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How to Brew Sweet Vanilla Sack Mead

January 2, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

New year means new brew. The brew kettle is all sanitized and ready to boil here at Gray Breweries, and it is just a matter of what is going into my big ol’ white buckets first.

Last year I had several dreams that coalesced into waking recipes: a traditional British Pale Ale with caramel as a finishing sugar, a first attempt at a noble hopped Pilsner, and several fruit and spice variations of sweet mead. I bought 10 pounds of Vienna Pilsner malt, all five noble hops, and some Budejovice lager yeast in support of my first ever all-grain beer. I’ve also had 15 pounds of white clover honey taking up precious shelf space in my brewing cabinet.

Personal laziness dictated which to brew first. I can’t do an all-grain beer yet, as I haven’t completed my home made mash tun (stayed tuned for that adventure in a future post). Sparging is pretty difficult without a mash tun, so merry mead making it is for me!

I guess 2013 is to be the year of sweet, sweet honey wine.

Things you’ll need:

Honey (lots of it – 15-20 pounds of white clover, but orange blossom is permissable)
Water (4-5 gallons of spring water)
Fresh vanilla beans (3-4 bourbon, Mexican, or Madagascar beans, depending on taste)
Good vodka (I used Stoli, but anything not in a plastic bottle should work)
Sweet wine yeast (I used WLP720 Sweet Mead/Wine, but something like Yeastlab Sweet Mead yeast M62 could work, too)

Grade A or Grade get-the-hell-out-of-here.

Step 1: Infuse!

Let’s do the easy part first. Using a good, sharp, elvish blade, slice your vanilla beans lengthwise, then chop them into three or four pieces (depending on length). Once they’re all nice and split, drop them into the vodka. It will take a while for the vanilla to seep into the vodka and create an infusion, so just seal your jar or bottle and set it aside. By the time you’re ready to rack your mead, you should also have some delicious home made vanilla extract, too!

Do not be tempted to take the shortcut down the well-worn path of store-bought vanilla extract. The preservatives in the baking stuff can completely ruin the flavors of your honey, which might result in five gallons of something tragically unpalatable.

Word to the wise: no matter how good the beans smell while you’re cutting them, do not eat them. They do not taste like you’d think (or hope) they would. They’re actually sort of sour. Weird.

It takes about 3 weeks for the beans to fully vanilla-fy the vodka.

Step 2: Stir and Sanitize!

Traditional sweet mead is incredibly simple. Honey, water, yeast. Nothing else. Nothing fancy.

But with great simplicity comes great responsibility. You need to be attentive when adding your honey and sanitizing your must, as it is the most crucial step to making good mead. Anything that touches your water or your honey needs to be sterilized (seriously, everything). You have to keep stirring to make sure no honey settles on the bottom of your pot and scorches.

Every time honey gets scorched, a viking in Valhalla sobers up.

Note: Honey takes up a deceptively large amount of volume. Roughly 10.67 fluid ounces per pound, for anyone trying to do math and stuff. Be sure to leave enough room in your boil pot to allow for all that yellow sugary joy. I started with three gallons, just to be safe. You can always add more water after the must is sanitized to make up the difference.

Once the water has reached ~130 degrees or hotter, you can start to add your honey. You don’t want to add it much earlier, or it will pool on the bottom like a lazy salamander. Or something. You’ll want to add all the honey and then let the entire must get up to at least 160-170 degrees for 15 minutes to make sure it is free from any unwanted yeasts or sneaky mead-ruining bacteria.

Honey by any other name would taste just as sweet.

Step 3: Keep stirring!

You need to make sure the mixture homogenizes, so keep stirring aggressively. The pre-mead will develop a thick, white froth. This is normal. And awesome.

The mixture should turn a dandelion yellow and smell intoxicatingly decadent. Honey is probably the best thing ever. Probably.

Don’t forget to re-sterilize your stirring spoon if you leave it out for too long, or if it touches those gross kitchen counters of yours.

I’m like one of those cappuccino artists, except with booze.

Step 4: Cool and Pitch!

After its relaxing, stress-relieving hot tub, you’ll need to cool the must down before you pitch any yeast. Too hot and the yeast will burn to death and die horribly, too cold and they’ll go into hypothermic hibernation.

I’m in the process of making a brass coil wort/must cooler (apparently I have a lot of half-finished projects), but until it’s done, I’m using the classic “fill the kitchen sink with a crap load of ice and promise your wife it will only be in there for an hour, tops.”

Four hours later, your must will probably be the appropriate 70-75 degrees needed to pitch the yeast.

I highly recommend investing in an infrared thermometer if you plan to brew often. It saves having to sterilize a normal thermometer over and over again to take readings, and is fun to shoot around the house like you’re an Imperial Stormtrooper.

I use liquid yeast as it saves having to rehydrate dry yeast and create a starter, which I’ve never had much success with. It’s a little pricier, but I’d rather have something that works on the first try, to prevent the headaches of the second, third, and fourth tries.

Use a large spoon (sterilized!) to create a maelstrom in the middle of your mead and then pour the liquid yeast into the center of the honey storm. Stir once again in the opposite direction to fully aerate your yellow brew.

If you shake this vigorously then try to uncap it with your teeth, it may explode in your mouth, which is generally unpleasant.

Step 5: Wait!

So you’re all like, “OK great, but you promised me vanilla!”

I know. Patience is a virtue and all that.

From my research, adding vanilla beans directly to the fermenting must can lead to all sorts of problems including stuck fermentation and off-flavors. It is also possible to over vanilla your mead(I know, I didn’t think that was even possible either), and by chucking some beans in you lose all control over how much flavor you have in the final product.

When fermentation slows and you are ready to rack the mead into the secondary vessel (probably after a few weeks in primary), then you can add your home made extract. Go slow and only add a little bit of a time, sampling every week until you reach the desired balance of honey and vanilla.

In four to six months, you should have a very sweet, very smooth mead ready for drinking, sharing, and toasting! Cheers!

How to be Critical

December 21, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

Despite the fact that I review things, I don’t like to be called a critic. The term alone implies something negative, and I find that the most common form of criticism is the non-constructive type. I’ve always associated the role of the critic with destruction and malice and soulless judgement.

