Adventures in Homebrewing Take 2

My first batch may or may not have turned out very well. I've had 4ish bottles of it so far that weren't very good much earlier this week, and a taste today of a bottle that was really good this afternoon, so there might yet be hope (it was sacrificed to the chili gods, more on that later). So yesterday I endeavored to take another crack at it in the hopes of salvaging my brewing self-esteem. Also, due to the number of questions I've received as to what's involved with homebrewing, I've hired a shoddy camera man to document the process! Shoddy camera man played by, erm, me.

Steeping the Grains
Steeping grains is exactly what it sounds like--you get a bag, stick some grains in it, and stick them in hot water much like you would tea or coffee. This step gives the finished beer more flavor and complexity, or so say the gurus of homebrewing that I listen to. I may in fact try to do an all-extract beer just to find out if it's true or not.

I'm not cool enough to do all-grain brewing but that's an awful lot more involved and I'm both broke and lazy.

Adding Extract
So this would be the lazy step--I get all the malt extract sugary goodness without mashing or needing weird sounding tools like "lauter tuns". If it looks like a syrup, that's probably not a coincidence since it is a syrup--not that I'd stick it on my pancakes.

The other bonus about using malt extract is that you don't have to worry about screwing it up and not getting enough fermentable sugars in the solution (brewers call this a "wort"). Believe me, if there were a way to screw up using malt extract, I'm certain I'd find it.

Hops
I am the first to admit that I had no clue what "hops" were before I started brewing. I am also the first to admit that prior to brewing, I was blissfully unaware of how completely and unbelievably nauseating their smell is. Seriously, I can't remember the last time a smell so wretched came out of my kitchen. See, I'm used to cooking where you take a buncha stuff that's probably pretty good by themselves and stick them together in a way that is cool. Typically, you don't go more than a few minutes without something that seems good to eat. Hops, on the other hand, take weeks to get the edge off at which point it's a good balance between the malty sweetness that you'd be left with otherwise. It's still sort of mystifying and exciting to me that you take this liquid...stuff...and stick it all by itself with some yeast to munch on it and you end up with something as awesome as beer.

Cooling the Wort
Next, to avoid yeasticide, you need to chill your wort to a reasonable temperature. I was able to take this pot of about 2.5 gallons from 209 degrees where it was at a rolling boil to about 80 degrees in about 20-25 minutes in the sink. This is not to say that it's either easy or fun but I haven't dumped the $40 on a wort chiller that hooks up to the sink yet (I may actually build one if I get crazier). A proper wort chiller is sposed to work in 8-10 minutes so really, other than the extreme inconvenience of sink-chilling, I don't see a huge need.

For those out in the "Real World" who might be trying this at home, here are two tips that will make this far easier for you: 1) keep the wort moving in the pot, and 2) keep the water moving in the sink. I cheated though and used bottled water to top off the wort which I cleverly fridged beforehand hovering around 30 degrees which brought the entire thing down to just under 65 degrees all told. Hopefully bottled water doesn't have any nasties.

Primary Fermentation
This would be the first stage of waiting, typically one week as the yeast do their crazy thing. I opted for the plastic bottle this time instead of the plastic bucket because I've been reading posts about how cool it is to watch yeast work. I have no idea what they're talking about. I can't see anything in there through the murk and I wrap the bottle in a towel most of the time anyway to keep the light out. I'm probably going to go back to the bucket next try since it's far more convenient to move.

Astute readers might wonder why the bottle is only partially full. The bottle therein is a 6 gallon bottle and most batches of beer are only 5 gallons. In this phase, if the yeast are particularly lively, the foam head can apparently be quite large and it'll spew all over the place through the bubbler on top. Also not helping matters, because my last beer was on the weak side, I opted to only go with 4.5 or so gallons instead of 5 to increase the alcohol content (same amount of fermentables...less water...seems good to me).

One more thing...
Five gallons of beer requires around 50 12oz bottles. Most people (myself included) don't really think about bottles much.

Welp, it's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

Yeah, you can buy bottles at $10 for a set of 24. At $35 for a set of 24 with BEER in them...well...you figure it out.

The chili gods are restless
I ran out of chile powder about a month ago. I make my own. These would be chile shreds in preparation for cooking, roughly 100 pods worth of various types. It takes some effort, some dedication, and more than a little bit of pain but it appeases the chili gods.

In fact, they're looking for worshippers now. I, their humble servant, best not keep them waiting.

Agile or Not?

