An Update...

Well, as evidenced by the last post I made, I do in fact suck at blogging. I have good intentions, but I'm just don't follow through like I should.
It's been busy for me the last few months. Nate (The Dude, The Great One, The Boy) started walking, and boy, lemme tell ya, that little guy is like a miniature tornado. He's fun but challenging. Kameron (the Monkey, his big sister) is a big help. Boys are definitely different raising than girls...
The Missus and I took our Anniversary Road Trip up the East Coast. It was quite an adventure. 10 days, 17 states, and just a hair shy of 4000 miles. Needless to say, we were both extremely exhausted and ready to be home by the time it was over. We saw lots of scenic views and touristy spots and landmarks and such, and we visited several breweries. I'll go over each of them in a seperate post.
Again, just an update. I'll try and do better...

Man, I suck at this blogging thing...

The title speaks for itself. It's been like 2 months or something... ugh. Anyway, the prophecy of my last post didn't pan out so good. I was home in late April and most of May, and I didn't brew anything. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I had to defer to the judgement of SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed) and pack up, haul away and clean out my Man Cave / Nerd Den / Brew House for some much needed remodeling. It sucked, and didn't leave any time for brewing.
I am a nerd of the highest degree, and all my friends well know how much crap I have. You really never know yourself until you have to pack it all in boxes and haul it away, load by load to a 10X10 storage unit across town. That was a major undertaking. But, at the end of the day, once the Wife and her brother finish with my office, it will have all been worth it. The room will look one million percent better than it did. The rustic barn wood on the walls had outlived their appeal.
The room is looking great, and it should be finished in the next 2 weeks.
I made the decision before I left not to bring back all my stuff and place it all as it was before the remodeling. One, you wouldn't be able to see all the effort Jessica and Jerrid pored into the room, and two... I have a lot of shit. I really don't want to haul it all back in again... call me lazy if you will, but I call it practical. I'm just gonna bring back the essentials and keep it bare minimum. This may come as a shock to some people, but they've never had to lug 32 boxes of comic books anywhere before.
Thirdly, by keeping things to a minimum, this will give me more working room for the Brew House. I'm hoping for me and Jerrid to start working on a 5 cubic foot keezer pretty soon, and it will need a home.
Everone needs their own space. I'm just thankful that the Missus is fixing mine up... Cheers!

Brushin' up on my ninja skillz...

Well, as evident in a couple posts back, I'm going home soon. I've got to be very crafty and dedicated to get any brewing done this time home. I promised the Missus I'd cut back due to a contruction project we have to undertake.

I do have some plans for some brews though...
I'll celebrate a Decade, introduce a new Saint, and dream of Ponchatoula. There will be something to do with roots, something untamed, and apples, apples, everywhere... oh so much to drink.

Cheers...

I apologize for a lack of visual aids in this blog. I am not at home so I can't get any pictures of my beer, or ingredients, or techniques or equipment and stuff. I will be remedying this situation soon. I have negotiated a trade off with a talented photographer to be my documentarian. It was pretty simple really, he asked me to teach him how to brew...

So, instead of pictures of my beer and whatnot, here's a slightly disturbing ad for another beer. I like how the one dude is holding balls as the other fella lurks behind him... man sized pleasure indeed.

Count down has commenced...

Well, I'm winding down my time at work. Five weeks is a long time when you think about it. I've been away from my family and my friends for a little better than 35 days. Sometimes it doesn't seem so long. Here towards the end of my trip though, it feels like forever. I'll be flying home come April 21st, Lord willing, and barring no disruptions from the volcanic eruption in Iceland. Keep your fingers crossed.

I'll be headed home to my family who I've been missing every day. There will be a lot going on when I get home, weddings, get togethers, work related courses, etc, etc, ad infintium...
I'll get to spend time with my children and the Missus. I'll get to see family and friends. I'm looking forward to reading some comic books, kicking back with some Netflix, and eating some good old Southern cuisine. And I'm ready to start brewing...

Due to the nature of my work and my schedule, I only get to brew about 6 months out of the year. I work for 5 weeks, then I get 5 weeks off. Not too shabby if you ask me. When I'm on my days off, I brew. My products get to either age in secondary, bottle condition, or age in a keg when I come back to work. I like to think that it adds a little roundness to my brews, helps smooth them out a bit. So needless to say, I stay busy when I come home. I love being able to step back, at the end of the day and say, "I made that".

My last days off were big and busy in regards to brewing, (and everything else). Several projects took off, and I'm ready to get home and check in on them.