It has taken years, but I’ve learned to (mostly) treat other people’s hard work gently. I used to swell with red-faced rage over mistakes and faults in things that I thought were elementary and inexcusable, without thinking about who the creator was or what they might have been thinking while they were working. But now that I’ve spent some time actually creating things that require time and energy and love, I realize that mistakes happen, people will disagree, and that taste in art as a whole is probably the single most subjective thing on Earth.

Scott’s honest post over at beerbecue proved that there are others like me out there; those who are able to appreciate the good in things without getting sucked into the quicksand of what we’re all told we’re supposed to feel about things. Who cares if a beer is craft or not, if it’s good? Who cares if the budget of a movie was $20,000 or $20,000,000, if the end product is entertaining?

Lots of people, apparently.

The internet has given everyone a voice. This is probably the best and worse thing to happen in the history of the world. Anyone with a computer and access to a coffee shop is free to say whatever the hell they want, whenever they want.

Freedom of speech is amazing, right?

Sure. But there are almost no guidelines about what can be said (at least in America) and very few ramifications for spewing off uneducated, misinformed nonsense. Short of being banned from a forum or facing the vitriol of internet intangibles like 4Chan and Reddit, the anonymity filter lets anyone say anything without fear of meaningful reprisal.

It’s all because being a critic on the internet is easy. It requires only the most basic of passive involvement: eating food, drinking beer, staring at a movie screen for two hours, things people are going to do anyway. It doesn’t require the person doing the critiquing to actually research anything or suffer the exhaustion of creative toil. They just say how they felt about it, good or bad.

I’m not suggesting that people shouldn’t have opinions. Nor am I saying that people should throttle their convictions. Cultural progress comes from compromise and learning about (and from) the people you don’t agree with. I encourage people to stand up for what they believe in and express themselves when appropriate.

But there is a big difference between saying you don’t like something or that you disagree, and authoritatively saying something is bad or wrong.

To claim something is “bad” is objective. There are definitely things that are decidedly bad out there, but after a point, art crosses a threshold where it isn’t objectively bad, and is only bad in the eyes of the person experiencing it.To make an objective argument, you have to have some sort of established, agreed-upon guidelines for determining the quality of the thing, and the personal authority to back up your assertion.

It’s the difference between some random person on Facebook who reads 1.75 books a year and has never written anything longer than a 140-character tweet spouting the same old, “Twilight is poopy!” and say, Stephen King, saying the same thing.

It may not have been very nice of him to say, but that doesn’t matter. He made a call based on what the literary world has come to accept is “good” writing, and supported it with his own reputation as a successful writer. While others may disagree, he makes a completely valid objective argument.

The person who makes the same claim on Facebook is expressing their subjective opinion and has roughly the same credibility as a grapefruit. They are completely welcome to their opinion. The problem is, in a lot of cases, they expect to be taken seriously.

I’ve brewed ~120 gallons of my own beer and tried ~250 varieties of other people’s beer. That’s a lot to me, given my other preoccupations and the fact that the beer thing isn’t my full time career. And yet, I still don’t consider myself a reliable beer critic. The amount I’ve brewed is 2% of what a brewery like Sam Adams makes every single day. There are tens of thousands of beers to try, so my scant 250 is nothing but the first hammer blow on the first spike of a new trans-continental railroad of beer drinking.

I’m still a whelp. A fledgling. A greenhorn of green hops.

And I’m totally OK with that.

You should be too.

So keep writing your reviews and expressing your opinions. Just realize that your criticism, for a long while, will be subjective. Open to debate. Simultaneously both right and wrong. Given the infinite mosaic of experiences that create our personalities and make up our lives, chances are your personal interpretation will be exactly that.

Socrates said, “The more I learn, the more I learn how little I know.” If you think you know something definitively, you probably haven’t turned that mental corner in the library of your mind and seen the massive freakin’ bookshelf of shit you didn’t even know you didn’t know. When you do, revisit your opinions. Remember how sure you were about certain things, and remind yourself that other people feel that way too.

“Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots.” -Frank A. Clark

How to be a Guest on a Podcast

December 10, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

I love trying new things so much that last week I did my first ever podcast with Josh Fortunatus over at Thoughts Weigh Heavy.

I’d never considered doing a podcast which may or may not have been directly related to never having been asked to do a podcast.

Come hear me make sweeping generalizations and bold, unsupported statements about beer tasting and what makes good writing! Marvel at my ability to use the word “subjective” 12 times in one sentence! Be amazed at my comparison of beer and Mountain Dew!

If you’d like to put a voice to my words, you can check out the stream here (there’s also a picture of me drinking Bass and being overwhelmingly dapper):

Oliver on beer, writing, and time travel

If you find yourself in a situation where your pods are to be cast, I suggest the following:

Things you’ll need:
-A computer with Google Voice or a working telephone (required)
-Vocal chords and a brain (required)
-A list of talking points and or questions (optional)
-Your most conversational tone (optional)
-Beer (required)

1. Mentally Prepare

Podcasts are serious business, especially when you plan to talk about beer and writing and more beer. Be sure to lose sleep over what you’re going to say, and do your best to psyche yourself out by constantly second guessing why anyone would want to talk to you, never mind record it.

Double extra bonus points if you pre-write a script that you end up not using because it’s near impossible to script a casual conversation.

2. Be ready to answer quickly, without really considering whether the answer is right or wrong or insane

The worst possible thing you could do is sound vapid and vacant in the middle of your chat. To avoid this, when asked questions you’re not 100% sure how to answer, jump to conclusions. No one will call you out on it probably.

3. Be friendly and assertive and don’t swear at your host or say anything about your nervousness related gastric issues

Everyone will appreciate that.

4. Listen to the podcast before you share it and pray that your host was gracious with his editing

Smile and thank your host when he was gracious with his editing.

5. Have fun, be yourself

Because, well, what’s the point otherwise?

Josh released an album on September 4, titled “Raise D’etre.” You should check it out if you like good music and good people doing good things.

How to Make (Kind of) Traditional Perry

October 9, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

Perry : Pears :: Cider : Apples

Don’t you just love fruit and alcohol analogies presented using symbolic logic? I know I do. Oh, you don’t? Well this post ain’t gonna get any less logical. Or Symbolic. Or analogic. Yea, that last one isn’t a real word.

