Mojoblog

     It has been a week and Ned has been churning and bubbling in his bucket. It’s time to transfer him to the secondary fermenter (a glass carboy) with some fresh cascade hops. The practice of adding hops to the secondary fermenter is traditionally associated with india pale ales (IPAs) and was originally intended to keep beer from spoiling on the voyage from Great Britain to East India. Brewers (and drinkers) on the East Coast of the United States sometimes insist on calling pale ales from the Pacific Northwest IPAs because they are almost always dry-hopped. What can I say, we like our hops! Beers from the Pacific Northwest also benefit from having near-by Cascade hops growing fresh in Washington and Oregon (they were developed in Oregon in the 70’s) and are perfect for dry-hopping because of their low alpha acids and clean floral/citrus aroma. They produce very large cones and lose their volatiles quickly, thus when purchased in home brew stores they will never be impart the crisp flavor that is found in beers that are brewed close to harvest time in Oregon, but I digress. On to Ned!
     First, we open up the primary fermenter to take a look at the wort--it has changed quite a bit since last week and now fills the kitchen with a rich floral aroma.. Mmmm. The crud stuck to top of the fermenter is called trub and consists mostly of the hop debris that floated to the surface and were pushed to the sides by the frothing during the very vigorous yeast reproduction in the first 24 hours.

Next, we syphon the contents of the primary fermenter into the carboy. You never pour beer once it has started to ferment. The bi-products of the fermentation are what gives beer its flavor, but these bi-products become very sensitive to oxidation. Since the yeast have chewed up all of the oxygen and turned it into carbon dioxide, they are protected, but if you churn the beer it will mix with air and impart nasty spoiled-beer flavors--yuck! For the syphoning, we use a racking cane, which is just a plastic pipe with a stand-off at the bottom. This allows us to syphon the beer from the bottom (to avoid churning with air) while leaving behind the trub at the bottom of the fermenter.

This is a good chance to grab a bit of beer for testing.

It is time to add the hops. This is my first time exploring the magical world of dry-hopping, but it seems pretty simple... I just drop on the remaining oz of Cascade hops from the boil into the carboy. It’s still winter here and first thing in the morning, before the house has thawed, my fingers are still red. Brrr.

As the carboy fills the hops mix into the beer, which is looking a lot like a Mir Pon Pale Ale at this point I have to say. More importantly, the kitchen is now filled with the fresh floral sent that is familiar to anyone that has had the pleasure of opening a cold Mir Pon on a hot summer day.

While the carboy is filling we can check the specific gravity. I get a reading of 1.015 which puts us at 3.4 % alcohol by volume. Mir Pon is 5.0 % so we have a way to go, but my original gravity was low so I’m probably not going to get all the way to 5.0. The color of Ned is strikingly similar to authentic Mir Pon, though more hazy. Mir Pon has a gorgeous chill haze, but Ned is at room temperature. This is normal though, as beers clarify quite a bit during secondary fermentation and bottle conditioning.

Ok, Ned is safely in the carboy, but we’ve left a substantial volume behind in the form of trub, and we want to minimize the head space in the carboy because this will be the only source of oxygen during the secondary fermentation. If we play our cards right, Ned will force the air in the head space out within a few minutes as the yeast wake up a bit and the liquid degases (either from nucleating on the hops, or simply from being smacked around by the transfer). Last time I used tap water, this time I’ll use filtered water.

It is time to attach the air lock to the carboy and stick Ned in the corner for about nine days. Since the heater I used to keep the primary fermenter above 65 °F is incompatible with glass Ned will be subject to the whims of a poorly insulated New England apartment in January. These fluctuations are less important in the secondary fermentation, but they will still affect the flavor making Ned a completely unique brew.

Take a look at this. It is the trub that is left at the bottom of the fermenter and is the primary reason for secondary fermentation. Up to a point, the longer a beer sits around and “conditions”, the smoother and more balanced the flavors will be. However, the longer beer sits on top of this trub, the more bitter (and generally funky) it will get. Some beers, like Belgian Sours, can condition for years, but Ned will only need about another week in the secondary fermenter, soaking up the yummy Cascade hops and safely isolated from the fat, protein, mineral salts, and (mostly) dormant yeast cells that make up the trub.