The first was a spiced mead. Technically called a metheglin, this little number will hopefully age for the better part of the year before I bottle it. It started with a base of about 5 pounds of honey. To this honey, I added some nutmeg, a couple cloves, allspice, and some orange peels for spicing. I bulked up the sugar content by adding brown sugar, raisins and bananas. Fruit has naturally occuring sugar in it, and it affects the taste and feel of the end product. All this fermented with champagne yeast and I racked it over to a secondary to clear up and smooth out. It smelled very Christmas-y.

The next brew was a kind of a throw together. When I first started brewing, I started with kits. The results weren't bad. They weren't great either. I was never one for starting small and all that, so pretty soon after those first few brews, I started formulating my own recipes. This beer takes one of my last kit beers, and takes it to the hilt. I basically brewed up a simple wheat beer, but threw caution to the wind and souped it up. Once the base beer fermented for several days, I added over a pound of honey, a jar of orange marmalade, and two pounds of whole cranberry sauce. This restarted the fermentation in a big way. There was foam everywhere. I was not expecting too much out of this little experiment, but when I took my gravity readings, smelled and tasted my samples.... well, I'll just say that I can't wait for this beer to be bottle conditioned. It smelled and tasted superb.

The next project was simple in style and ingredients. I made a cyser. A cyser is a historical cross between a mead and a cider. Apple juice and honey. I used several pounds of local wildflower honey given to me by one of the coolest and craziest individuals I know, Richard Vance. (Rich and his dad have been beekeepers for the past 20 years. He gives away all his honey to friends and family. He does it for the love of it.) I was inspired by the Rabbit's Foot Meadery for this project... I made this one for my Vikings.

I also made up a braggot this time home. A braggot is a cross between a mead and a beer. This is the biggest thing I've tried to ferment to date. It's still chugging along. Massive amounts of honey, malt, hops and cherry juice. More on this one later.

And finally, my first kegged brew. 1534 Quito Abbey Ale. In the book Microbrewed Adventures, homebrew guru Charlie Papazian took a trip to Quito, Ecuador in the 1980's. He visited the Iglecias Monasteria de San Francisco. In the 1500's, a group of Franciscan Monks set up this monastery, and commenced to making their beer, as they were accustomed to back in Europe. This in effect made this monastery the oldest brewery in the Americas. Charlie formulated a recipe based on notes from the monks and brewed his beer. I took his notes and brewed mine. It is simple in it's ingredients, but complex in itself. I recultured yeast from a bottle of Chimay to complete the effect. The aromas from this beer when I kegged it were great. I'm ready to get home and have a taste of history.

Well, I got long winded again... sorry. Brewing does that to me. I'll report back with the status of these brews when I get home. I'll try and share some with ya if possible. Thanks for reading. Cheers!

Kris.

It's not always about the beer...

It's all about love and respect... one of my favorite pictures in life.



Watt and Allgood, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1997

Mr. Greenthumb

Well, well... two months of inactivity, and then two posts in a day. Within an hour or so of each other... I'm getting better at this.

I joined a wave started thousands of years ago by the first brewers, and honed throughout the ages by the German masters, the mad Belgians, self-sufficient monks of all orders, American Patriot Brewers, Charlie Papazian and his motley gang of American brewing rebels, and the legions upon legions of homebrewers, just to name a few. I'm joining them in creating beer, that wonderful social lubricant, sustenance giving liquid bread, art in a bottle.

I'm going to try my hand at growing my own hops. Yep. That's right. The brewing bug has bitten into me and has latched on like a summer tick. I constantly think about brewing and beer, thinking up recipes, designing labels, the whole process at times borders on obsessive (just ask the Missus).

Hops are the cone shaped flower of the hop plant. They are used as a bittering agent to balance against the sweetness of the malt. They are also used for flavorings and aromas, and they are used for their preservative effects as well. Hops are a very integral part of beer. In ages past, before hops became the norm, multiple herbs were used to give bitterness and balance to beer. These historical beers were called gruit, and I'll brew one, one day.

There are numerous varieties of hops, the Noble Hops, English varieties, New Zealand types, and American hops. They all have their differences, such as alpha acid levels and aromas and flavors, and each of them lend their unique spin to beer.

I've chosen 3 American varieties to try and grow, Cascade, Willamette, and Chinook. All 3 are widely used by American craft brewers, and all 3 of these are reputed to be pretty sturdy. I'll put them to the test and see if they are Mississippi proof. Due to landscaping issues at my house, I'll be planting these in big nursery planters and stringing a twine for them to travel up.
I'll keep this updated with the plants progress, and hopefully in the fall, I'll have a decent little hop harvest and be able to share the bounty with all of you.

