Yup its the often criticized Triumph TR7 which I have been working on getting back into operation the past three weeks.  I know what you’re thinking, drinking and driving don’t mix, not kidding.  However, in some weird way, beer and old cars do, don’t ask me how, they just do.  Why is the Tr7 criticized?  Well many believe that it led to the downfall of the British Leyland and it was voted one of the 50 worst cars ever built due to its under-powered engine and over protective bumpers.  However, with all that being said, it’s had a bit of a resurgence in the past 5 years in Europe and with many (including mine) getting after-market engine upgrades to more powerful v-6’s and v-8’s, it’s actually a nappy ride.

Mine is a 1976 with a 231ci 3.8L V-6 engine and automatic transmission.  Over the past few weeks I’ve tore out the interior and installed new carpet, changed the valve cover gaskets, the manifold gaskets as well as tinker with the carb.  It’s a lot of fun, but it’s distracted me for brewing.

The good news is that I was sick for about two weeks and didn’t touch my beer so there was little to no hit on my supply from the end of April until about a week ago.  Currently, Bobby Brown is still hanging out on tap, my Noble Pilsner is tapping (although I really may have over hopped with Saaz on that one, the hops flavor on it is a little intense), along with my latest IPA and Japanese Kaffir Lime Imperial Lager ( just realized I didn’t make a post for this one, I will have to write something up ASAP!).

Besides all of the above, I’ve been out exploring beers in the greater Syracuse area…oh yea, and I was lucky enough to see Pearl Jam AGAIN in Hartford CT, here is a little taste:

Thanks for sticking with me! More to come, cheers!

A little more than a week ago I received an invitation from Josh Solomon, Director of Sales for US Beverage Net, to visit their offices in downtown Syracuse.  Funny thing is I’ve walked by their building for the last 5 years and was finally able to get in and check it out.  The building was vacant for a number of years and they have been one of the new tenants, remodeling their floor to include a demo bar, conference rooms and a bunch of offices.  But I’m not here to talk about real estate, I’m here to talk about beer.

As a quick overview, US Beverage Net has a patented process for measuring the flow of beer through keg lines and relays the information into a web-based user interface.  The user interface allows managers, brewers and business executives to monitor real-time statistics about what brews are selling, track innovatory and beer temperature.   The video below is quick peek at how the system works:

The system allows managers to see how much beer is being sold with the information from the registers at the bar against the actual beer that flows through the beer lines.  Innovatory is tracked in real time and allows managers to know the status of kegs on tap.  Over time, information is collected so that larger bars and beer operations can produce reports to show trends in purchasing, beer choices and sales.  This is really precise measurement where most bars and brew pubs rely on simply lifting kegs and quick counts.

Now beer is an interesting asset for a bar.  While we (beer geeks) can really see the value in tracking the beer flow on a high end beer like Chemey, most people in the bar/restaurant service industry see beer as a low-cost, high profitability product.  This can easily lead them to ask “why should I care?” – I have to say, when I first learned of US Beverage Net I asked myself the same thing.

So what makes this valuable to customers?  After talking with Josh, I’ve learned that they’ve found a few hot-spots for customers and have an enticing opportunity for future growth.  First, restaurants with multiple locations that see a large volume of beer flow through their lines can quickly realize the value of tracking “beer loss” (includes everything from people who waste beer that is foaming by leaving the tap open to overly friendly staff that like to treat their friends).  It allows for accountability and in some cases, US Beverage Net was able to identify 20% loss of beer and, with some basic review of staff and practices, were able to get the losses down to 2%.

Now while it’s easy to see how hundreds lines with beer flowing inefficiently can lead to quick turn around on investment dollars, but how can this help a brew pub?  Empire Brewing Company is currently using the system and brewer Tim is able to accurately monitor inventory so he can plan out brew sessions, asses the effectiveness of recipes with sales information, and do all this from the comfort of his home.  The web-based user interface has created a situation where he can pick and chose the time he needs to spend in the bar so he doesn’t have to walk into the coolers picking up the kegs every night to monitor supply.