     The last thing I do is have a taste of Ned (there is no point in the brewing process that the beer cannot be ingested). The wort in the primary fermenter was horribly bitter--and not in a good way--with a sweet, malty taste that didn’t compliment that horrible bitter taste at all. This time, after a week in the fermenter, the bitterness is gone and is replaced by a pleasant, hoppy, bitter aftertaste. The nose is floral and sharp, a lot like a Mir Pon, and the flavor is... Not quite a Mir Pon, but similar, and overall tasting like a hoppy pale ale just like home! Also, Ned lacks a lot of the off flavors that have plagued my other beers (even Albert had a bit of these). I think this is because I used an American yeast starter instead of dried yeast, so they got a foothold faster and were able to out-compete the bacteria, of which there were a lot fewer to begin with because of the wort chiller.
     I’m off to a week of job interviews, but when I get back we’ll bottle Ned... And 2-3 weeks from then he’ll be ready to drink!

     Mirror Pond Pale Ale, or “Mir Pon” as it’s known by Oregonians, is brewed by the Deschutes Brewery in Bend Oregon and is my favorite beer in the whole world. Unfortunately they don’t distribute out here in Massachusetts so my Mir Pon supply is limited to what I can smuggle in my checked luggage (because, of course, we can’t bring beer on planes anymore). This is unacceptable, so I’ve decided to take stab at brewing my own. Naturally Deschutes doesn’t give out the recipe and I don’t have access to fresh Cascade hops or snow melt from Mt. Bachelor, but the Internet is full of recipes that attempt to replicate this beer. Keeping a journal of your homebrews is the key to making better beer, so I name my beers to make it easier to keep track of them. I’m calling this one “Near Pon Ned” (last time I brewed “Albert the Altbier”).
     Mashing grains at home is beyond my abilities (and time constraints) at the moment, so I make my beers using the extract method. The four ingredients of beer are: water, barley, hops, and yeast. The extract method uses barley, but instead of mashing it, malt-extracts are added to the brew pot after extracting the crystal (crushed malted barley). For this clone, I am brewing a five gallon batch based on a recipe I found at skotrat.

Here goes...
Heat 4 gallons of Cambridge Tap Water to 150 °F

Add the crystal malts

Heat for 30 minutes on the way to 170 °F

Add the malt extracts and gypsum and bring to a boil. I always screw something up. This time I added three times as much gypsum as I meant to. I should have added one teaspoon, but I added one tablespoon--d’oh! Sulfate should be kept below 450 ppm and mine is around 775 ppm.

Remove the lid and add the bittering hops

After 30 minutes... More bittering hops!

During the last five minutes, finishing hops are added, then the wort chiller is submerged in the brew pot to bring it to 70 °F as quickly as possible (10 minutes in the winter)

The cooled wort (wort is the the name given to the mixture that will be fermented) is then transfered to the primary fermenter, diluted to five gallons (churning as much air into it as possible), and the yeast is pitched

     Now we wait... The Original Gravity--the measure of density relative to water--was 1.041, which is 0.009 less than the recipe cited. This could mean that I didn’t extract the crystal completely, or that I should have added more malt extract (Clo made some cake from the leftover, so maybe it is better this way). I don’t have a picture of the primary fermenter because it is just a plastic bucket with a heater strapped to it (to keep it above 70 °F so the yeast won’t go to sleep). Next weekend I will rack (wrack?) Ned to the secondary fermenter for dry hopping. One week after that, it will be time to bottle!

