Emotional responses

Unfortunately for ... everyone, I have my best blog-worthy thoughts during conversations that spawn from unpredictable sources.  Recently, one trope came up and kept coming up (mostly because the conversational counterpart just wouldn't consider it a real thing).  That was that it's "easier to hate and fear than it is to think and consider".   It's a bit wordy, needs work, but essentially it describes, in a sentence, much of the working-class western world and how they react and deal with the goings-on in the rest of the world.

Now, I don't claim to know what's going on in the rest of the world.  I admit that the war on ISIS, the chinese stock market, heck - the entirety of australia - could simply be a media fabrication.  Have I seen them personally?  No.  But I have seen them through the computer screen, through the internet, through others, through the news, etc. etc.

Mind you, I don't actually believe Australia doesn't exist.  Was meant to make a point.  That point is - there are a great many things that a great many people only have experience with through the lens of another - namely here the media, the internet, etc.

I'm going to do my best to stay politically-neutral because, truth be told, I'd be hard pressed to choose which political party wants to shit on America more.  On the one hand you have capitalism-fueled socialism, and on the other hand you have capitalism-fueled fascism. Let's table the notion that through the extremes comes balance, because we've quite clearly not seen that apparent, at least in enough ways that matter.

I've written the next few paragraphs over and over, ranging from pointing out media bias (and the ignorance of it), to disassembling terrorism (poorly).  Ultimately what I'm trying to say is that when you feel angry, when you feel fearful, when you watch the news, when you watch a movie, when you talk at the dinner table and you have a shot of adrenaline surge through your veins because uncle harold said something racist, when you get cut off in traffic, when you hear a politician say something untrue and everyone cheers, when you see someone litter, when you ponder the infinite and realize that humans are wasting our true potential because someone told us to hate someone we've never met or that my god is more real than yours.

Don't.

Don't let the hate in.  Don't let the fear in.  If someone wants you to be afraid, if someone wants you to be mad, if someone wants you to think something you didn't think a moment ago - understand.  Think.  What's their angle?  When a politician says something inflammatory and bloviates about baby murderers and some religion somewhere, what happens next?  You feel anger.  You feel rage.  You hate the people or the thing or the idea that the person in the screen told you to.  You leaned on your confirmation bias and holes in your knowledge because you've never met a person like they're talking about, and the one you have seen that one time gave you shifty eyes.  So they MUST be the way the man in the screen is telling you so.  Who are you to second-guess?  It's not legal to lie in the news...and politicians only tell the truth, because if they didn't - how would they get elected?

Right?

Stop and consider before you hate and fear.  What's the angle of the person in the screen?  What are they trying to get out of you?  Are they trying to inform?  Are they trying to teach?  Or do they want your vote...do they want your money?  Are they playing on your hopes and fears and lack of knowledge to try to get you to, rather than think rationally and logically, react emotionally and feed into the machine that they'll tell you helps you (but the other guy is doing it wrong, so vote for me!).

But by giving the people in the screen what they want - your rage, your fear, your lack of knowledge - they get more than you ever thought you'd be able to give.  They get your loyalty.  They allow your mind to be twisted away from logical, rational, intelligent thought and toward whatever narrative they want.  I'm not saying that everything the man in the screen is saying is untrue.  Merely that, when letting it into your head, it behooves the listener to truly understand what is being said - and what they are trying to get you to think and do.

Hate.  Fear.  Obey.  Buy.  Consume.  Breed.  Never question, never waver, AMERICA AMERICA AMERIKA.

I'm not saying don't fear, I'm not saying don't hate.  I'm not saying never get angry at those warranted of anger.  I am saying to think for yourself.  Don't let someone else dictate your emotional responses, for they can lead you astray.

Immemorial

It's been a very long time.  And I've missed you.  I'm currently reading through all my old posts, I'm near the end of 2011 now, I should read the remainder before I keep posting away.

What I need to do is get my thoughts out on paper once again.  I'm reading back through these and having vivid memories, new thoughts, and remembering things that happened in my past.  My memory is at best, atrocious.  At worst, it's functionally retarded.  Maybe I have a problem paying attention to things, maybe I have a learning disability.  Maybe I'm an autistic savant mentally retarded person.  The fuck is that even I don't what.

So in happier news, brewing is one of the few things in my life that have stuck to me all the way through.  Just something about it, despite being chores, doesn't feel that way.  Except when the grain bags break on the way to the trash can.  Seriously fuck everything about that I swear to the devil if he is doing that and I meet him one day I literally will give up the rest of my forever existence to push him feet first into an unfortunately rusty meat grinder.