Finally, they’ve got some interesting prospects for the future.  US Beverage Net has recently signed on with a few distributors.  Now this is interesting because they can provide access to distributors to have a real-time view of inventory at bars and restaurants.  This can save them man hours, gas and increase efficiency of the beer distribution process.  There is also the possibility  for US Beverage Net to, as they build their client base, compile information for brewers and the beer industry to provide an immediate snapshot of consumer reaction to beer in the market.

Over all, the upside of this product is great.  It’s especially attractive given the current economic climate and everyone’s desire to stretch every penny.  This quote from Jake Wright of Quaker Steak and Lube says a lot:

“We have had a FULL return on our investment for the installation and a full year of fees from just ONE busy night, moving from a variance of 20% the week before we notified staff to just 3% the week after. The system worked from day one, the support from the Bevnet team was immediate when needed and most importantly the cost was amazingly low. No hassle, easy to use, low cost and immediate ROI.”

Syracuse is a great beer town and US Beverage Net is a great beer company using innovation to help modernize the industry we support.  Cheers.

UPDATE – Found this story online

So this weekend, I spent a good 16hrs taping and mudding. This week I am going to treat the many water stains and paint. When it’s all done, I have some cupboards to hang up in there and finished semi-gloss finish on the sheet-rock.

I consider this a semi-beer project because I brew in my garage. Since I spend 5+ hours in there staring at the water-stained unfinished sheet-rock every other weekend, this seems like a great way to spruce-up my brew space.

I’m not going to bother with pictures until I brew again, but I should have some real brew news in the next few days.

Cheers.

I scaled my recipe down to 2.5 gallons to fit into the 12 1 Liter bottles I had. I also didn’t use the oak chips as I had never used them before but had read that it is very easy to go overboard and I didn’t want the oak to dominate the flavor.

7.5 lb Pale US 2-Row
1.25 lb Munich 10L
.75 lb Special Roast
.50 lb Caramel 120L
.50 lb Caramel 45L
.12 lb Chocolate 350L
.50 oz Columbus – 60 Mins
.30 oz Goldings – 10 Mins
Mash was the same as above. 60 min boil. I used Wyeast 1056 (with starter) instead and my fermentation temp was a bit higher at 70 degrees. It was in the primary for 2 weeks and then I racked into a secondary on top of a Madagascar Vanilla Bean that I had cut down the middle, scraped out the inside, and then chopped into quarters. I soaked the pieces in a bit of bourbon for a day beforehand. I left it in the secondary for another 2 weeks and added half a cup of Jim Beam Bourbon at bottling.

Now I had this while my wife and I were over for dinner, but Jeremy was nice enough to give me a bottle to try on my own.  I enjoyed it over some football, here are my notes:

Aroma: I noticed a lot of fruity smells in the nose, there were some light vanilla tones, but very subtle.  Vanilla is a forgiving additive for a beer, it plays nice.  The fruity aroma was pretty intense and probably a result of the warm fermentation.

Head: A pretty thin head until I poured it more aggressively, this happens in beers with higher alcohol content, he may want to increase the dex on the next time around.  The color of the head was cream/off white and reminded me of a cream ale head.

Color: Deep rose red to a mahogany color, a nice color for a porter.  The clarity was fantastic on this brew, there was no chill haze or sediment in the brew.

Taste: There were hints of fruity esters on the front end with the creamy vanilla flavors following on the back end.  Clean finish with all the flavors being subtle and nothing really overwhelming the beer.

Mouth feel: Early on there was some carbonation burn on the tongue, but nothing too bad and it really tapered off as I drank.  The body was clean, crisp and easy to drink with no alcohol burn.

