fmajowich

Recently Chuck Welch approached me to see if I was interested in writing a beer column for www.metroi4news.com. I determined two things would happend if I said yes. First, I would probably learn more about beer along the way. Secondly, I would get to drink beer for “research”. So of course I accepted his offer. This is the first attempt at writing a beer blog article. It’s a review of my trip to the Vail Big Belgium’s and Barley Wine Festival in Vail, CO.

My First Beer Blog Article

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I’m always looking for way to improve my Home Brewing. The idea occurred to me the other day that I should collect as much data while brewing as possible.How else will I know what happened during a brew session without data to reference? Since I hate doing things manually (Paper/Pencil) I figured the data collection could be done with my computer. While scouring the internet I came across people using the Arduino platform for all sorts of cool things. One of the first items I came across was using it as a PH meter. Which this gave me hope as PH is something we are interested in home brewing. Then my mind was blown when I found the Brew Troller. Not only can it operate as a monitoring device but can be a complete brewing automation system! Needless to say I’m going to ordering one of these rather soon. This will be  great side project that will lead to better beer.

fmajowich Beer, Homebrewing, Tech

Brewing beer in Florida has a number of challenges due to the heat wave know as summer. A couple of these challenges include Fermentation temperatures and wort temperature for yeast pitching. To combat against the wort temperature for yeast pitching I purchased a
Therminator from Blichmann Engineering. However, my purchase had one fatal flaw. I did not take into account the high ground water temperature in Florida.

After my first use of the Terminator the wort temperature was at 79 degrees. This temperature was higher than my target temp and this was not even the hottest time of the year. This is when I decided to build a pre water chiller for the Terminator. I took a run down to my local hardware store and ended up with the following parts to hack together the pre water chiller

Parts for Pre Water Chiller

Read more…

fmajowich Beer, Homebrewing

Since getting my Ipod touch in christmas of 2007 I have wanted an Iphone. The only hold up for me getting an Iphone was my employer pays my cell phone bill. Then recently my company switched us over to the Blackberry Curve off of the Windows Mobile platform. My initial experience on the Blackberry has been good. I really like the Google apps for the Blackberry along with the Twitter and Facebook apps. However, I was still yearning for all of the “Cool” apps that the Iphone had. Granted I still have my Ipod touch, however, not everywhere you go has WiFi. My car being one of those places where I spend a considerable amount of time. Which brings be to the BlackBerry App World that was released at the beginning of the month. Granted the Blackberry App World is no where near the scale of the Apple App Store. However, it has alot of the applications that so far have given me the “Cool” feeling that the Iphone apps do. So my Iphone Envy has subsided for now, at least for a little while.

fmajowich Saving Money, Tech

So here I am. One month without having cable. The truth is…I don’t miss it. ESPN, The channel I thought I would miss the most has not even been on my radar. That may have something to do with football not being in season but time will tell. My Tivo is jammed packed with shows to watch. I have found myself needing Tivo days to catch up with all of my recordings and yes, I actually do enjoy watching the shows I’m recording/downloading. I wasn’t blogging when I decided to cancel my cable so I’ll give you a run down of my current setup.

TivoHD x 2 OTA turners for local channels
TivoHD for netflix streaming
TivoHD for video podcast
Netflix 2 at a time for blue ray movies
Xbox 360 streaming from my media center PC
Vista Media Center PC with 2 OTA tuners
Playon on Media Center PC for Hulu streaming
DB4 HDTV Antenna
VHF Antenna
Jointenna

Yes, all of those devices/subscriptions cost money but I already owned/paying for them. What I watch the most of OTA channels ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX, next is Netflix Blueray movies, then videopodcasts, finally all of the streaming. Granted I have spent more time with my hobby of home brewing lately but I can honestly say I don’t miss cable at all. I have to thank my friend Ben Drawbaugh for inspiring me to drop cable.

fmajowich Saving Money, Tech

One of the benefits of all grain brewing is reducing your ingredient price. However, one of the ingredients that I’m currently buying is water. Now that I going all grain I will be using more water. Previously I had been buying 6+ gallons of water for extract brewing. Since I will at least double my water consumption for all grain I made a decision to build a water filtration system. I did some googling and found it should be rather easy to build one. The system I planned on coping was one I found at BYO. I headed down to my local big box store with a parts list in hand. Once I arrived at the water filter section of the store the light went off in my head. I could just use a whole house system and save myself some time. I just needed some fittings to attach it to my garage sink, some tubing, and the water filter. This is what I ended up with.

