First State Brewers Blog

OK, I’ll be honest - I’m not talking about the city in which I live. It’s cool and all, but I wouldn’t exactly say that it “Rocks”.

No, I am referring to Newark InOne… They are an electronics supplier that has just about everything under the sun, and for a pretty fair price too. This morning I ordered the following, and they have already shipped:

2 MCP3202 2-channel 12 bit A/D converters
2 MCP3204 4-channel 12 bit A/D converters
2 MPX5010GSX Motorola pressure sensors
2 AD620ANZ Instrumentation Amplifiers
2 LM331AN Voltage / Frequency converters

These are obviously purchases for the electronics components that will make up my homebrew sculpture - most notably the level sensor circuits. I am a little nervous as I am not convinced that it will work at all, but I’m not plowing new ground here… both Wicked Stone and Emile have done this with success before using these components (well… almost these components).

I also ordered some new PICAXE components this week… 2 of the new 28X1 chips and 2 of the 40X1 chips. I am very excited about the I2C slave functionality and built-in SPI support, as well as the internal resonators that eliminate the need for extra circuitry. Should give me plenty to play with down in the basement while the sun scortches thru summer.

On a non-nerd note, I have both the Amarillo Pale and Black Raspberry Ales on tap now - they are great individually, and magnificent when blended. Cutting the grass will be less of a chore for the next few weeks.

… 22 jars of wort… For starters!

Today was a very, VERY long brew day in that I had made another batch of starter wort. I brewed up a 5 gallon batch of 1.040 wort and managed to get it all canned in a single evening - The wort itself only took 4 hours, from about 1pm to 5pm, but the canning took another 5 hours. That’s fortunately alot shorter than the first time I did it - learned the hard way that my stove just doesn’t have the required UMPF to pressure can at 15 PSI… but the propane burner sure does.

Now I’ve got another 5 or 6 month supply…

My next batches won’t happen until end of May though. Got too much going on for the next 3 weekends, so it’ll have to be the weekend after our May meeting - and I’ll be brewing a starter batch of SOMETHING using Saison yeast, followed by a large 15 or 20 gallon batch of Saison du Sevier once that starter batch is ready for racking. My wife is also petitioning for a big batch of Witbier, so the Saison may get usurped until a little later in the season - I don’t know. I’ve also got a crazy amount of American hops just BEGGING to be used, like Columbus and Simcoe, so I’m thinking a 15 gallon batch of IPA might have to be brewed soon.

So much to brew, so little time.

Check out this great article in Spark Magazine!

Brewmaster’s

SPRING

BEER DINNER

Saturday, May 12^th 6PM

Hosted by:

Head Brewer

Brian Finn

Head Chef

Bill Robbins

1^st Course - Hand cut pomme frits with roullie butter and Prince Edward Island mussels simmered with leeks, garlic, fresh herbs and Belgian tripel w/Belgian Tripel

2^nd Course - Grilled Venison, Blueberry and Merlot Sausage with micro greens with sage vinaigrette and boursin crostini w/Belgian Quad

3^rd Course – Sautéed Lamb Lollipops with toasted almond-medjool date compote and pomegranate emulsion w/Abby Dubbel

4^th Course – Chocolate Lava Cake with chocolate ice cream, raspberry ganache and vanilla caramel sauce w/Russian Imperial Stout

$49.95 per person (gratuity not included)

Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant

710 S. Madison Street

Wilmington, Delaware 19801

www.ironhillbrewery.com

Limited space available.

Make your reservation now with our host staff.

Call (302)-472-2739.

Its a little after 5am and I’m already frustrated. After this morning’s mash-in, I may become a Marty Drinan disciple….

Promash calculated a strike water temp of 176 for me to hit my desired 151-152 range. I heated the water, and it hit 178 before I could catch it…. so I turned the burner off, let the kettle sit for about 5 min in the 50 degree air, and it cooled… to 174. So I turned the burner back on, and a minute later the thermometer said 176, so I killed the burner. I gave the water a quick mix with my spoon - 178!!! D@mnit!!!! So I said screw it and into the mash tun it went.

And I mashed in my grains, using my trusty mash paddle. I check the temperature - 162. SAY WHAT?!?!? OK… time to stir like hell…. so I grab my stainless spoon and stir-stir-stir for 2 minutes. 156. Eh… not too bad, but not great. More stirring ensues…. 156. OK… time to adjust down a hair.

