Idiomatic Expression

This is mostly for me to review what I am supposed to know while I am on the road.

After a very poor experience at Majestic Cafe, my old favorite spot for nice Friday dinners, I am looking for a new favorite. Any suggestions? 2941 Restaurant would be a front runner, but it is a little too pricey.

Pictures are up from James’ and my hike to Mary’s Rock.

While I was attempting to make a La Fin Du Monde clone a couple of weekends ago, James took a couple of pictures. This was also my first attempt at brewing an all grain batch of beer. If you look closely you can see some mistakes.

In other news when I transferred the beer to secondary it tasted good, and the specific gravity was down to 1.010 from 1.072 giving about 8.3% alcohol. Now it will sit in secondary for a week or two before bottling.

Now that I have a mash tun out of a 10 gallon Igloo cooler and various bits of hardware I am going to attempt my first all grain batch of beer Tomorrow. I will also be making my first high gravity beer, which means I am making my first yeast starter to breed a couple of million extra yeasties to attack all that sugar. It has the making of a first-rate disaster! This is designed as a La Fin Du Monde clone.

Recipe Characteristics

Ingredients

Recipe Notes

75 minute total boil
Starter made from .25 lb pilsner DME and .25 gal water

Dough-In 12 qt @ 166 for 150 90 minute rest
Mash-out 8.5 qt @ 208 for 170 dump
Batch Sparge 1 8.1 qt @ 170 10 minute rest dump
Batch Sparge 2 8.1 qt @ 170 10 minute rest dump
Expected wort 6.55

Seperately Bring Honey to 150, hold temp for 30 minutes, add to primary after wort

Katherine and I met her cousins in Manhattan for a long weekend in New York City. We had a great time, but I was a bit disappointed that SOHO looks to have lost a lot of the unique clothing boutiques that I remember from six years ago. Now it is mostly an outdoor version of stores you can find in your local mall. However, there are still a number of cool trendy furniture stores.

We went up the Empire State Building, and I am happy to report a total absence of giant apes. Pictures are here.

Pulitzer Prize winner Art Buchwald, best known for his regular column in the Washington Post, has been writing about his experiences since deciding against dialysis and checking himself into a hospice to wait for the end. They are insightful, funny, and sad. Take a minute to check them out.

• Having a High Time Where You’d Least Expect It
• The End. Or Maybe Not.
• Low-Interest Loan
• Who Art (Not Quite) in Heaven

Of the beers that we made at the Flying Barrel, Katherine’s Hefeweizen turned out the best, but it still seemed to be missing something. Then I found the stye description for Dunkelweizen! Now that sounds good. I could not find a good looking extract plus mini-mash recipe for this style so I adapted my own with the help of an all grain recipe, Designing Great Beers, and qbrew. Let me know what you think at this first shot at rolling my own. Hopefully I will get to brew it this weekend, or next weekend.

Recipe Characteristics

Ingredients

Recipe Notes

Mash in at 130 deg F water and allow a 20 minute protein rest. Gradually raise mash temperature to 154 degrees F either by direct heating of your mash vessel or by decoction of a portion of the mash. Rest for 30 minutes and then raise to 168 for mash out. Batch Sparge

Boil for 60 minutes

After the boil, chill and pitch. Ferment at approximately 64 degrees F ambient temp for 5-7 days, Secondary at 60-62 degrees for 7 days.

I took a quick look at the Fairfax County Water Authority’s Inorganic and Metal Water Reports today and it looks like according to John Palmer’s How to Brew site that we are grossly lacking in Calcium, Magnesium, and Sulfates needed for all grain brewing. At least when I get to that point it should be easier to add these to water than to to take them out if the numbers were excessive.

I am also not quite sure which water supply is serving me in Fairfax Circle. I am officially on the City of Falls Church’s water system, but for areas outside of the beltway (aka my house) they buy the water wholesale from Fairfax County. The FCWA site says that Southern Fairfax is mostly served by Lorton and Occoquan supplies, while Northern Fairfax is served by the Corbalis plant. Fairfax circle is almost dead center of the county so no idea where that puts me. Luckily all of the sources seem to be about the same.

*All number are in PPM

With the help of James and Chris I made my first attempt at brewing beer at home this Saturday. Other than some numbness in my extremities legs and finding out how absurdly long it takes to filter 6 gallons of water through a brita filter, the process was relatively uneventful. The fermenter is bubbling away happily in my upstairs bathtub (the warmest room in the house at 64 degrees) so I believe it will turn into beer, perhaps bad beer, but beer none the less.

Now all I have to do is wait. I am planning on 5-7 days in the primary at 64 degrees, 10-14 days in the secondary at around 59 degrees, and priming with corn sugar prior to bottling. Then after only 2 short weeks of bottle conditioning I can get my first taste of the product.

More pics available in Petrilli’s flickr set.

Recipe and more details after the jump.
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