Some of you may remember that I made Pear Mead/Cider last year, and it turned out deliciously potent. The same generous lady who gave me a bucket-o-pears last year has given me a box-o-pears this year. I decided to do something a little different, foregoing the honey completely this time for a 100% fruit based beverage.

Last go-round, I juiced the pears using a food processor, which accidentally caused the fruit to prematurely oxidize, which I have since learned is a bad thing, which I have since learned should be avoided if you want your finished product to actually taste good, which I have since learned is an important characteristic of things people want to put into their mouths.

This go-round, I decided to get all Amish on the pears and crush them under the immense wooden weight of a manual fruit press!

I am fortunate to live very near Maryland Homebrew, who offer cider press rentals for a mere $15 for three days.

Note: A 50lb cider press does not fit into a Mini Cooper S very easily.

Paring pairs of pears in a press.

How to Brew Perry (Pear Cider)

Things you’ll need:

~30lbs of pears (ripe but not rotten, easily squishable with a strong grip)
A fermentation bucket (5 gallons or bigger, for best results)
A hammer (you’ll see why in a bit)
A cider press (to squish them there fruits)
A can opener (you’ll [also] see why in a bit)
A large mash pot (to catch the juice)
Cider or wine yeast (unless you want 5 gallons of pear juice instead of cider)
Campden Tablets (in case you need to stabilize your batch)
Beer! (or cider!)

Step 1: Mash up the pears

The kind and helpful staff at Maryland Homebrew suggested that I mash up my pears before trying to press them. Overestimating my Herculean strength and Odyssian ingenuity, I figured I could just use tools and brainpower to juice the pears without going through the trouble of turning them into pulp first.

As usual, I was wrong.

So, I hit them with a hammer.

Stop, hammer time, etc.

This is an incredibly messy and fun process. Just spread out a tarp (or a series of plastic bags) and smash them there pears like they are your work computer right after it crashes in the middle of that huge document you’ve been working on for 6 hours straight.

Hopefully the pears are ripe enough that a few good thwacks will turn them into pear-puree. If not, you’ll be hammering for a while. Have fun with that.

Once you’ve got a big soggy heap of pear parts, drop them in your press.

Science!

Step 2: Supplement

At this point, you’ll realize that you don’t really have enough pears for the amount of juice you wanted to make a 5 gallon batch of perry. Short of going to find a local pear tree, your options are limited. I opted to harness the power of the industrial-culinary complex, and bought cans and cans of pear, floating in 100% pear juice.

If you buy store-brand, you can usually get cans for ~$1 a piece, and they contain a pair of pears with about 10 ounces of juice.

Open them things up. You can use the hammer again if you want, but a can opener might be a little less dangerous. Pour the extra juice into your mash pot to add even more sugar for your hungry, hungry yeast.

Not as visceral as hammer-opened cans, but much more elegant.

Step 3: Juice!

Now you can finally set to juicing the pile of fruit you’ve got sitting out on your back deck, exposed to the air and bugs and falling acorns. The style of press I used had a ratcheting handle that attached to two half-circles of wood that applied consistent downward pressure on the fruit. It was surprisingly effective, but also very labor intensive. I sweat despite the chilly weather.

I was genuinely surprised at how much liquid came out of these pears. I collected nearly 2.5 gallons after I had pressed and mixed the pears three times. I added this to my fermentation bucket, but realized I still needed a lot more liquid to get a full 5 gallon batch.

Pressed Pear Cake, coming this fall to Martha Stewart Living.

Step 4: Supplement again!

Don’t add water to your juice to get the volume you want, this will only (shocker!) water down the flavors. Instead, you can either 1) add unpasteurized apple cider (often found in the produce aisle during the fall months) or 2) use 100% pear juice (often found in 32 ounces bottles in the baby food aisle). The prior has more sugar for your yeast but will obviously add some apple flavor to the final product, the second has been clarified which can impact the final flavor as well.

I split the difference and used a little bit of both. Once you’ve reach 5 gallons, toss in your yeast and seal the bucket. Unlike beer, the airlock may not bubble like a mad science experiment. Don’t worry if it doesn’t. Every few days peak inside the bucket to make sure the yeast looks like it is doing its thing. You’ll be able to tell by the gross brown sediment that lines the bucket as the yeast eats up all of the sugar.

Congratulations! You’ve now got a batch of 100% fruit perry that will be ready to drink in 4-6 weeks.

Note: If the batch smells a little odd, or really yeasty, you can toss a few campden tablets into the bucket to make sure no nasty bacteria ruin your hard work.

How to Brew Spiced Pumpkin Ale

September 6, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

I know not everyone likes pumpkin beer. But I do. A lot. Maybe to the point of obsession. Last year I went on an adventure to find and try as many new varieties of pumpkin brew I could find, which looked something like this:

-Dogfish Head Punkin Ale
-Bluemoon Harvest Moon
-Southern Tier’s Pumking
-Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale
-Wolaver’s Organic Pumpkin Ale
-Brooklyn Post Road Pumpkin Ale
-Harpoon UFO Pumpkin

And, being the kind of beer drinker I am, I loved all of them. I still argue that DFH Punkin Ale is my favorite, but at $7.99 for a 4 pack (and that’s shopping around quite a bit) I can’t justify buying much of it each year.

A few others are comparable in terms of pumpkin taste, but there is something about the spiciness of the Dogfish Head variant I love.

The spices make the beer warm and cozy. They remind me of a night outside in the woods with my buddies, telling stories, drinking beers, keeping the chilly winds of late October at a distance with a pillar of fire and the warmth of fun and cheer.

Being all overwhelmed by sentimentality, but also very cheap, I decided to try my hand at making a Punkin Ale clone, with a little bit of LitLib spice (read: unprofessionalism) dashed in for good measure.

How to Brew Spiced Pumpkin Ale:

The recipe isn’t straight forward, but it also isn’t difficult. There is a good amount of prep time because you have to cut up and roast the pumpkin before you even start your boil. The boil itself takes at least two hours, and cooling the wort can take a while if you’re not setup correctly, like me. Make sure to set at least a six hours aside if you want to do this right.

Drinking pumpkin beer while making pumpkin beer. A multi-generational experience!