1 x Whirlpool WHKF-DWHV Whole house water filter
2 x 1/2" Barb x 3/4" MIP Elbow
2 x 5/8" OD x 1/2" ID x 10'
1 x Quick Connect Sink Adapter
1 x Quick Connect to Hose Adapter Male 5/8"
1 x 1/2 Bard to 5/8 Female

I went with a more elaborate sink adapter which allows me to also connect a hose to my sink. I need this so I could connect my Therminator for wort chilling. You can modify the connection to your particular water source. When connecting all of the fitting make sure you use teflon tape to reduce the chance of any leaks. So far I’m happy how the filtration system turn out.

fmajowich Beer, Homebrewing

I acquired 3 kegs awhile back with the plan to convert them into an all grain home brew system. Since I don’t own a welder I decided to us weld-less fittings. Doing some googling I came across the Weld-B-Gone Deluxe+ Keg Conversion Kit from Zymico. The kit includes a Stainless Steel 1/2″ Barb, Ball Valve, and bulkhead fitting. I then found the BrewMometer from Blichmann Engineering to use as my temperature gauge. I decided to leave off the site glass to keep the costs down.However, I will probably add a sight glass down the road. I used a step drill bit to make the 7/8′ hole for the fittings. If you are drilling more than 1 keg I highly recommend getting drilling oil. That way your drill/drill bit with last longer. Once the holes were drilled assembled the weldless fitting into the appropriate holes. I then attached the Zymico Bazooka T in my boil kettle for a hop screen. Next I installed a 11″ Sanke Stainless Steel False Bottom into my Mash Tun. I had to use a hacksaw to shorten the tub from the False Bottom to fit correctly into the keg. Ultimately converting the kegs was a straight forward process. I believe anyone could convert keg given you have a drill,step drill bit and a hacksaw. Check out some pics of the converted kegs.

fmajowich Beer, Homebrewing

This past weekend I had the opportunity to volunteer bottling at Saint Somewhere Brewing Company. Saint Somewhere is a small batch craft brewer specializing Belgian Style Ales located in Tarpon Spring, FL. This was the first time volunteering so wasn’t really sure what to expect when I arrived. When I arrived I was greeted by some of the other volunteers and owner Bob Sylvester. My first impression was wow I can’t believe how small the brewery is. However, it then made me think of my visit to Avery Brewing in CO as both were in a industrial park. Avery Brewing now occupies multiple bays at there site, however, had obviously started in one bay and slowly took over other bays(not all consecutive either). I then took the opportunity to snap a few photos with my camera phone before we started. Once we started everyone else seemed to know what was going on except me. Most of the other volunteers are veterans of the process and grabbed the respective task they wanted. The bottling process at Saint Somewhere is a very labor intensive process. At one point there were at least 12 people working in the entire process. These are the bottling steps.

1. Take bottle cases off palette
2. Unpack bottles from case
3. Sanitize bottles
4. Fill bottle using 4 line bottler
5. Cork bottles
6. Place cages on bottles
7. Tighten cages on bottles
8. Place front and back labels on bottles
9. Place bottles back in case
10. Stack cases back on palette

By dumb luck I ended up just placing the cages on the 750ml bottles and handing them off to the tightener. To tighten down the cages on the bottles they used a curved bit in a cordless drill. Pretty ingenues I thought. To cork the bottle they use a corker similar to this one. By far the most time intensive piece is placing the labels on the bottles. Roughly three quarters of the way though the bottling I swapped jobs with the corker. Man was I in for a shock. Previously I was doing the easiest job hands down. I now moved to one of the harder jobs. It didn’t take long for me to start sweating. Oh, I hate to admit it, however, I was sore the next day. In total we bottle ~780 bottles that were headed up to PA.

After we wrapped up bottling we got to sample both the Lectio Divina and Saison Athene. Then Bob was generous to break out some beers he had made while waiting during brew day. The first beer I tried was like a bomb of hops went off in my mouth. I don’t recall the exact amount of hops that was used during brewing, however, it tasted like I threw some hops in my mouth and just started chewing. The second beer was a coffe flavored beer used with a coffee flavor extract. It tasted more like coffee going down then it did a beer.

Oh, volunteering at Saint Somewhere doesn’t mean you leave empty handed. They are nice enough to provide lunch and 6 bottles of there hand crafted beer. Also, I could have brought a cornelius keg and had it filled as well(Always Next Time).

I had a great time at Saint Somewhere Brewing and recommend any one interested in brewing to volunteer at a local brewery.

Extra Brewery Pictures

fmajowich Beer

Well finally got around to setting up a personal blog(well any blog). Will post random things about my life from work to beer. I plan to post at least once a week but not making any promises.

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