But the beer I brew now is pretty killer.  So maybe the hardships* are for the best.  Hosting a party soon with a stout (best recipe ever), blueberry mead (it makes people make bad decisions), and pumpkin ale.  The last of which was a new recipe, though I used too little pumpkin, forgot molasses and two extra pounds of sugar.  Ended up being an even 5%, which was horribly low but it tastes good.  Which is really all that matters, provided you don't repeat a beer I made a year ago...ended up (probably) being called chunky irish failure.  That's actually not a bad idea.  Call your malt Liquor "Irish", short for "Chunky Irish Failure".  Like Operation stout is short for "Operation get behind the darkies".  Times like these you think you're funny.  You are not, sir.  You are not.


Anyway whatever, the pumpkin ale is delicious.  Back to reading more blog entries.

So I'm reading through, reading about how I said I was going to do many grand things.  Yet, I remember clearly.  I didn't really do any of them.  I felt strongly about the ideas when they were created but then did nothing to enact any of them.  Why do I lack motivation to do anything?

So I've finished and lost my steam of vomiting negativity onto the intertubes.  Be back later. Maybe. I never know.

*Not really hardships, not real life altering things.  Just spilling waste.  I was being colorful. Sorry raccoons.

Back again

So I'm not entirely sure why I didn't post about my last three brews, but so far they're all fantastic.  I've all but licked my problem with overcarbonation, as the Hefe, the Red, and the Pale all came out at just under what I imagine their carbonation should be.  Which is a very good thing!  And instead of saving my last few bottles of porter for family and friends, I decided to just finish the rest of it.  It's so embarassing having to say "open it over a sink and pour slowly into a glass...and even then it still probably is going to foam out everywhere".  I'll never give out failed beer to anyone ever again.

Having just racked to secondary my fifth brew of the year, an IIPA, I can say with some certainty that I have a knack for brewing.  I'm very confident that once I get my temperatures under control (all but impossible in my current living situation) and up production (a nice conical fermenter perhaps) that my beer will be, dare I say it, approaching a nanobrewery in terms of quality.  Lots of ground to cover until then, and at least half a dozen batches once I feel I've dialed in a brewing setup.  Alas, that situation will not happen until far after grad school completes and I obtain a job (Amazon?  Google?  Valve?  Planetary Resources?  Seattle!) and my life somewhat stabilizes.

This, of course, assuming the world doesn't end as we know it in the coming year.

One form of temperature control that I can have more of a force over is mashing.  The pale ale, initially thought to be skunked, I now believe to have a sweeter and fuller feel due to my higher-than-optimal mash temperature.  I believe I mashed in the high 150s, rather than the low 150s to upper 140s.  Nevertheless, the beer is decent and it was a first round recipe.  Next time I make it, mayhaps soonish, I'll reduce the amount of color by a few points, drop the mash temp (conservatively low as opposed to slightly-riskily-higher), and split the batch into two.  I have an experiment to conduct with a new triple-recipe.  *cue maniacal laughter*

Brew 2, First Hefe

My second brew of 2012 and my first bottling finished, suprisingly, easier and cleaner than all previous batches. To start off with, I didn't have a boil-over. A combination of leaving one gallon (or so) out of the kettle until hot break and a constant skimming of foam caused there to be no boil-over, just a nice, smooth transition from not boiling to boiling.

However, it wasn't until I cooled the wort and pitched the yeast that I discovered my 4 gallon recipe was around 3 quarts short. Now, before with the porter I was a quart short. Now that I think about it, a quart over or under shouldn't matter as long as your gravity was hit correctly. Which, in this case, it was. However, being 3 quarts short made me wonder. Opening up the mash tun to retrieve a bag of grain and to begin the cleaning process I discovered my hose filter wasn't nicely settled on the bottom of the tun. It was, instead, suspended within the grain, leaving a good amount of delicious wort behind. So next time I need to remember that once I'm ready to begin the boil, give the tun a stir to make sure I got all the sweet liquid that I can get.

All in all, brewing today went off well. Stirring the cooler slightly caused the chilling process to go from boiling to 80F in the shortest time yet. It had to have been under 15 minutes, but I didn't check. Hopefully this yeast strain gives me the desired taste. I chose the Wyeast for it's bubblegum qualities, but my local store only had White Labs. We'll see how the taste comes out. All in all, ~3.2 gallons should end up being a tasty brew, and eventually (after a couple of refinements) a perpetual house brew. Oaked Hefeweizen, anyone?

Speaking of oaked, I had a thought that once I perfected my porter I'd take 1-gallon samples and subject them to various types of aging. My winter ale was ... ok ... with oak, but I had wanted it to be sweeter. The porter might benefit from the oak more than the winter ale did. But, after bottling the porter today (busy brew day...) I can say that it turned out, yet again, fantastic. The changes I made to the recipe really brought more chocolate and coffee and roasty goodness out. I'm excited to see how it turns out in a few weeks and I'm going to have to force myself to put a bottle away so I can age it.

