January 2022 Archives

Beer Cellar Take Two

Beer Cellar.jpg Cellar_Exterior.jpg  

My old Michigan house had the perfect cellar for storing those three hundred bottles of beer. It has been my intention for a while to use the chest freezer with the temperature controller for lagering. Currently I have all of my cellared beers stacked in boxes inside. It's really hard to know what you have and to find a particular beer. While I don't have the perfect cellar in the new home, I do have some unused space I plan to convert to a cellar. I have been posting the progress on twitter as of late. So far I have the space under the basement stairwell cleaned up, framed in, insulated, the exterior covered in drywall, and the interior sheeted with plywood and a cedar overlay. With some slate look tile for the floor. Given the concrete floor and at least one side being an exterior wall, I am hoping it will remain close to 55F year round. I plan to fabricate a hidden insulated door and shelving. Determining what I want to do exactly for shelving has been a bit of a challenge. Given the ceiling is at a 40 degree angle and it's all rather small and awkward haha. Follow me on twitter for updates. Here are some before and in progress views: Before,  Interior, and Tiling

Home of the Homebrew

Brewing.jpg  Honey_Strawberry.jpg  honeyandlemon.jpg

So it's hard to claim you're the home of the homebrew if you, you don't homebrew. So once I moved back to Michigan I hit up Siciliano's Market and once again started brewing. No brewshed, no brew sculpture, just my ghetto rig, but it worked. I brewed up my barrel aged stout, and few months later lemon honey wheat, and my strawberry ale. I used grains of paradise, Georgia Sturdier Honey and whatever else I could think up.

Lemon Wheat

5 lbs. American Two Row

5 lbs. Wheat

1 lb. Pilsner

1 lb. Flaked Wheat

½ lb. Cara Pils

½ lb Rice Hulls

American Ale Yeast

All of the grains of paradise I could find

1 oz. Hallertauer (Bittering)

At flame out honey, lemon zest, more hops ; )

O.G 1.044

 

Strawberry Cream Ale

½ lb Carapils

½ lb. Munch Malt

5.5 lbs Pilsner Malt

½ oz. Willamette (Bittering)

At five minutes before flameout 1 oz. Saaz, and a bunch of Strawberry Puree.

O.G 1.035

shed_bandw.jpegSo I have 'written' countless posts in my head over the past few years, but for one reason or another have they have never actually made them to the blog. In April 2020 I managed to write the following text here in the blog never to actually post it "I took a bit of a sabbatical from brewing. But not from drinking. I was waiting to get my brew shed complete, then create my brew sculpture and resume brewing. I completed the brew shed, only to move. I recently setup a small basement area for brew equipment so there may be hope I will resume soon."

So that pretty much sums it up. I left the great beer state, moved to Georgia and silence. I kept drinking and mountain biking but the weather changed things up a bit for me. The first issue I encountered was the three hundred bottles in the cellar, where would they go? South East Georgia does not have basements. So I solved the issue but packing beer in the beer fridge, kegerator, and purchasing a fermentation chamber aka a cheap Lowes chest freezer that I added a STC-1000  temperature controller to. I have yet to use this cooler for lagering which was the long term plan. Sadly since modern technology is crap - or planned obsolesce as it's called - it is on its last legs and still holding beer. I have replaced the starting cap twice and the compressor whines like death is imminent amongst other issues. It has my signed Bell's bumper sticker from Laura Bell on it's face so I not going to part with it until I have to.

But I digress. The weather; In Michigan I brewed and did beer stuff in the winter and biked in the summer. Georgia was summer all the time. So I biked all year and since we didn't have a decent homebrew shop never actually brewed a damn thing in six years there. I did however make a brewing and bikes shed. The plan as my un-posted excerpt at the start stated was to weld up a brewtus once it was done. But perfection takes time and I am slow so I finished the brewshed right before I moved back to the great beer state. Here are a few photos of the beer and bike shed for your viewing pleasure. It has a retractable bike stand built into the floor, rough cut yellow pine loft, jar lights, heat/ac and all the stuff a guy could want. I left days after finishing it.

Jar Lights     shed_ext.jpg     loft.jpg     Inside.jpg

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This page is an archive of entries from January 2022 listed from newest to oldest.

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