Stuff you’ll need:
-Pumpkin (I used 10 lbs, which equals about 4 smallish pie-pumpkins once all cut up.)
-Butternut squash (these add to the pumpkin flavor, and tend to be more fragrant than pumpkin alone. I cut up two large gourds, about 3lbs each, and added it to my pumpkin.)
-Cracked Malt (I used 1lb of Vienna, 1/2lb of Crystal 20, and 1/2 lb of wheat. You could sub in any malt that blends well with an American ale, so feel free to be creative here.)
-Liquid Malt (I used 6.6lbs of liquid light malt extract. You could use anything you want here, but the amount of sugar is going to dictate your final ABV.)
-Hops (I used 1oz of Mt. Hood for the primary, as I wanted something to compliment my spices. I also used 1/2oz of hueller bittering hops right at the end of my boil. You could certainly change things up here if you wanted a less citrusy/less spicy final product)
-Yeast (I used a liquid American ale blend. Not a lot of give here if you’re making an ale.)
-Spices (This is where you can go crazy, or not very crazy. I used cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, ground cloves, vanilla, brown sugar, and a tiny bit of molasses. I wanted heavy, sweet, and hearty. You could leave any [or all of these] out and still have a nice, pumpkin flavored beer, but it would lack the things that make it taste like you’re drinking a liquefied pumpkin pie.)
-A big, sharp knife (seriously, butternut squash is no joke. It will make lesser blades look silly.)
-All of your brewing stuff (I won’t harp on [too much] about what you need to brew, as hopefully it is a given if you’re reading a brewing recipe.)
-Water (this is something I always forget when I collecting my ingredients, and it makes a big difference. Grab five gallons of filtered spring water. Any one who drinks your beer will thank you for starting with fresh, clean water.)
-Beer (I chose Harpoon UFO Pumpkin because it is really, really good.)

Step 1: Chop n’ Bake

Before we can even start our primary boil, we have to prepare the fruit. Gourds. Vegetables. Whatever the hell pumpkins and squash are. We’re going to roast everything in the oven for about an hour at 350 degrees, so get to preheating. While the oven slowly bakes itself, start cutting your gourds into manageable chunks. You want them to be small enough to bake quickly and fit into a muslin bag or cheesecloth.

Pumpkin = soft and easy to cut. Butternut Squash = made of solid titanium.

When you’re done, spread them out on a cookie sheet and add a bit of water to the bottom of the tray. I ended up having to use a shallow Pyrex container as well, because it turns out 10lbs of pumpkin and squash is a lot of fruit-flesh. If you’re going to use cinnamon, sprinkle a liberal amount onto the raw chunks before they go into the oven. If you’re not using cinnamon, don’t.

Completely full tray 2 of 2

Step 2: Bag n’ Boil

While the pumpkin roasts and fills your house with the delicious smells of autumn, you can start your primary boil. Fill a large stock pot with as much water as you can effectively cool down later.

Note: There is some debate in the home brew world about doing a partial boil (in which you boil as much as you can of the actual beer, then add water to reach the desired final quantity) or a full boil (in which you boil the full volume of the beer and don’t add any water afterwards). A full boil is usually preferred, but if you’re doing this in your home kitchen and don’t have access to a fancy wort cooler, you can’t really get away with boiling 5 gallons and cooling it quickly enough to pitch your yeast. That, and heating 5 gallons of liquid on an electric stove top takes approximately one epoch of time.

I did a 3 gallon boil, and saved another 2.5 gallons of water to add afterwards.

Place your pot on the stove and set the heat to high. While the water very, very, very slowly heats to a boil, put your cracked malt into a muslin bag. I dumped all of mine into one bag because I overestimated how many bags I had left in stock, but feel free to separate them to make them easier to dispose of when you’re finished. Drop the bag(s) into the pot of water. Let the flavors seep into the delicious pre-beer as the water reaches a boil.

Malt striation: a rarely seen beerological phenomenon.

By now, the timer on your oven should be letting you know that your pumpkin is hot and roasted. Remove the trays, forget that Pyrex gets very hot, burn your hands. After swearing and pressing the cold glass of your Harpoon UFO Pumpkin against your burn, transfer the newly roasted foodstuff to a muslin bag or large swath of cheese cloth. You’re going to put this into the pot with the malts, so you want it to be relatively contained by the cloth. If a few pieces escape, don’t freak out. You can always scoop them out.

Ever wanted to know what 10lbs of pumpkin looked like in 4yds of cheese cloth? No? Well, here’s a picture anyway.

Your setup should look something like this by now:

Appetizing!

Step 3: Sit n’ Sip

Now comes the idle part: waiting for the pot to boil. I heard that if you try to watch the pot boil, it never will. Seems crazy to me, but I’m not one mess with tradition. This is a great time to collect the spices for the next step, or just sit around watching a ba movie on SyFy, nursing your burn and breathing deeply the aromas of primordial beer that are filling your house. Your wife will tell you that it smells like breakfast cereal. Take that as a compliment.

It took about an hour and a half for my boil to get rolling. Once it’s there, remove the malt and pumpkin. They will hold onto a lot of delicious liquid, so do your best to press or drain the bags before you throw them in the trash. They’ll be scalding hot, so do your best not to add a trip to emergency room to this guide.

You can now pour in your liquid malt and add your Mt. Hood hops, sugar, and molasses. Even though the mixture is boiling, be sure to give it a good hearty stir (with a sterilized spoon) to make sure none of the malt sticks to the sides or bottom. Stuck malt can lead to scorching which can leading to burnt taste which can lead to “gross beer face.” Nobody likes burnt beer, not even me.

Sundry supplies supplement spicy suds.

More sitting and waiting. You want to let the whole concoction boil for about an hour, so set your timer accordingly. After 45 minutes, you can add your bittering hops. At the end of the hour, add your other spices and vanilla.

Your final product (sans yeast) should look something like this:

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

Step 4: Cool n’ Drool

This next step is arguably the trickiest; you have to cool your work down to ~75 degrees as quickly as reasonable so that you can pitch your yeast. Letting the beer sit around and cool works in theory, but it can also lead to the unwanted creation of sulfurous compounds that make your beer taste all funky-like.

