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of course you’ll see this in my flickr feed, but i’ll elaborate.

we’ve had the 4-tap kegfridge for quite some time now, even going so far as to have it transported from WA to NH when we moved (is that legal? probably. it was empty at the time).

we were never really happy with our chromed faucets. they quickly chipped, leaving a nasty appearance. also, their traditional design left most of the internal valve mechanism exposed to the room air while in the sealed position. this meant that both they would get sticky and difficult to operate, and that various microorganisms in the room air could waft up the nozzle and take up residence in the aforementioned stickiness.

as a christmas present to ourselves (okay, i ordered them and carrie went along with it) we purchased four Ventmatic faucets. their design is significantly different - a “forward sealing” design which means that they aren’t subject to the standard faucet issues. also, the entire faucet from tail to tip is made from stainless steel.

plus, i think they’re awfully handsome. if i only would have cleaned up the plastic tap handles before taking this shot:

in the longstanding tradition of explaining nonsensical-sounding old english traditions at the holidays, i present to you: Wassailing. of course you can go look it up on wikipedia, but they tend to have all the wit and charm of your high school guidance counselor (after they banned smoking in the teacher’s lounge).

Wassail is a traditional strong beverage made from ale and spices, and served in bowls. many modern microbreweries maintain this tradition, at least in part, by producing a Wassail beer for the holidays. usually they are not as strongly spiced as our ancestors would have made, but they are typically high in alcohol relative to normal beer. what you drink it out of is up to you.

this is the part that’s new to me - Wassailing, in the traditional/historical definition, is not merely the gathering together to consume the aforementioned beverage. Wassailing is essentially caroling - going door to door and singing christmas carols, in questionable (and likely dubious) quality, until being paid by the residents to leave their property.

one might imagine that the combination of Wassail with Wassailing would lead to prompt and considerable payment to reduce the infliction of such “singing” upon those within the household.

so in this, the most sacred of holiday seasons, let us all lift a glass (or a bowl) of our respective beverages, and remember how fortunate we all are — that our drunk neighbors are not crooning on our doorsteps for blackmail money.

so, today ended up being mostly dedicated to beer. we started in the morning, formulating recipes for a Lager, and an Amber that’s mostly based on a clone recipe from McNeil’s Brewery in Vermont.

today we brewed the Lager, and i cleaned & sanitized kegs whilst we were steeping the specialty grains. the Lager will remain in primary fermentation for several weeks, then move to secondary fermentation for quite a while longer.

on friday, we brewed a derivation on our winter beer. it started out as a clone brew of Pyramid Brewing’s SnowCap from 2003, but has since been altered in almost every dimension. it’s fermenting furiously in primary and should be moving to secondary fermentation soon.

yes, this was a mundane post about brewing. my apologies.

so, a typical memorial day weekend might be spent drinking beer, then going to work at the end.

when have you known me to be typical? well okay, you got me there. but we spent the weekend, in addition to doing household chores & work, doing work on our kegging setup, and didn’t get it done until late monday night.

the last element missing was faucets & shanks. these are the 2 elements that, together, make the “tap” that you see at your local saloon. we purchased 2 of each from a local homebrew supply store, and i spent all day monday doing all the final hookups and testing the system.

we have the capacity inside the chest freezer to hold 4 kegs, and we’ll probably add on at least one more in the next few weeks. in order to fit that 4th keg, we need to do a bit of finagling with the lines & whatnot inside the fridge.

now, with these expenses, how many batches of beer to we have to brew & serve ourselves, before we realize a monetary savings over purchasing it? i don’t know — ask my accountant. luckily, the accountant happens to be the brewmaster (er, brewmistress - aka, alewife) so the answer has to be “it’s worth it!”

hold on, i studied engineering, i can do math. (plus i have access to google calculator). so let’s think out loud, in bulleted-list format:

• 5 gallons of homebrew is 40 pints.
• a pint of microbrew at a restaurant, outside of happy hour, is at least $3.50.
• to drink 40 pints in a restaurant, would cost $140.
• the ingredients to brew 5 gallons beer cost around $30, retail.
• our brewing equipment has already paid for itself several times over in the 22 batches we’ve already brewed.
• a CO₂ cylinder refill is $15 (i think), should be necessary twice a year.
• our chest freezer was energystar rated at $26/yr to operate — that’s when it was a freezer. we’ve convereted it to a fridge, should use less energy.
• propane refill is about $30 (i think) should only need this once a year (only use it for brewing).

so, with all that babbling about, let’s say that a batch of homebrew, with diluted energy and supply costs, runs us around $40 (probably a tad high estimate). that means a savings of $100 per 40 pints over purchasing it elsewhere. is that right? i’ll have to call my accountant to check out my numbers.

i know, we could have saved even more money if we continued to bottle. but frankly, we would have paid that price with out sanity. bottling is tedious at best. and since we don’t really take our beer anywhere or share with anyone (the only friends we have don’t drink) then why do it? we’ll still bottle some (for things we want to condition for a long time, or send to contests) but i think we’ll primarily be kegging from now on.