     Since we’re just getting this blog going and I’m just learning how to blog, I will try to introduce you to two of my favorite things via this blog entry. The first is Daytrotter.com which is the website of a studio where musicians stop by on their way across the country and lay down four tracks that are then made available for free via the website. Here is how Daytrotter puts it: The best part--besides the totally free downloads of unique songs by great artists--is that they record all-analog. For those of you who know anything about sound engineering everything is done digitally now. This is great for people like me who can buy a couple of condenser mics and lay some tracks down on their MacBook, but many professional studios have completely abandoned the tradition of analog recording. You’ll notice that the songs from Daytrotter feel warm and close, like the band is sitting in the room with you. This, much like the difference between film and digital photography, is because analog tapes don’t hard-clip when they can’t keep up with dynamic range, rather they sort of bleed or shoulder into it. The lower fidelity and dynamic range of analog means that you often hear this contribution to the recordings. Anyway, go check it out--you’ll probably find a new band to love, I know I have. And hopefully I will highlight more of my favorite Daytrotter Sessions on this blog.
     On to Eef! Last March I ventured to Worcester MA (pronounced “whuhsta” by locals) to see Ben Folds play in a college gymnasium. The sound sucked and I was one of the oldest people in the room (did you know that kids now hold up cell phones instead of lighters at concerts?), but Ben was great. The opening acts were...Well, I’m not going to trash artists trying to succeed...except for Eef Barzelay. Eef got up on stage in a white suit and gave a short intro, then played a few songs on his acoustic guitar. The music was like nothing I had ever heard before. It smacked of jazz, country, and 80’s rock, but with a hint of bluegrass and wonderful lyrics. Eef embraced his nerdy (as a nerd myself I use the term affectionately) aura wholeheartedly and even poked fun at those guys that go to guitar stores to show off their mad skills at reading tab and playing pentatonic scales. After the concert it started to snow cats and dogs, but I was scrambling for a pen to write down “Eef Barz...” I couldn’t remember the rest. I picked up his solo album Bitter Honey and was blown away. I later found his four tracks on Daytrotter, after which I spent weeks teaching myself “Apocalyptic Friend”, “Thanksgiving Wave”, “Well”, “Jews for Jesus Blues”, and others.
     I was browsing YouTube for Eef songs and I noticed that he introduced himself as “Eef Barzelay of Clem Snide”. I grabbed a few YouTube videos of ClemSnide and thought “these guys are just getting in his way”. Google pointed me at ClemSnide.org where I found recordings of Eef playing live at coffee shops and bars--cool!
     Wanting to support a talented, independent artist, I picked up Clem Snide’s End of Love and dropped it on my music player (NOT an iPod BTW) to listen to on the train. Wow! Clem Snide quickly became one of my favorite bands! End of Love, Soft Spot, and The Ghost of Fashion live in my car, my music player, my laptop--I listen to them constantly. Maybe some day I will put some of my favorite Clem Snide tracks up here for a listen, but until then here are the completely free songs available from Daytrotter’s Archives of Eef Barzelay. Enjoy!

     Having recently acquired a Nikon D300 I took the long route home from work last Saturday on a mini-photo-safari. I had spotted this building the night before on the way home from work and was dying to take a picture of it when the sky was clear, and well, here it is. Although I didn’t like it so much at first, it has really grown on me and looks fantastic on paper. In fact, I think it is going to claim the frame that is currently occupied by another photo. This picture has heavy machinery, a wonderful blue gradient in the sky, and cool surreal colors, all of which are some of my favorite things--no wonder I like it so much!
(click on the picture for a blow-up)

     I’m a huge fan of animation and particularly of cartoons, so I was biased towards Persepolis to begin with, but this really is an excellent movie. As I understand it, the cartoon is based on a French graphic novel which is in turn based on the life of Iranian expatriate Marjane Satrapi. The movie follows her life, growing up in Iran in the late seventies and early eighties in a family of anti-establishment communist activists. The animation follows the style of thick black lines and high contrast that is common to “dark” graphic novels and I just love it. Periodically it cuts back to the future, which is in color, but only just.

     The movie is in French, but takes place in Iran and Austria, and apparently the dialog is even better (so says Clo) if you understand French I spent most of the time focused on the terrific animation and the surreal story of living in Iran during the take over by the Shaw. At one point Marjane’s aunt needs to apply for a passport to get her husband out of the country for needed surgery--at this point in the movie the Iran-Iraq war is tearing the country and its people to pieces. The man denies her request, citing “God’s will”, and the aunt angry points out that this man used to wash windows, but since the Shaw he has grown a beard and now runs the hospital... According to “God’s will”. Marjane herself speaks to God, very casually, throughout the movie in a casual an non-confrontational way that is unfamiliar to American cinema. Her irreverence truly manifests itself as she challenges her religion teacher, refuses to pull her head scarf over her face, and as pictured in this screen shot, sports a jacket that says “Punk is not dead”. The two teachers point at her button of Michael Jackson and she says “No, it is.... Malcom X”. Fearing for her safety her parents ship her off to a French school in Austria and a hilarious bit of animation ensues during which she matures into a woman.

     If you want to read a real synopsis of the movie, you can check it out at the IMDB, but if I were you I’d drop what I was doing and go see this movie... Or if you’re in Europe, go rent the DVD

This is it, the new blog! I was sitting at work too stressed over job interviews to do much other than drool on my keyboard and I thought, why not start a web site? I’ve been looking all over for a place to put my photographs and an appropriate format to do it with, but all the sites lacked something--they weren’t mine. Thus, I registered ChezMojo.com and fired up a blog. I suppose this is place where Clo and I will post stuff about our happy little lives in Boston, including lots of photos. I also put up http://photoblog.chezmojo.com specifically for photos. I often like to flip through years of photographs and try to remember what I was thinking and why I took a particular picture, but recently I’ve noticed that all this crazy stuff I’ve been reading about photography has seriously influenced the quality of the pictures that were coming out of my shiny new Nikon D300. Whatever the cause, I wanted a website that I could waste time flipping through my photos in chronological order, so there you go.