Hefeweizen should be bubbling by the end of tonight, porter is bottled, and in two weeks I'll bottle the Hefe. I haven't decided if I'm going to bottle and brew in two weeks or if I'm going to bottle in two weeks, then in two more weeks brew an Irish Red. Today was fun, but it really did eat up my entire day. I want to brew 100 gallons this year, so once I crunch some more numbers I'll know if I'm going to be bottling in two weeks or repeating today in two weeks. Part of me feels that if I do what I did today every two weeks...by the end of the year I'm going to be burnt out. Don't want that.

Rocky start to 2012

After brewing with my father almost successfully sucked every drop of homebrewing desire I had, I had a hard time getting my head in the game to brew today. I'm glad that I did, but the whole process left me feeling drained and unhappy. Maybe I'm coming down with something, who knows.

But, yet again, I brew with a slew of problems. For starters, my mash temperature dropped from 156 to 146 over the course of an hour, I sparged with half a gallon too much water, causing a boil-over. I even took two large glasses of wort out and added them over the course of the boil. And, to top it all off, my dumb ass didn't use a hop bag for my aroma hop addition, so 2/3 of an ounce of hops adorned the last bit of wort. All in all I thought I used half a gallon too much water, but I ended up with 1-2 quarts too little in the fermenter.

There was good news, though. I hit my target OG (1.061, after a temperature adjustment). The yeast starter turned out fine and hopefully by the end of tonight I'll see bubbles. I also used proper cleanser this time (Easy Alkaline), which did a remarkably awesome job at cleaning the brew kettle of the boil-over junk.

Hopefully once I see bubbles and smell beer I'll start feeling better, but in the mean time it's time to start thinking about my next brewday in three weeks (the porter takes three weeks in the primary). It's going to be a simple hefeweizen that should have hints of bubblegum.

New year, new goal - 100 gallons!

Here I am in 2012, with a new brew plan and a brand new MLT (more on that in a bit). My goal is to brew 100 gallons of beer this year, across 8 recipes. I'm going to make five recipes on a cycle until I get them down. These will serve as my five house brews and the plan is to have them available at any time. A porter, red ale, pale ale, DIPA, and hefe. The porter and the hefe are the only recipes that have any of my modifications in them (porter has added coffee flavor and the hefe has my hand selected yeast), but hopefully by the end of it all all five will have sufficient modifications that I can give them a name.

I refuse to name a beer unless it's original enough that it's something new. With that in mind, I'm going to be making the big five beers on a cycle all year, with three beers being brewed later in the year for the holiday season. A pumpkin beer (with real pumpkin, recipe undetermined), an imperial harvest ale (everyone loved it despite it being terribly incomplete), and a christmas ale. Last year the Christmas ale had too much cherry and too much oak, so next year my goal is to make it the way I intended, that being like a gingerbread house in a bottle. So nix the cherries and half the oak and quadruple the ginger and add some to secondary. Or something like that, anyway.

But the real star of the 2012 season is my shiny new (and bright orange) Mash-Lauter ... container. I hate the word "tun" for some reason. Sarah's father gt me a 10 gallon watercooler for Christmas and today I purchased all the parts and put it together. No leaks! Though I did have to use two lock washers to get the installed hardware to sit snugly.

Unfortunately, my local home brew store is closed Monday, so bright and early (early being sometime in the afternoon) Tuesday I'm going to purchase ingredients and cleaners and a few other things. Brewday should be Thursday or Friday once I've had sufficient time to make a starter. Going to do all of my beers this year with starters because why not? I plan on making each of these beers at least three times, so if doing a starter I get weird results that can be attributed to a starter, then no more starters will I do. Also it'll give me an excuse to not have to buy yeast 15 times instead of a more comfortable 5.

Starter powers activate

Sitting on my dining table right now just spinning it's heart out is my first ever starter. Used 2 2/3 cup bottled water and 2 oz of extra light DME. Found out about a few interesting problems that I'd not have known about had I not actually done this whole process. Namely, the flask I'm using isn't completely flat on the bottom. This becomes a problem because as that water boils, it forces the flask up. This happens over and over, causing the flask to vibrate inside the pot of boiling water. My solution was to use a slightly bigger pot and a bit more water so that the flask _just slightly_ is floating in the pot. That allows the steam to escape and prevents the vibration.

That all being said, though, after 15-20 minutes I wasn't able to get the flask to boil. So I dumped the starter into a smaller pot and boiled the starter directly. Way easier. Cooled it down over 10 or 15 minutes in an ice bath (it does cool very quickly), added my (mostly) decanted mead yeast cake, and added the sanitized stir stick. Around 10:30 last night I set the stir plate to on and by this morning the bubbling had all but stopped. Which is fine, though I did remember that I forgot (ha) the yeast nutrient. The starter is ~600ml, so I threw in 1/4 tsp of nutrient, and the bubbling spiked for a few minutes, but subsided.

If the bubbling doesn't increase tonight or by tomorrow evening, I'll be cold crashing the starter and leaving it be until early March, when I'll be bottling the vanilla and brewing the pomegranate. All in all the making of a starter was an interesting experience and I look forward to seeing the krausen-explosion from my porter brew in mid January.