An ice bath is the easiest solution. I tried a rapid cool-down by adding the rest of my water (slightly chilled) but it didn’t work as well as hoped. To cool it down even more, I used my kitchen sink (with the wife’s permission, of course) as a beer bath. You can do the same, just make sure you have enough ice on hand to keep the bath cold.

I didn’t have enough ice. I used frozen 2 liter bottles of water instead. Ingenuity!

I mean, it’s still ice, it’s just not in cube form. Think outside the cube.

Every fifteen minutes or so check the temperature of your wort. You can use a cooking thermometer, but be sure to keep it clean, as you don’t want to contaminate your beer.

Or, if you’re a DIY dork and IT nerd like me, use your infrared laser thermometer to check the temperature. It’s hyper-sanitary, and the cats love it.

I freakin’ love this thing. I use it to take temperatures of literally everything. The inside of my mouth, the cat’s butt, the list never ends.

You’re almost done! Once the wort is sub-80 degrees (or so) you can pitch your yeast. Any higher temperature and the heat might kill the yeast, so don’t rush it.

You’ll also want to make sure the wort is aerated appropriately, so give it a nice big stir just before you pour in your liquid yeast.

Yeast: it turns brown sugar water into beer.

Now, seal your bucket, add an airlock, and put it in a nice, darkish corner to ferment. Primary fermentation should start in 6-24 hours. If you hear crazy fast bubbling, you’re in business. If you don’t, you did something wrong. Repeat steps 1-4 and do better this time.

This is what your airlock should look like ~15 hour after you add the yeast: Bubbles!

I’ll post again when it’s ready for kegging and I can tell you what it actually tastes like. For now, fingers crossed.

Happy fall!

How to Disagree

September 1, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

This is one of the few times you’ll ever see me coming close to considering thinking about maybe talking about something political. It’s one of those topics from which I respectfully abstain, simply to maintain my sanity and calm demeanor. Before anyone gets all frothy-at-the-mouthy, please note that this is an article about arguments and rhetoric, not conservatism and liberalism.

I am part of a mortally wounded breed known as politically “neutral.” I’m just as frustrated/confused/disgusted by what both dominant parties say, but I also see some merit in the basics of their overall arguments. Both sides occasionally makes good points, both sides have something to bring to the table, and both sides lie and cheat and manipulate when it serves them best. I know that an ambivalent voter is kind of pointless, but…meh. I spent my developmental years unable to vote (green card, holla!) which made my apathy towards the entire system grow strong and calloused as I couldn’t even have participated if I had wanted to.

My issue is not that we’re currently in a moment of history where everyone disagrees with everything anyone says. That’s not new. Humans are built to disagree; it’s the same principle at work that makes dogs chase cats, why we have a bipartisan system, and why Bristol Palin no longer has a reality TV show.

We’re supposed to disagree. It’s good for progress.

We’d still be drawing Ptolemaic spheres with Earth at the center if not for disagreement. We’d still be sailing our ships off the edge of a flat world. We’d still be in the dark ages if the countless scientists and engineers in our history hadn’t had the balls to disagree with the status quo.

But based on the conversations that flood the media, I worry that we as Americans have forgotten how to disagree. All I see is wild accusation, defensive counter-attacks, and snide territorialism over who knows what and what is therefore right.

The structure of a traditional civil argument should be:

Person 1: “I believe marshmallows should be removed from Rocky Road ice cream because they freeze and get hard which ruins the eating experience. Here is some well researched data and some testimonials from others who have experienced this to support my argument.”

Person 2: “While I understand your issue with the marshmallows, removing them would effectively destroy the identity of Rocky Road ice cream. It would be like removing the almonds, or changing the ice cream flavor to vanilla. I will review your research and consider your point, but perhaps what would be best is to introduce a new flavor entirely, with a new name, that doesn’t have marshmallows.”

And then they might go back and forth making compromises until both parties were satisfied. It might take a while and people might get frustrated at points, but with mutual respect an outcome would be reached.

Conversely, modern disagreements look startlingly more like this:

Person 1: “I believe marshmallows should be removed from Rocky Road ice cream because…”

Person 2: “Fuck you! Why do you hate ice cream! Hey everyone, this guy hates ice cream!”

Then the first person gets equally belligerent, and what could have been a nice conversation boils down into a petty show of mudslinging and name calling that goes nowhere and accomplishes nothing. These types of arguments serve one purpose: to pour ants into the pants of the voting bodies using purely emotional appeals.

Anyone who has studied rhetoric know that Aristotle was the man. He believed an argument could be based on three types of appeals: logos (logic), pathos (emotions), and ethos (ethics). The perfect argument contained all of these appeals, which the listener could associate with and ultimately choose the side that made the most sense to them using all of their most powerful brain parts.

If we apply the Aristotelian Appeals to the current political campaigns, we see that the Republicans are predominantly (read: only) using pathos in their arguments, as most of what they say is an appeal to how people “feel” about a certain situation. They know their supporters well; they are driven by tradition, quick to anger, and resistant to change. They don’t mind lying (which violates ethos and logos) as long as it hits that emotional chord with enough force to move their voters into action.

Democrats on the other hand, base their arguments solely on ethos, using tactics that make their opponents look bad from an ethics stand point. They can’t shut up about Bain Capital, Romney’s tax records, or which men really don’t understand how the female body works. While these arguments might have some merit, they are quick to ignore context and any logic, in hope that their voters will be ethically disgusted enough to get out and vote.

That leaves poor logos all sad in a corner at the party, sipping on a Mai Tai, staring at the floor. Ethos and Pathos found their buddies and wandered off to dance. They just ditched logos. And that should really piss you off, as an American citizen.

Why?

Because it suggests that those in charge of our political systems don’t think you as a voter are smart enough to understand a logical discussion of facts, economics, law, and policy. And maybe you’re not, but in the current system, you’re not even given the chance to learn. They’d rather you act on emotions or ethics than logic, because with logic, we might actually learn something, and realize that the whole system is fundamentally fuster-clucked.

I know I can’t change much. I’m just one guy with a keyboard who loves studying the history of persuasion. But I can ask that we all take some time to relearn how to disagree. If you want someone to listen to your side, you have to be willing to listen to theirs. As hard as it may be to accept that there are people out there who are fundamentally different from you, it’s true.