Cheers! and sorry if I got long winded
Kris


(Cascade Rhizome)

Has it really been two months?

Ok. So I lied. I said I would try and update this blog on a regular basis. Well, two months inbetween posts... eh. I'll try better next time. I'm new to all this anyway. I did set up a Facebook page for my brewing operations. Be sure and check it out. Just search for Paulksbier - Misadventures in Homebrewing. Become a fan of the page. I'll be posting there pretty regularly. I'm gonna try and do some contests, give-aways, and what-not, so keep your eyes peeled. Tell your friends. Add the page.

Cheers!
Kris

History Lesson, Part 1 (with respect to the Minutemen)

Much love to d boon, watt and hurley...


My name is Kris and I enjoy beer. I really enjoy it. I like the way it tastes. I love the sweetness of the malts, the bitter and herbal flavors from the hops, the intricate complexities imparted by the yeast. In all honesty, I would probably drink beer, good beer, even if it didn't have any alcohol in it. I like making beer and the sense of accomplishment that comes with a well made batch of beer. I like the social aspect of it. Hanging out and shooting the breeze, sipping and savoring a glass or mug or snifter of well made and tasty beer. This wasn't always the case though. Cue fade...
I grew up in Mississippi, and went through what most of us go through in our awkward young adulthood, a rebellious phase that often included the sneaking of and drinking of various types of alcohol. My poison of choice during this time of my life was Jack Daniels. I did not like beer. It was a vile potion, bitter and skunky, foamy and thin, designed to keep the masses at bay. I had no urge nor want for it. I think the first beer to ever cross my lips was a Budweiser, quite possibly left sitting around by my step dad, I really can't remember. All I knew was that the stuff was evil and I did not like it.
Along comes my pal of pals, old Moriarty himself, Hank. Old Hank was born a hellraiser, and will most probably one day die a hellraiser. Gotta love that. Well, one day long ago, on a hike into the woods to explore an old creek bed and possibly a cow skeleton, old Hank breaks out a mason jar, half filled with this amber elixir, smelling slightly sour, oaky and so so inviting. Good Old Hank had purloined some of his Grand-dad's Old No. 7. It was a revelation to us. (As an aside, Good Old Hank had been topping up Grand-dad's whiskey with water. We thought it was a brilliant plan, until the old man got wise to us and beat us like a couple of rented mules.) Never during this time period was beer a major player. I still couldn't stand the stuff. I would see the commercials on TV, the funny ones, the ones with the bikini squads, the ones with the rough and rugged fellas sitting around a campfire with a freshly grilled fish of some sort and rafting gear all around proudly proclaiming, "It just doesn't get any better than this", but it just didn't sell me. (I admit, I still from time to time randomly utter, "It just doesn't get any better than this", so apparently something took.)
Fast forward a few years, and my circle of deviants and miscreants had grown. I'm still a whiskey guy though. It is my preferred drink, but a lot of times, it could prove very hard to come by. It was by this condition that I was pretty much forced to turn to beer. Our goal was to get tanked. I was the oldest looking one on our crew, and it was delegated to me to secure us some beverages with which to get tanked. We would go to a place affectionately known by us as Habeeb's. Sometimes you got lucky, and sometimes you came out empty handed. On the nights we would score, our treasures included Heinekin, Grolsch, and Bud Light. Mmmm Mmmm....
And at this particular time period, there wasn't much more variety than that. So, out of necessity, that is what we drank, and to us, that was the world of beer. Oh, what poor ignorant fools we were...
A little later during this same era, a dear friend of mine would seemingly rise from nowhere, out of the mists and haze of American Style Pilsner and shower down upon me the beer that would get my mind right...


to be continued...

Gotta start somewhere...

I like to drink beer. More on that later.
I make my own beer. I homebrew. I take base ingredients, and with the help of the wonderous little critter known as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, (brewing yeast) I attempt to make a product that is both unique and palatable. I have been doing it for just over a year now, and I'm getting better each time I brew. I enjoy so many aspects of the art, the creative aspects of brewing, the satisfaction of making something by hand, the tradition of brewing all the way back to the Sumerians and the Song of Ninkasi, and the enjoyment of a delicious beverage at the end of the day.

I have started this log as a response of sorts to a friend's request, to document the steps of recipes I have planned, to document tasting notes of my beers, to rant and rave, to give history lessons, to showcase commercial beers of note, to make announcements, give shout-outs, and generally just have a good time.

I hope to update this log regularly, but forgive me if I don't.

Thanks in advance,
Kris