Over all: This is rich, but not overbearing.  The vanilla and caramel notes really set this beer off, but it finishes clean on your pallet.  This makes the beer very palatable that I might even go so far as to call it a session beer (perhaps it’s a drinking mans session beer, but it’s something I could have a few of and not get sick of).  There are only two things I would change; fermentation temp to keep the esters in check and maybe tweak the recipe to give it a little more complexity, but it should be done in extreme moderation as it’s a very drinkable beer and that should remain.

Thanks to Jeremy for sharing his beer, it’s a great beer and I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I did.

Cheers

After a party this weekend with some of my neighbors, it was brought to my attention that there are in fact two meanings of the word “keggle.”  Ignorant to the intricacy’s of female anatomy exercises, I have been known to talk about my “Keggles” and how I’ve been working on them for years.  So to clarify the differences, I decided I would outline both and how they are different.

Whats a Keggle and a kegel?

First off, a keggle is an informal word for a keg that has been converted into a kettle.  The kegs used are traditionally 15 gallon beer kegs with a hole cut in the top by a torch, plasma cutter or a saw.  In most cases, a hole is cut in the side for a spigot using stepped drill-bit to ensure proper sizing.  There is generally a welded or weldless ball-lock, silcock or other spigot affixed to the hole.  In some cases a hop strainer is also attached to spigot (inside the keggle) to keep hops out of the finished wort.  Keggles can be found as both home-made and store bought. 

When looking at a keggle compared to a kegel, there are several major differences between the two.  For example, a kegel is defined as:

The aim of Kegel exercises is to fortify muscle tone by strengthening the pubococcygeus muscles of the pelvic floor. Kegelis a popular prescribed exercise for pregnant women to prepare the pelvic floor for physiological stresses of the later stages of pregnancy and vaginal childbirth. Kegel exercises are said to be good for treating vaginal prolapse and preventing uterine prolapse in women and for treating prostate pain and swelling resulting from benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and prostatitis in men. Kegel exercises may be beneficial in treating urinary incontinence in both men and women.  Kegel exercises may also increase sexual gratification.

Note that while a keggle is used for brewing beer, a kegel is generally used to exercises pelvic muscles, treat “vaginal prolapse” and possibly increase sexual gratification in women.  A kegel consists of contracting and relaxing the muscles that make up the pelvic floor, whereas a keggle consists of a keg with a hole in the top and a spigot on the side.  Finally, in the case of a kegel, a “kegel  exerciser”can be used to work these muscles.  In the case of a keggle, if anything besides a keg were used, it would not be a keggle, just a kettle or brew pot.

Use of the word

While it appears that there are many physical differences between a keggle and a kegel, the two words are both spelled similarly and pronounced the same.  With that said, generally there are very different uses of the words.  For example:

“I built a new keggle this weekend, I can’t wait to try it out” 

This compared to the use of the word kegel:

“It hurts every time I do a kegel.”

Now when used in the plural, the possibility of confusing the two words increases, both because of the context and because it is less common to meet someone with multiple keggles:

“I was cranking out on all keggles this weekend, it was awesome”

Note that this can sound very similar to:

“All my kegels are starting to pay off, I was cranking this weekend, it was awesome”

Finally, to further confuse the issue, if you are talking about things that improve a keggle, a statement can easily be misconstrued:

“I picked up a metal bar so that I can hang a bag of hops in my keggle”

Compared to:

“I picked up a device to increase the effectiveness of my kegels”

Now hopefully we, as brewers, can move forward to ensure that there is no further confusion about the difference between a keggle and a kegel.  This newly equip knowledge will keep us from party Faux pas like “My keggles are awesome, they really help things down there (pointing to the basement)” or “Did I hear the word keggle?  Whats up? You ladies brew?”  or “it’s a keggle, it really helps make the whole process easier and increased my volume ten-fold.” 

Cheers.

Packed and ready for the show

So over the winter I was contacted by a representative from Forte Promotions about trying out some of their products and writing about them.  For the last six to eight months I have been looking for the right time and place to give some test runs.  Then the perfect opportunity came; Pearl Jam in Toronto – what better place than a concert to really take some products for a test drive!