the only additional ongoing task now, is for me to work in biceps, triceps, and deltoids. because lifting a 40lb keg of beer into the chest fridge is no small feat!

i’ll post pictures up after i take some tonight.

no, i’m not adding Nitrous Oxide injection to my car.

we’re assembling the parts to finalize our kegging/draft beer setup. since we started homebrewing, we’ve grown more and more tired of collecting, stripping, cleaning, and sanitizing bottles. read on for more info and pictures that only a homebrewer could love.

the first picture is all the supply-side equipment boxed up and together, CO2 cylider on the floor and a big length of gas supply tubing.

here’s the ball-lock valves for the supply (gas) and the service (liquid) sides of the kegs.

this is a 4-way manifold to split off the supply gas to 4 different kegs.

these are (on the left) the gas pressure regulator, that meters the CO2 out of the supply tank. (on the right) is an inline regulator. i think i need to re-assemble these — the splitter needs to go on the tank regulator (higher pressure) so we can tap off one high pressure line for carbonating beer, then send the other line to the subsequent regulator for serving beer at a lower pressure.

a motley assortment of used cornelius kegs, previously used to store the syrup that makes soda-pop as it comes out of the soda fountain. these are excellent for homebrewers, as they can have a lid that can be removed for cleaning, and can hold 5 gallons. this is a whole, or one half, of a typically sized batch of homebrew, depending upon whether your brew 5 or 10 gallons.

another recent purchase not pictured here, is a chest-freezer that we will convert into a refrigerator to hold all (or most) of these.

more pictures & information as the project progresses. we expect to have it almost complete within a week or so. exciting!

we’re back from a week spent in new york (and briefly in new jersey). we visited with my family, for the first time in a number of years. it was a good trip! exhaustive & boring details follow.

a picture of my mom’s greyhound, spirit, sleeping with his christmas bells on

tuesday

we arrived in newark tuesday night on the 20th, rented a vehicle and drove to saugerties to sleep for the night.

they didn’t have any more “jeep grand cherokee or similar” so they upgraded us to a durango SLT. i bought more gas in the last week than i have put in my focus in months. (granted, i drive my focus a round-trip of about 4 miles a day).

wednesday

anyhow, wednesday morning we drove to albany to check the city out and stop at Mahar’s Public Bar (BeerAdvocate review). turns out we were early — they didn’t open until 4. we had planned on being on the road to buffalo by then, so we skipped it. loved albany, however.

to buffalo, where we stayed with my parents & their kitty & their 2 greyhounds.

thursday

we got up early (by pacific time standards) and went into downtown buffalo, for a couple of reasons.

first was a stop at the currently-being-restored Darwin Martin House. much activity there, couldn’t get too close to it of course. (stark contrast to when the University @ Buffalo School of Architecture & Planning first acquired it — i remember having a professor say we would meet @ the Martin house, and got to walk around and sketch it from all angles.)

second stop was Pearl Street Grill & Brewery (BeerAdvocate profile) in downtown buffalo.

great beer, great food, great service. waiter found out we were beer freaks & homebrewers and we were in town from seattle — so he arranged for us to be able to bug the brewer for a while. Paul (self-described as a part-timer who was previously the master) was quite nice and seemed to genuinely enjoy a grilling about their beers. maybe he doesn’t get enough beer geeks coming in?

upon prodding for a recommended local package store we were directed to Premier Gourmet, and we were not disappointed. many many local micros, as well as the better-distributed micros from other regions.

friday

drove out to visit my brother & his wife and family. was good to see his little farm & kitties & dog, and my nephews and niece.

saturday

christmas eve means family gathering at my aunt & uncle’s house. the whole extended clan was there, many of whom we hadn’t spent any measurable amount of time with since our last christmas visit (in 2000).

sunday

christmas day was fun, got to spend a lot more time with my brother & sister-in-law and the kids. hopefully they’ll actually recognize their uncle mike next time he shows up.

monday

back to the reportable action. we left monday morning to head back down to joisey. drove I-90 out for a while, cut down on rt 96 to go to ithaca. there we stopped by Finger Lakes Beverage Center and picked up 12 bottles of local NY/PA microbrews.

we continued down 96 though many charming little towns, to the Southern Tier Expressway. then it was east on 17 through binghamton and through the southern foothills of the catskill mountains. what a gorgeous little collection of towns nestled in nooks and valleys, all covered in snow.

about 60 miles outside of NYC, we started hitting rushhour traffic. but we got to the Courtyard Newark within an hour of projected ETA. our room contained the most comfortable king bed we’ve ever slept on in a hotel!

tuesday

on a plane at 9am, out of newark and back to seattle. we kept alive our travel traditions of parking at doug fox parking, and enjoying lunch & a pint at bison creek pizza in burien before returning home.

overall, i think a great trip. the only downsides would be the fuel consumption of the durango, and the fact that newark is unbelievably confusing. would we do it again? next time we’d probably drop the extra coin to fly to buffalo. we’ll visit albany again, but it will be a more deliberate and more encompassing vacation.

now we’re almost still on eastern time (maybe central time) and we’ll probably stick to this schedule for a week, since we’re heading back to new england to visit with carrie’s family soon!