So I add about a half quart of cold water… stir stir stir stir - 155. Ugh… this is gonna take forever. Add another half quart. Stir stir stir stir…. 3 minutes later… 154. GOOD LORD, this is insane!!! OK… dump another half quart in, declaring that’s all I’m doing. If its a little high, then so well… it’ll be fuller-bodied than I intended. Mix, mix… stir stir stir… 155. WHAT?!?!?? The temperature went UP!??!!?!! Stir-like-the-mash-did-me-wrong hopping-mad for 3 minutes… 149!!!

(Flurry of four letter words and not-so-nice 5 letter words ensue)

I have been all-grain brewing for 2 years now!!! I SHOULD @!#@ING KNOW BETTER!!!!

So, after calming down and proclaiming that “it is a belgian-style abbey dubbel, and if it ferments way low then so be it”… and going to go grab some coffee, I think back to Friday night’s meeting where Marty showed us his latest tool for mixing his mash - a drill-powered paint stirrer with every other fin taken out…. And I wondered how much of this heartache could have been avoided if I just had a more efficient means to stir my mash.

I am going to Home Depot. I am buying a paint stirrer. And I am going to use that b!tch on my next mash.

As for the dubbel - I may just have to leave a pound of corn sugar out of the recipe and deal with a lower initial gravity to compensate for the lack of dextrins in my wort. Or maybe I’ll add it in and see what the hell happens. I guess I’ll wait until 9:30 or so and see how I feel when that addition comes up.

As demonstrated at the meeting last night, Jerry Carney has prototyped some scalloped beer mugs with our current logo etched on the front. If anyone is interested in these, please contact Jerry for pricing and details. You can send me some mail at webmaster _at_ firststatebrewers.com and we’ll get you guys hooked up.

There was some interest at the meeting about imperial (16oz) pint glasses, or even having a logo contest and updating our logo (our current one, by Scott Beiber, is many many years old at this point). That sounds like a great idea to me! I’ll have to see about putting something together.

I will be brewing a 10 gallon batch of Dubbel this weekend with the White Labs WLP540 and Dark Candi Syrup - can’t wait to try it in a month or two, once it is all bottled & corked. I will be saving the yeast cake (1/2 is going to Oliver, for sure)… and I’ll also have to see about getting some to John Biggins so he can “bank” it for us. Have a good weekend, ya’ll!

Or maybe just hallucinating? Ok, so I’ve got these great ideas - this overall vision - of what a computerized brewing sculpture interface would look like. I’ve seen examples made by various folks (including commercial examples like FALCON), looked at alot of screenshots, and even downloaded some VB source code to see what others had as part of their vision… I am thinking through not only how the brewer would interact with their sculpture during a brew session, but how they would want to to set up graphics for their own sculpture (if they were to build apon what I am doing)… In short, I am not only am I trying to please myself in this effort, but also to develop a solution that could fit the needs of others as well.

It is a daunting task… and one that constantly is adding to my list of to-dos.

Take, for example, my Pipe class. Two weeks ago I was very proud of how this class could take a series of points on the screen, and route / draw a reasonable looking pipe. You can see screenshots of it in posts like Confessions of an Ubergeek. It even supported flanges at the ends or internally, and oversized elbow joints. I figured the other graphics stuff would come in time, but at least for those few days, I thought I was done with the pipe class.

In the past two weeks, I’ve identified lots of other stuff I wish the Pipe class could do, like:

• Terminate in a transition gradient for T-s and 4-way junctions, or rounded for things like pump inlet graphics
• Support internal T-s and 4-way junctions for header pipes
• Support concentric pipe arrangements easily, like for a counterflow chiller
• Support different elbow graphics, other than just smooth curves… like "BumpUp" and "BumpDown".

I have actually started trying to visualize and document my ideas using Powerpoint as the quickest medium I know of to realize them… (I get lots of practice with Powerpoint at work). It turns out to be a really quick way to prototype ideas, since the same building blocks I use in VB.NET are available in their drawing tools (like horizontal, vertical, and path gradients), and seeing the construction of the graphics helps identify what object properties are required.

You can actually see the full concepts by checking out the Concept Powerpoint I have been working on.

Hopefully the result of all this rework and effort will be a flexible and robust platform for people to apply to their own pursuits… of course that’s probably just the handful of us crazy enough out there to want to computerize their homebrew rig.