I'm a real big fan of one Alistair Cockburn because he's in the past said a lot of things I think are insightful. He's also a proponent of Agile Development which has had some bad press lately. Googlisms of those links aside, I've always been skepitcal (like many) about "Agile" and what it really means. On the other hand, I think there are some really good ideas therein and can't dismiss it out of hand like many do.

My disclaimer for the discussion that follows is that video game development is crazygonuts different than "normal" software development if there even is such a thing. It seems that as an industry that we've been pretty good about completely ignoring the rest of the software industry--even about ignoring those things that might help us. Though not dedicated to the software part of the industry, there's a lot of good stuff at IGDA's site of which I am now officially a member.

Then I read this piece which I found from here. As is typical of the works therein, it was interesting and insightful with the one exception of point #3 where he's listing "outdated and inefficient process conventions". Specifically:

* People work better in private offices.

This seems in complete disagreement with sources that I've quoted here before. This invariably lead me down the path of trying to figure out what I'm missing which is what I usually do when faced with such contradictions. On the one hand, I respect Alistair Cockburn and don't think he'd lead me wrong intentionally. On the other hand, his statement just plain seemed wrong given the bulk of software culture I know of and even the bulk of my, ableit short, professional exeprience.

I've ranted about my current workspace before. Others have undoubtedly done the same (and no, I don't have any links handy, sorry). I can also point out that during my last two jobs I had very similar experiences where, in the company of many people, both the quality and quantity of my work has declined dramatically. What I can't point out about my current job that I can about previous jobs, is that when moved back to private workspaces that I got all of that quality/quantity back. I don't think this is particular to me, nor do I think that it was particular to these three companies.

The essence of what I do on a regular basis is private. I debug code, I read code, and I write code. Timewise, secondarily I also have to track down requirements and read through a pile of emails (typically 100 on a slow day to up to 500 nearing a build) and context switch to fight some fire or another while someone is standing on my desk waving their hands around in a panic. Ok, so the standing on my desk part is exaggeration, but they tend to be very panicky. As a lowly grunt I really don't have a lot of design time nor do I spend time with clients who, in this case I suppose would be management. This has not changed in 6 years.

Debugging code, reading code, and writing code tend to not require outside assistance. Occasionally I will ask for assistance when debugging someone else's code but that's fairly rare and even then, in the search for info to be able to ask good questions, I usually figure it out without intervention. I don't know if it's just me (I suspect it isn't) but I find that I'm able to get more done by focusing and not being interrupted on all of these tasks than I am with, say, between five and fifty people in the same room.

Business software as I understand it, is a totally different beast where there's a lot more interactive design between people on a team. I imagine that in those types of situations that you could get a lot more done if you could talk stuff over with the people making the decision especially if you were one of the people responsible for said decision. It probably also helps if everyone within earshot is at least tangentially involved in whatever it is you're discussing.

None of these are true for me right now in the vastness of the 2000s wing. To my right is an artist. Across the row from him is an artist. Across the row from me is an artist. On my left is the audio tech programmer. Across the row from him is a performance 360 tech programmer, probably the only person in my near vicinity that I have any technical business with. So when the two artists talk about UI graphics and stuff like that, which I have almost no input into, I don't particuarly get anything out of it and it can be incredibly distracting. Don't even get me started about when they start talking about WoW, loudly.

My conclusion at the moment is that this is a largely cultural difference in opinion where both sides are right in their own context. I'm not entirely happy with that explanation but I'm also at a loss for anything further. I think that if you want your programmers to program, debug, and generally be assigned those tasks that are best handled individually, that sticking them into a huge bullpen with others not of the same department is probably not a good thing. I won't comment on the appropriateness of such decisions on task assignment, but that seems to be what happens more often than not in places I've worked.

Either way, I'm going to let this one soak for a while; I think I may be missing something here.

Memory Escapes Me

I've spent a day coming up with ideas to jot down here and yet right now none of them come to mind. Addled though it might be, this happens to be the only mind I'm currently in posession of (though I do change it from time to time).

And in an attempt to create the worst segue evar: this evening I've watched three extremely fascinating programs on the brain, the most interesting, about Savant Syndrome and the real life inspiration for Rainman Kim Peek. This, sadly, resulted in the completion of only one of my four tasks for the day but that's just one of the many costs of having too eager a curiosity.

In one of these programs, one particularly clever researcher had a nifty tool that would send crazy magnetic something or others through the subject's head and scramble their noggin to try to recreate some of what some savants' brains do with some very encouraging results. And no, that last sentence wasn't run-on. Assuming there are no long-ranging health problems and the ever-advancing march of technology and our own understanding of the brain continues, this raises some very interesting ethical questions. "Who will be allowed to use the happy brain device?"

