Heavyweight News

From: Heavyweight Brewing Company
Sent: Jun 16, 2006 9:25 AM
To: Beer Lovers
Subject: Heavyweight News

Greetings-

I trust that everyone in the NYC, NJ and the Philly area is getting excited about the upcoming 2006 NJ Beer Fest. This year’s fest will again be held on the pier of the NJ Battleship at the Camden waterfront on Saturday, June 24th from 1-5pm. All the brewers in NJ (those that care about good beer and good beer drinkers, anyhow) will be there pouring nearly 50 NJ-made beers. Your ticket also allows you to tour the historic ship. For more info, check out www.njbeer.org or www.battleshipnewjersey.org. The revenue from this fest supports the NJ Battleship Museum and the not-for-profit Garden State Craft Brewers Guild which promotes craft beer in NJ. Please come out and support the NJ brewers.

As for Heavyweight, many of you have no doubt heard that we are closing up shop at the end of June 2006. We sympathize with the faction out there that feel sorry for themselves about our closing; we will also miss many of our beers. But you should not feel sorry for us. Heavyweight was designed to essentially be a one-man operation. We know that in order to allow Heavyweight to grow (as it wants to) we would have to dramatically change that basic design and we’re not willing to do that. Instead, we choose to stop Heavyweight, while (in our opinion) it’s on top of it’s game and redirect that momentum into another project. We don’t have any details for you now, except to say that it will be a pub/restaurant with a small brewery. The wheres and whens are still to be sorted out. We’ll keep you posted.

In order to have an opportunity to says thanks and goodbye for now, we are hosting one last wacky Heavyweight open house gathering. This time it will actually be two open house gatherings; Saturday, July 1st and Sunday the 2nd. Each day will run from 1-5 pm and we should have a bunch of beers on tap. We recently brewed a sour-mashed rye and a wild rice beer and both will be on tap. As always, bring whatever beers you’d like to share and please bring something non-perishable for our local foodbank. Hunger is something few of us truly experience and is a disgraceful thing in such a wealthy land.

If you can’t make it to the open house, Andy’s Corner Bar is throwing Heavyweight a Tribute night on Wed., June 28th starting at 6pm. George, Barb and Tom are giving us most of their tap space and we’ll be there to show our love for one of NJ’s best beer bars.

Thanks again to all of you who made these past seven years so enjoyable for us. Remember, you are the reason that craft brewers do what they do. Thanks for supporting small breweries everywhere.

Peace,
Tom and Peggy

ENGLAND’s massive army of World Cup fans is drinking Germany dry

I found this online today!

BEER WE GO

Germans fear weii going to drink them dry

By Jeremy Armstrong
28 June 2006

ENGLAND’s massive army of World Cup fans is drinking Germany dry, it emerged yesterday.

Breweries warned beer could run out before the final because of huge demand from our supporters.

In Nuremberg, organisers revealed 70,000 England fans who flooded the city drank 1.2MILLION pints of beer – an average of 17 pints each.

Astonished bar keeper Herrmann Murr said: “Never have I seen so many drink so much in such little time.”

His bar at a fans’ tent in the city ran out after they drained all 32 of his 50-litre (11 gallon) barrels.

Herr Murr calculated Britons were shifting beer at a staggering rate of 200 pints per minute.

City official Peter Murrmann said: “The English proved themselves world champs. They practically drank us dry.”

In Cologne, where England drew with Sweden, bottles and barrels of the local K?lsch beer ran out because so many English took them to campsites and parties.

Stuttgart bar chiefs said an extra 900,000 pints were sunk last weekend where 60,000 fans partied before and after our 1-0 win over Ecuador.

The Veltins brewery also revealed it has produced a record 418,000 gallons in a bid to keep up with demand.

A spokesman said: “It is incredible how much is being drunk but the hardest thing for the breweries is keeping up with the thirst of the English.”

In Dortmund, where most fans for England’s Gelsenkirchen clash against Portugal on Saturday are staying, the giant DAB brewery is bracing itself by ferrying in extra supplies to boost production.

Terminal Velocity.. er Gravity

Well, the Bastogne Tripel I brewed last weekend has finished fermenting… it was mostly done on Tuesday night, if you can believe that… in 48 hours. I checked the gravities this morning using Promash and got the following:

OG -> 23.4 Brix = 1.09425
FG -> 11.6 Brix = 1.01676 (as of today)

%ABV = 10.32

That is one serious Tripel. The unconditioned sample I took smelled incredible… yeast, bread, fruit… and while the taste was VERY yeasty (alot still in suspension), it was also very good… And STRONG. I’m actually a little scared of this beer.

Next weekend I’ll probably be brewing 10 gallons of Oak Aged Vanilla Porter… My sister wanted a couple cases (and bought me ingredients for it), so I need to get to work… After that, I’ve got a couple of joint brews with folks planned, along with a whole battery of beers for me….

I’m going to have to start using my ice cooler and pump setup again. Our tap temperature is >75 degrees again, and it took nearly 45 minutes to chill this tripel down to 77 degrees. Thank goodness I have a solution to the problem, but it does add complexity and stress to the overall process. Blech.