Your life experience is a tiny piece of a massive world and a gargantuan universe. No one sees and understands things exactly the way you do; your time on this planet is as unique as your finger print. Remember that the next time you are so sure you’re right and have it all figured out.

Appreciate the other side. Be part of a conversation, not a yelling contest.

Look, this isn’t an argument.
Yes it is!
No, it’s just a contradiction!
No it isn’t!

How to Ireland: Dining

August 28, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

(Before we start, I’m forcing myself to do some PR. I’ve made a Facebook page for this here blog, so feel free to “Like” it if you prefer to get your updates through that medium for whatever reason: LitLib on Facebook! I also have a Twitter profile that I thoroughly neglect @OliverJGray)

Ireland is like a small East Coast fishing town. Paint peels from wood from overexposure to salt air, there is a subtle quaintness to the tininess of the houses, and every business in the entire place shuts down around 9:00 PM.

Well, the pubs stay open, but those don’t count.

Due to a slight logistics explosion, our first day in Ireland was set back roughly six hours. We had planned to pick up our rental car and careen into Kilkenny around 1:00 PM Irish time, but a delayed train and missed flight had us pulling into the hotel around 7:45 instead.

We checked in, dropped off our gear, and sat around for a few minutes, trying to shake the travel dust from our shoulders. It’s pretty hard to keep up the international kickassery after 36 hours of being awake, in a completely different time zone, after hurtling through the air at 505 MPH next to a demented clown-woman, but we tried anyway.

We got back into the car and drove to the heart of Kilkenny; an awesome Irish town with brightly colored row houses, a decidedly European bridge smack in the center of town, and a nearly 900 year old castle looming on a nearby bluff. After fighting with some locals for a place to park, we got out and sauntered around like tourists will do; giggling at the accents, remarking on the obvious cultural differences, and pining after pints of Guinness and Bulmers.

Kilkenny by day.

We were in no rush. Drunk on wanderlust, we were happy to finally be together on our honeymoon, and happy to just enjoy the lively Sunday evening. Kilkenny had beaten long standing rivals Tipperary in the All Ireland Senior Hurling semi-finals match earlier that day, and the town was awash in mirth and merriment. Every pub we passed was overflowing with music and loud patrons, despite it getting later and later on a work night.

Tiff and I wandered down a side street that had Chinese-style stringed flags hanging over head, each one decorated with a carp or a flower. All I could smell was beer and cigarette smoke, which was oddly welcoming. When we finally decided our stomachs were too hungry to ignore, we popped into one of the less rowdy pubs, Kyteler’s Inn, that had a delicious sounding menu scribbled in mutli-colored chalk just outside the door.

This inn is supposedly haunted, but we didn’t see any ghosts. Next time, I guess.

But as we sat down, the waitress informed us that the kitchen was closed. We were free to get drinks and take a seat wherever, but food wasn’t going to happen. We thanked her and tried another place.

Then another.

After five restaurants, we began to realize that kitchens close early in Ireland. By 10:00, we had resigned ourselves to eating Lion Bars and Tatyo brand Cheese and Onion crisps in our hotel room for dinner.

Fortunately, on the way home, we found a Turkish Kebab restaurant that was still open, and was more than happy to serve us massive portions of doner, salad, and pita bread. I’m not sure if it was the hunger or just really good kebab…but it was the best meal I’ve had in a long time. We even had to pull the typical American move and take some home with us.

This night set the tone for the rest of our trip. We spent most of the day out having grand adventures, only to be rushing to any place we could find, praying their kitchens were still open.

If you decide to eat while you’re vacationing in Ireland, be aware of the following:

1. There are pubs and bars, but they aren’t always the same thing. Pubs sell food, but only until about 10:00 PM, and that’s on the extreme end. Bars typically only sell alcohol (you may find a bowl of nuts if you’re lucky).
2. Most normal restaurants serve meals between certain hours (like dinner between 6:00 PM and 9:00 PM); there are no Applebees or 24 hour fast food restaurants like the ones that kept you alive during your college binge-drinking years.
3. There are no hostesses. Do not go into a restaurant and assume that someone will lead you to your seat like an elementary school teacher leading a recess line. Seat yourself. A bar back or other employee will notice you, so don’t worry.
4. Menu items are not always available all day. You may find that a pub only serves sandwiches at lunch time. Deal with it. Nothing is worse than a confused, whiny American asking for Bangers and Mash at 8:43 PM after drinking four pints of Beamish.
5. Fast food is almost non-existent. You may stumble upon a Subway or a McDonald’s, but who wants to eat that garbage anyway? Ireland doesn’t have fast food, because there is no slow food. Menus will inform you and apologize if a certain dish will take 15 minutes to get to you. You’ll get your food fast, wherever you eat.
6. Tipping is not required. It’s kind of the way tipping should be, if the American restaurant industry hadn’t ruined the whole thing by paying their servers slave wages and making them rely on tips for sustenance. You can tip if you thought the service was especially good, quick, or friendly. Otherwise, there would be no harm in paying what you owe and saying thank you.

The good news is that almost all of the food we had was excellent. We may have been lucky in choosing our places to eat, but I liked everything I ordered, and only felt it was overpriced on one or two occasions.

So, eat, drink, be merry. Also remember pulling a real pint of Guinness takes about ~5 minutes, so make sure to order your second before you’re done with your first.

Blaa blaa blaa sandwiches are soooo blasé. Ba dum ching.

How to Ireland: Driving

August 25, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

As some of you astute readers may have gathered, I was out of the country last week. I was going to announce my trip, but I just ran out of serviceable brain hours.

Four months after the wedding and one grad-school semester later, my beautiful wife and I went on our honeymoon. We decided to forgo the stark ordinariness of a tropical vacation or a cruise, and decided to pay homage to both of our bloodline heritages by visiting Ireland. The plan for our trip was basically to get to the island, rent a car, and see what happened next. Everything went as to that plan as can be expected of a plan that lacks so much of the essential planning of a plan.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be chronicling (in chronological order, of course) our adventure. There will be much hyperbole, exaggeration, and Guinness.

For the official record: I love Lonely Planet. Their guides are well written, their website is great for wasting random chunks of time, and they take articles from freelance writers (for all you travel writers out there). But as much page-by-page kickassery as they do have, they lack certain local knowledge; things that are often taken for granted or just left out in place of directions to and descriptions of the most touristy of landmarks. We used a Lonely Planet guide as a primer to the places we stopped. It was good, but not great.