…of the Worts XII!!! Yesterday I headed up to Keystone Homebrew Supply to make use of my $50 gift certificate for taking first in the Stout category. I walked out spending half that much again, but I got some good stuff. The gift certificate covered a 55lb sack of Pilsner malt ($42) to aid me in my lager and belgian brewing and a bottle of Belgian Candi Syrup ($8). The additional purchases were a second bottle of the Candi Syrup, a 6.6 lb bag of corn sugar, 3 lb of wheat malt, and a vial of WLP565 Saison yeast. I’m not sure it was really worth the 120-mile round-trip drive (which was probably another $14 in gas), but at least I redeemed the gift certificate.

Been doing a little work planning my next development steps for the sculpture interface. Every time I turn around I seem to think of something else I want to implement or a better way of doing something. I will post some pics maybe tomorrow. Right now I’m off to do a little coding and watch some LotR.

OK, so I don’t really have too much “official” to blog about, but so what. I’ve been sipping on my S^4 Ale for most of the evening, and it packs a punch - and I am feeling a little chatty. So you all will endure me just rambling about pretty much nothing.

This weekend I hope to get up to Keystone Homebrew and redeem the $50 gift certificate I won in War of the Worts this past February. My plan is to get a fat sack (50 lb) of Weyermann Pilsner Malt and use it in some upcoming belgians, lagers, and Saisons. That should kill most of the gift certificate, and whatever is left over I will probably spend on either a yeast culture or some Belgian Candi Syrup, if they have it.

My sculpture development hasn’t progressed too much - I’ve got a big long list of stuff I want to order from Newark One, in the way of pressure sensors for level control and other gadgets, but I’m holding off for now. I’ve been managing to find an hour or so here or there to work on the user interface stuff, and have completed my work on implementing T and 4-way pipe junction graphics. I did some preliminary specifications of some additional classes, including a “Valve” class that looks like it should be pretty great… new screenshots will probably be in order in a week or so, once I’ve worked on them some more.

On the sculpture development front I must also express a little angst because the maker of the microcontroller I intend on using just released their next flagship products, the X1 chips. PICAXE from Revolution Education Ltd. is now offering a substantial upgrade to their 28 and 40 pin chip models, called the 28X1 and 40X1, in May… My angst stems from the fact that I’ve got 2 28X and 2 40X chips in my basement that have yet to even be used in any capacity (even testing), and they’ve already been outdated. I shouldn’t gripe too much as I can still use the 28X and 40X chips for prototyping, and simply implement the X1 chips in the final design / implementation. They run faster, cleaner, and offer some features that aren’t available on the regular “X” chips, such as I2C slave support and native SPI support - so I may have to pick one of each up for playing purposes.

Finally, I haven’t been brewing much since my last batch was 20 gallons of Amarillo (and I’m almost out of canned starter wort). I plan on brewing a 5 gallon batch of something soon, and repitching the yeast into ANOTHER 20 gallon batch. It’ll either be Black Honey ale or Saison du Sevier… and since warmer weather is fast approaching, I imagine I’ll probably go with the Saison. I am toying with the possibility of a couple back-to-back 10 gallon Belgian batches, but I’m gonna need more Candi Syrup to pursue that particular dream.

Meeting next Friday (April 20th)… Don’t forget!

I just can’t find the kind of time I need to work on the application side of the sculpture. Progress has been painfully slow. I’ve got some good ideas, architecture and design ready to go, but cannot find the several-hour blocks required to implement them. Instead I find 30 minutes here or 15 minutes there - often enough time to get in, screw something up a little, then have to walk away from it - only to return later and spend 2 or 3 sessions tracking down what went wrong.

Its maddening. But here’s what I have managed:

• I have implemented enhancements to the pipe class - it now supports “Ts”, and will soon support 4-way unions as well.
• I created a new class, “ConcentricPipe”, for shell-and-tube type arrangements like a counterflow chiller.
• The basic architecture is in place for saving and loading screen arrangements to and from files
• A label class is now available for putting text on the screen with a variety of options, like variable opacity.

I hope to start working on things like static graphics for pumps, valves, etc. sometime in the near future… as well as support for custom graphics so people can use their own libraries or creativity to augment the standard stuff.

Yeah, I know - I am focusing on the “window dressing” before I have even really got the heart of the system - the electronics and event model - completed or worked on, but I have been jotting things down on paper and in powerpoints around that.