the judges. Also, even though I have some good scores, this competition was extra difficult because of the opportunity to go on to the Masters Championship of Amateur Brewing (MCAB) event. All the first place winners advanced to this event, which probably explains why 8 out of 17 1st place winners were from out of state – mail in opportunity. Enjoy!
Dear friends,
As we wind down the Phish career, it is done with both great joy and great sadness. The joy comes from remembering the incredibly good times we’ve experienced, the successes we’ve enjoyed, and knowing that even in our closing we are honoring the band. The sadness is obviously driven by the fact that something I love will not be a part of my life anymore. To me, we have been the greatest band in the world and have had the greatest fans ever.
I still love the music we make but the situation feels different to me now. I guess in my heart I’ve known for a while that something had to change, but it wasn’t until this last weekend that my feelings really began to coalesce. I’m old enough now that I am able to look to the future without feeling that I need to balance it with my past. I find it ironic that half of my life has to go by before I am able to focus solely on the future. As a member of a successful rock band,
it seems that every aspect of my profession encourages me to extend my youth as long as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I like feeling young, but more importantly I need to be honest with myself.
The pressures and schedule of this work can take its toll personally as well as creatively. As someone who has recently been through a divorce, I know how traumatic change can be. But, I also know that if you are able to let go of things and embrace change there is the potential for incredible personal (and creative) growth.
If I sound unusually candid in this statement, I am able to do so because in my mind I’ve already moved on to the next phase of my life. This is a feeling I believe I share with Trey. I have a four-year-old daughter and there is nothing more important to me than being with her. Come August, I’m not going to have to tell her how many days ’til daddy comes back from tour. Combine that with my perception that the band’s vitality is not what it once was, and it’s easy to see how my mind quickly begins to move in one direction instead of a hundred directions all at the same time.
I will miss it incredibly, but I have no regrets. The pride that I feel for the band, our fans, the organization, and all of our collective accomplishments is overwhelming. I love you all and know that we wouldn’t be here without you.
Thanks again.
Sincerely,
Page McConnell