It lacked the real stuff I needed to know. The stuff that is right in front of you, but somehow overlooked. Etiquette, etc.

To aid my fellow travelers, I offer the follow general information to make your transition into an Irish vacation a little less harrowing.

Driving:

The obvious thing to note is: in Ireland, like the UK, you drive on the left side of the road. While this may seem obvious, it is far from intuitive, and in practice is a ridiculous challenge of mental dexterity. This doesn’t just mean you cruise in the left lane and hope for the best, there are dozens of nuances and idiosyncrasies that go along with switching sides. I consider myself a pretty sharp dude, and I drive in some of the worst traffic in the country every day, and I still nearly crashed into anything and everything as soon as I got behind the wheel in Dublin.

You can turn left on a red, and into the near lane. The first time you do this, you will probably scream like a little girl, in fear that you’re intentionally driving headlong into oncoming traffic. After about four hundred left turns, it gets slightly better.

Near everything is switched: all of the freeway exits are on the left, you need a filter to turn right at a light, and even the windshield wipers go the opposite direction. The slow lane is the left lane and is also has the right-of-way. Mix this with jet-lag and road signs in Irish Gaelic and you’ve got a recipe for “Fear and Confusion Driving Muffins.”

If you lack foresight (like me), you’ll assume that driving stick in Ireland is just like driving stick in the US. Wrong. While the pedal configuration is the same, you have to shift with your left hand. If you’re left handed, this may be a godsend. But if you lack the gift of the southpaw, this is as easy as swinging a baseball bat on your opposite side, or signing your name with your off hand. You’ll be slamming your hand into the dashboard and parking brake more often than not, as your mentally challenged left hand tries to develop some modicum of skill.

Once you’re able to actually move the car without fear of instant death, there are myriad other oddities that you must overcome to drive in Ireland. For example:

They claim that a single lane is a two lane road.

Ireland does have a few large roads, but once you’re off the main “M” designated motorways, your only option it to brave the tiny isthmuses of pavement cut into the otherwise uninterrupted hedge-maze that is Ireland. To say these roads are small is like saying the Moon is a grapefruit. They were clearly made for horses (or horse type creatures) and were only recently adopted by cars.

There are no shoulders to speak of, only thickets that are as deep as they are tall. If you’re caught having to pass a tour bus (yes, these spaghetti noodle roads often have two-way traffic consisting of work trucks, double-decker passenger buses, and massive hay gathering vehicles) your only option is push your tiny car as far into the hedge as possible without actually driving inside of the hedge. On more than one occasion, my wife got too all-too-close a view of the Buxus Sempervirens in her passenger side window.

Native Irish drivers seem to have no problem hurtling like drunken rugby players through these tiny streets, and will pass you if you’re doing more than ~30 kmph under the limit. Almost all of the roads allow for passing when safe, so if you’re stuck behind a 1991 Volkswagen Polo that has seen more rust than repair, feel free to downshift and pass him, but preferably not on a blind turn.

The speed limits themselves are also surprisingly high; you’ll often find speed limits of 100km (~62mph) on roads no wider than a McDonald’s drive-through. There are very few police officers lurking around bends, but the government has installed hundreds of “safety cameras” that can and will take a picture of your three-cylinder Seat Ibiza doing 140km in a 120km limit. On the freeways, the limits climb quickly from 50 to 80 to 100 to 120kmph (74mph). Unlike in the US, where people will sit in the left hand lane doing 55mph with their turn signal on, drivers in Ireland are courteous and structured. If you’re going too slow in the right hand lane, they will flash their lights at you, and they will be pissed if you don’t get into the the slow lane to let them pass.

The traffic lights are almost never overhead, but instead on the sides of the road. If you’re still trying to figure out which lane traffic is going or coming from, it is easy to overlook them. I suggest having your wife scream, “RED LIGHT” when you have clearly not seen one. It saves embarrassment and insurance deductibles.

When you start your trip, you’ll want to stop and take pictures of every ruined castle, church, or tower you see. They are pretty freakin’ cool. But don’t waste your time. There are as many awesome, ancient ruins in Ireland as there are Starbucks in the US. You’ll have more than enough photo-ops with old-stone and ivy, so just keep the pedal down.

Take your time when you get your rental car to figure out how everything works, where reverse is in the gearbox, and when and how you turn when on the opposite side of the road. Do yourself a huge favor and don’t cheap out on the 5 Euro-a-day GPS unit; it will save your life when you get lost on the Dingle Peninsula after randomly following signs towards some local castle.

And lastly, but oh so not least importantly: buy the full coverage insurance. I made it out OK, but there were a few times when I thought we were going to be returning half of an Ibiza, as the other half was stuck to the front of a CIE Tour Bus.

Yea, this is a TWO LANE ROAD.

How to Survive a Transatlantic Flight When You’re Stuck Next to a Certifiably Insane Woman

August 19, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

After a hellish layover, you are really looking forward to cramming your ass into a Delta economy seat for six plus hours. You’ve been up since 4 AM local time, and want nothing more than to eat your meagerly portioned vegetarian lasagna in peace.

You trudge down the aisle towards your seat: 34G. It’s the window, which you like, since you can watch the patchwork of farms and suburbs shrink as you leave and grow as you arrive. You can also rest your head against the bulkhead in hopes of pulling down some much needed unconsciousness.

But sitting in your seat is another. She looks like a skeleton who got into a Maybelline factory and just went nuts. Her eyes are huge and wild, never blinking, and her overly sticked lips are cracked and dry.

“Hi, I’m 34G.”

“OK. Guess that means we’re together.” She makes direct eye contact with you. You know this is going to be bad.

She seems completely content with staying in your seat, so you take the aisle instead. It’s not ideal, but best not to start the flight with some petty drama over a seat. As you sit down and remove your coat, bending down to shove it uncerimonious underneath the seat in front of you, you notice the smell. Cheap au de toilette and the unmistakable smell of aloe vera and lidocaine.

Before you’ve even taken off your hat, she asks what you do for a living.

“I’m a writer.” You try to keep the conversation terse, as you’re exhausted and not feeling particularly chatty.