The Wheatopia Raspberry Revolution (pink beer) is on tap now. Its pretty tasty, although more tart than I was expecting. I hope to put the Saison on tap today… the Native Rage is REALLY close to kicking.

brewz.NET

As a disclaimer, I figured I would start this post by clearly stating that it is going to digress into realms of geekdom and nerdiness that few with our passion are willing to tread, yet I do it anyways… Programming.

As I said several posts back in my “Confessions of an uber-geek” post, I am slowly working on a graphical user interface and platform for developing a computer-controlled homebrew rig. Why you ask? Pomp, circumstance, and sheer vanity is my best and only defense… because I can. I can’t think of anything cooler than having folks over, giving them a tour of the ghetto brewery in the basement (which WILL be upgraded as part of this project to an all-stainless, glorious marvel), and firing up the PC to give a demonstration. Have other people built computer-controlled homebrew rigs before? SURE. And many probably did a better job than me. But I am still resolved to do my best and do something truly ridiculous, unnecessary, and utterly cool.

My previous post gave a couple of screenshots of a pipe class I was building… well, it is now obsolete and must be completely rewritten. The reason is that I have finally decided to take the plunge and learn Microsoft’s latest platform, .NET. I will be recoding anything developed thus far in VB.NET and will continue from here on out with that as the framework language of choice. It took a great deal of soul-searching and self masochism to ultimately decide, but it is the right decision. I have long avoided delving into this new language because of my inexperience and utter stranglehold on the previous iteration (VB6), but the time has come for me to learn something new once more.

I honestly wish I had time and interest to do it sooner. I actually had a very strong support structure several years ago that could have assisted me. One of my best online friends (and an absolutely brilliant resource) has since disapppeared from the face of the planet and isn’t returning my e-mails. And everyone else has about a 4 year head start on me… BUT HEY! I’ve been busy. Kids. Moving from Mexico. Establishing myself in 3 jobs in 4 years. Learning to homebrew!!! (and investing ridiculous sums of money and time to do so). But I will make use of my demon-given aptitudes and meld my world of yesterday with that of today.

These screenshots are the re-write of my “tank” class in VB.NET. I have rewritten this class now 4 times – 2 times using VB6 and the Windows GDI API library, once using VB6 and a GDI+ wrapper, and finally (as shown) using VB.NET and pure .NET library code (No VisualBasic namespace for me, thank you very much).

In the long run I firmly believe the .NET platform will give my homebrewing control application flexibility, portability, and use that legacy VB6 never could. I must admit I have my reservations regarding many aspects of the undertaking (my own experience being one large factor), but quite honestly my tenacity and pure vanity WILL win out in the end. My arrogance and commitment knows no bounds.

This project will be open-source. Everyone who has the interest (and ability) will be able to download and start using it as the base for their creations, once completed. My intention is to build the following:

• A process designer application that allows users to customize graphics, layouts, and displays for their homebrew systems
• A flexible and customizable input/output system that will interact with any DACA card or device on the market and allow whatever device necessary as an input or output (thermocouples, thermisters, solenoids, float switches, solid-state relays… whatever
• A SQL server database middleware layer that can be used to export and import brew sessions and trend/analyze data as required.
• A web portal for folks that actually want to share their brew session data online with other folks
• webcam support so folks can watch the action in progress

And many other things. Its a big laundry list to fill… I’ll obviously focus first on items necessary for me to get my own brewery up and running, but the idea is that ultimately anyone could use it if they wanted to.

Enough for now… time for me to go drink some Nasty Habit Abbey Dubbel. Gotta make room for those summer saisons and wheats!!!

Big Bad Bastogne Belgian Brew…

Today I thoroughly enjoyed Father’s Day by brewing a 5 gallon batch of Tripel. Things went really well, although I did end up second guessing myself and adding another 15 minutes to the boil… so it was a 135 minute boil instead of a 120. Totally unnecessary, and as a result I’m going to end up slightly short of the 5 gallon mark (like 4.8 or something near there)…. although the other consequence is that the gravity is higher… 1.094, actually. I did some quick spot calculations, and this beer is going to come out somewhere near 9.5-10% minimum.

Thank god I had lots of yeast to pitch… actually, the Hell’s Bells Pale Ale was a fantastic starter. I ended up pitching 750mL of thick, nearly pure WLP510 slurry. There is ALOT of yeast in this thing. Its apparently the Orval strain, so it may have a somewhat acidic finish, but having tried all the strains (Trappist, Abbey, and Belgian) I am excited to try something new. I also oxygenated it for like 3 minutes, so there should be PLENTY of O2 in there for them to do their job.

Needless to say, its fixed with a big bore blowoff tube, and I am expecting some major action when I wake up tomorrow. I’ll have to post pictures if it is really crazy.

Another BIG brew coming up. I’m going to have to brew more Black Honey soon… it goes so quickly… I’ll probably do either a 15 or 20 gallon batch again. I am also planning a split batch with another homebrewer using all Horizon hops, and a 10 gallon batch of Oak Aged Vanilla Porter (5 gallons of which is going to my sister).

Both Wheatopias are kegged and carbonating. The raspberry turned out pretty tart… and the apricot is more grainy than I expected. I’m hoping that they’ll fall clearer in the kegs once they’re chilled, but they both tasted pretty refreshing. Also looking forward to getting my Saison on tap sometime really soon – that may be another beer I have to brew again this summer (got plenty of strisselspalt hops left).