As you will note, pictured above is a Koozie Party Cooler that was one of the items that was sent to me.  As you will note, we took the liberty of decorating it ourselves with the hope that it might not get taken.  Anyway, as you can see, it’s filled to the rim with delicious “Mill St. Wit” (it only gets modest BA’er love) and some random cans we brought with us.

We used this cooler to hike nearly a mile to the Molson center in Toronto in traffic.  This cooler really stood up to the pressure and didn’t fail us.  Our beers were cold and there were no broken handles or dropped beers.  A win all the way around.

The sad news is that our plan of tagging our property failed and our cooler was no more after we got back.  However, our cooler was a really warrior that held up and hopefully has moved on to keeping some other Canadian beers cold.  My recommendation is that this is a hell of a cooler and will be missed.  It’s durable and the bottle opener attached to it is clutch. 

If you are interested in learning more, check out the folks at Forte Promotion.  They were friendly and eager to help out. 

Finally, how about a little taste from the Jam show… [first time they played Porch on this tour!]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsLKy0kq-Uc&feature=related]

Beer Mom’s and Wives make the world go ’round.

Cheers to Mom’s

This is a pretty cool video that was posted by Final Gravity.  Great find.  I don’t speak German, but any brew enthusiast should be able to follow this.  It looks like a double decoction on the front end of this, anyone else agree?

With the snow melting and hops starting to sprout, this is a good time to think about brewing beer (I know, it’s always a good time to think about brewing beer).  This month’s Fermentation Friday is hosted by HomeBrewBeer.net and the question is:

“How will you grow or change as a homebrewer this Spring? How will you embrace your Spring fever and channel it toward your homebrewing endeavors?”

First off, in Central New York (the CNY of CNYBrew for my southern visitors) it’s tough not to get jazzed up about spring.  Syracuse is in prime basketball season, the snow is (hopefully) gone and Liverpool Country Club has been open fro three weeks.  As far as how that impacts my brewing, it means no more carharts and boots for brew days.  It means breaking out the back yard hose for colling instead of snow.  All good stuff.

As far as embracing spring, I would like to use the nice weather to brew in the evenings a few times this summer.  A lot of my neighbors have shown an interest in brewing and I would like to get them involved.  Brewing in the evening will be a more social time to brew and have a few brews.

Thats it for now.  Cheers.

A while back I brewed a Belgian Abby ale that I called The First Tuesday after the First Monday Abby Ale.  The original was an extract brew that I was really pleased with.  Now that I have a little lag time in between large volume brews, I figured I would try a 5 or 10 gallon abby again. 

In line with coming up with a good brew, I want to do some tasting to decide what I want out of my Dubbel.  This brewing in hard stuff.

Anyway, since Wegmans is pimping out with a huge beer selection I figured I would hit them up for an Dubbel I hadn’t tried before.  This is Val-Dieu Brune, an authentic Belgian Dubbel that gets much BA love.  I have also been doing some other tastings of Dubbel’s in the past few months so I had a lot to think about with this new Val-Dieu.

The nose had hits of brandy with sweet nutty aromas.  The color was lighter than both the New Belgium and the Ommegang with hues of red matching the traditional mahogany.  The mouth feel of this brew was less intense than many of the other bottle conditioned brews.  It was light, sweet and had a creamy feel going down.  The flavor was a lot more mellow then some of the other Dubbel’s I’ve had.  There were hints of smokiness in the flavor that blended well with the traditional raisin sweet candy of the Dubbel’s profile.  There was little or no alcohol burn going down on this one.  Very easy to drink for a beer this big.

In the big picture of things, I would say that this is close to what I want to hit.  I want something a little less big and bold than the Ommegang, but I also want to drink a Dubbel when I go to drink a dubbel.  However, I would not add the smokey earthiness that the Val-Dieu.

More to come on the recipe with this one…Cheers.