“I am a scientist.” Her voice is harpy-like, tainted by the cringe inducing elements of a thick, Minnesota accent.

“OK.” You look down, fumbling for something to serve as a distraction.

She proceeds to tell you that not only is she a scientist, but she is a bionanotechnologist. You nod. Her eyes flash with eccentricity bordering on full blown insanity. She explains that she is working on something that will “literally change the face of science” but no one respects her findings because she’s a woman. She tells you for the first of about thirty times during the flight that she is fifty-two years old.

She promises to show you her data via a PowerPoint after she’s gone to the bathroom. You politely decline, but she demands you see, as it is apparently very important. As she gets up, you notice her outfit for the first time; a saggy white tank top with the word “Cardio” in bright pink, written in stylized characters. Her ill-fitted yoga pants match.

The woman across the aisle shoots you a sympathetic look. You look around in a panic for a free seat, but this appears to be a full flight. You’re stuck next to the nanobiotecnolometerologist for the next six hours, and there ain’t shit you can do about it.

When she returns, she doesn’t give you a chance to stand up, and instead awkwardly squeezes by you, forcing your laptop up into your face. She sits down and rummages in her bag, pulling out dozens upon dozens of tiny bottles, all filled with unidentified liquids. You are pretty sure she shouldn’t have gotten through security with all of that, but you say nothing.

She proceeds to slather green aloe vera gel all over her shoulders. Before you can ask, she leans in closer than appropriate and proceeds to show you the soft tissue sarcoma that has blown a crater into her shoulder. She is applying the aloe vera to combat the targeted radiation she had that morning and tells you that it is like the worst sunburn you can imagine. You pray for deliverance or death, whichever comes first.

She doesn’t stop talking. After she orders her first glass of pinot grigo, she starts swearing profusely, claiming that, “we’re all fucked” and “don’t even know that we’re fucked.” She also manages to casually slip in several blanket racial slurs, mainly directed at the “dirty” Russians and the “scheming” Chinese.

By now, she has pulled out her MacBook; a filthy thing with more specs of crap on the screen than you’ve ever seen. She has sticky notes stuck on either side of her touchpad; the are penned in some arcane language, or at least by someone who doesn’t understand how to communicate with other humans.

As she goes through slide after slide after slide after slide, of images of metastasised mouse tumors, she points out how her sub 50 nanometer biocapsule is the solution to every problem in the world, including cancer, heart disease, and somehow, Downs Syndrome. She gets to a slide with human test samples, which she not-so-subtly mentions came from her living tissue. She also let’s you know in disgusting detail how she has injected herself with her own, unproven, untested nanocapsules, and that, “they totally worked.”

The technology she is describing is actually sort of fascinating, so you start to write it down in your notebook. You’re thinking, “maybe I can get a bitchin’ SciFi story out of this torment.” She eyes your journal suspiciously and asks if you’ve ever been to Iran. You say no and stare at her blankly. In the dim cabin of the C767-300ER, her crumpled, thin hair makes her look like an extra from Hellraiser.

When the horrific nightmare that is the sub-50 nanocapsule presentation is over, she finally asks why you’re travelling. You explain that you are on your way to meet your wife for an adventure in Ireland. An Emerald Isle Honeymoon, if she will. She won’t. She tells you she is going to meet her younger sister, if the plane doesn’t crash into the middle of the Atlantic while we’re all asleep.

With no conversational transition, she tells you how her marriage has been destroyed because she’s going to be dead in a few years, and how it is important that you and your significant other “test” your relationship by going through some physical hardship. I bite my tongue to keep from suggesting that perhaps her unbridled maniacal monomania might possibly kind of sorta have something to do with her problems.

You’ve tried everything at this point to politely get her to shut the fuck up. When you pull out your Nintendo DS to appear otherwise occupied, she tells you that she is old enough to be your mother, and that video games are “a fucking waste of time.” She tries to read to you from her “Hinduism for Dummies” book. You can’t decide which would be easier: killing her or killing yourself.

The next three hours are like a fever dream; she mentions that she is an incest survivor (you can only guess what that means, and that guess is terrifying), slaps you on the thigh with her emaciated arm at one point after she tells a joke, and explains how she shouldn’t really be running a $100,000 chemistry lab in her basement and injecting her cats with experimental drugs, but the EPA doesn’t give a big enough shit to do anything about it.

Every time you try to fall asleep, she leans in and says something completely asinine like, “think we’re still over the water?”

When skeletor asks you what all those green things lining the outsides of the farms are, use one or two word responses, and feign (or just give into) exhaustion. Keep responding to keep her looking out the window.

“Trees.”

“Soccer field.”

“Rocks.”

“Runway.”

When the plane finally lands, grab your things, and start talking to the couple behind you. Doesn’t matter what you talk about, just talk.

Bolt for customs. Prey some unnatural evil doesn’t give her strength. Clear customs, escape into the wilds of Ireland, bereft of sanity, haunted by the smell of Banana Boat after burn lotion and poorly applied lipstick.

Appropriate picture from the trip is appropriate.

How to Get A Free Beer at the Airport

August 18, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

Everyone knows that airport beer is expensive and of dubious age/quality.

Why pay retail? Follow these ten simple steps to free beer euphoria time:

1) Plan your trip so that you have a monstrous layover. Twelve to fourteen hours should do.
2) Find the sports bar in your arrival terminal (there WILL be a sports bar).
3) Order a Bass Pale Ale (or similar commercially available ale).
4) Taste the Bass. Using your keen, well trained beer diagnostic skills, determine that it clearly isn’t Bass. Report the details to the bartender. Explain how it is sour, so it is either a cheap lager, or a bad keg of Bass.
5) Refuse to send the beer back, claim you’re telling him out of pure courteousness to future patrons.
6) Drink the beer, whatever it is (honestly it tasted a lot like Yuengs). In the meantime the barkeep will be checking the keg/keg connections.
7) Order another beer, something local this time (Brooklyn Pennant Ale, mmmmmmmmmm)
8) Close your tab. Have the bartender apologize for the first beer and tell you it is on the house. Smile.
9) Enjoy the free beer that is now in your stomach.
10) Fly to your destination one beer happier.

JFK. Brooklyn Pennant Ale. FTW.

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