I expect that within my lifetime that we'll be bombarded with many of these which I suspect we may be ill-prepared to deal with. As science procedes, one can only hope that society will also proced, preferrably at an accelerated pace, in order that such questions be answered satisfactorily.

I So Need This Book

A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates

How did I ever live without this book!? Read the Amazon comments if you get bored.

Weekend Cooking

In a feeble attempt to steer this blog away from how much I hate my job, I present to you, A Weekend In Cooking. I'm also going to try to use the image upload doohickey.

Adventures in Homebrewing

For those not familiar with the brewing process, it typically goes a little something like this:

brew a proper wort and pitch your yeast

wait 1 week

rack (transfer) to secondary fermenter

wait 2 weeks

bottle the beer into, um, bottles

wait 3 weeks

get really drunk
Astute readers might notice that there's an awful lot of waiting around. I'd be on that last one right now one week in. Technically I bottled last weekend, not this one, but I also hadn't gotten to update here either.

Bottling went OK if a little long and messier than anticipated EXCEPT that my triple scale hydrometer decided to make a bid for freedom. Now I get to randomly pick shards of glass out of my feet in my kitchen which is nowhere near as much fun as it sounds (ow).

(For those wondering why the glass is mostly empty...I'll leave that to your imagination.)

Things You Shouldn't Do While Watching Tivo

That, on the right there, is a very burned yet still somehow very tasty pancake. I make these occasionally when I'm not trying to diet like right now. The Tivo, sadly, isn't even hooked up. These would be the 40 odd episodes I've had recorded since I moved here in February of 2005. The Tivo is very not happy with me but I don't have a phone line to hook it up to. (For the nit pickers out there: I also don't have a wireless network nor do I have an Ethernet cable long enough to reach from the den to the TV even discounting the fact that I'd trip on it every time I went downstairs.)

Right about here is a better one.

I make these from scratch and, minus the inevitable burning part, they are the tastiest pancakes I've ever had. Yesterday I even splurged on a gut-busting bottle of Grade A Amber maple syrup--a taste from my ever-so-blocked-out-of-memory childhood. If you haven't had maple syrup--real maple syrup--you're totally missing out. Seriously. I'm not just saying that because I grew up in a place where we put spigots in trees.


Ok, one more.

Probably the first real dessert I could ever make and oddly enough, probably the only thing I can bake consistently and effectively is cheesecake. Those would be attempt #48,123 (roughly) of mocha cheesecakes. I had previously given up on these thinking them to be a culinary oxymoron of some sort but then on Friday night at one
Hubbard Avenue Diner where I tend to frequent, I had a slice of mocha cheesecake. Oddly enough, it wasn't even that good, but it did convince me to try again. So there on your right is attempt #48,124.

No clue how it tastes since they're still cooling, but the batter was pretty tasty with just a tiny bit of coffee and a whole huge amount of dark chocolate (Hershey's Special Dark in this case). Two of the bricks of cream cheese was played by a similar amount of Ricotta which I'm told they use in Italy for their cheesecakes--so I figured, what the hell.

I didn't get to the granola mostly due to laziness. I might just survive this distubring lack of oat-snack, just maybe.

Sick

Yesterday I headed down to Rockford for dinner and games to Erik's place (otherwise known as martiank9 to the right there) with a bunch of friends. Had pizza, played some terribly amusing games including this one, then I went home late, went to bed, and got ridiculously sick.

They have two cats and two dogs and I am deathly allergic to both. I also recently found out (recently as in about five months ago) that I had outgrown most of my allergy to cut grass which means I no longer have an excuse to pay a ridiculous sum of money to have someone else mow my lawn for me. So I figure "hey, maybe my dog & cat allergies are also better." Yeah. Smooth. NOT ONE BIT.

So I feel a bit like death warmed over right now and I can't honestly think of when I've been sicker in the last like three years. I also can't get to the things I need to do today on account of not being able to see straight over the throbbing pain in my place where thinking happens. Mowing this week will just have to wait I'm afraid.

Even more terrifying is that I'm without game at the moment. Sword of the Stars might be an awesome game (I'll know more in about a week) but it is about as incredibly obtuse an interface as I can recall encountering in quite some time. I'm sure I'll rant about that here when I'm closer to coherent. So I'm stuck with Galciv 2 which I've played the hell out of and am quite bored with (though they do have a new patch that I didn't get), Sword of the Stars which requires me to read the manual (um, yeah), and...well...not a lot else. I was dismayed that I could not play one of my favorite games of all time because my machine is somehow incompatible. I know I got an old 486 around here somewhere...

EDIT: worst part yet? No beer. I'm convinced that the universe hates me.