wordless Wednesday

Feeling pretty awful the last few days…  I never know if I have allergies or if I am sick but after day two, I have a pretty good idea that I am sick.

 

shadow of papa smurf on our dining area wall

 

despite the warning, I still ate %50 of the jar of nuts

 

does the roll go over, does the roll go under … problem solved. your welcome.

 

 

 

one of my favorite beers

 

our little hop plant. I think he needs a sunnier spot

 

Review – Digital Thermometer

Right now sitting in our basement we have a few thermometers for brewing.  We have purchased one for Mashing, a few  for measuring the temperature of water, and one for measuring the temperature in the cylinder when testing the hydrometer readings.

The first one we bought was a floating thermometer.  It was great for sitting in the pot and hanging  bobbing around.  At first we were able to keep it in the pot and just forget about it when we were heating our strike water.  It was great except that it would take a long time to read the temperature correctly.  If we took the thermometer out of the pot and inserted it back in  to check the temperature the mercury would take so long to rise that we had already gained 5-10 degrees while waiting.  If you think waiting for water to heat up is a test to your patience, it really isn’t fun waiting for it to cool down.  Now we mostly use it to stick into our Mash and it stays there while the mash is resting.

We later got a digital thermometer with a probe attachment.  We thought it would work great to stick on the side of the pot or nearby and have it set to the desired temperature and beep when ready.  I guess the moisture got into the probe and we pooched it after a few uses.  It was a good idea in theory but turned out to be useless.  Glad it wasn’t expensive.

For testing our temperature in our cylinder when taking hydrometer readings we purchased a small dial style thermometer from Lee Valley Tools seen here.   It is simple and accurate, but takes a bit of time for the dial to get to the temperature reading.  The only advantage this one has over the floating one is that it is able to fit in to the cylinder.

We recently got a thermometer similar to the one sold at OBK seen here .  We were not sure what to expect but we tried it for measuring water and mash temperatures and we really liked it.

 

We did a little test with our other two thermometers to see how fast it reached its temperature point.  All three thermometers gave us the same temperature reading, but the digital one was much faster.

All were accurate, just took longer for dial and mercury to reach a temperature reading.

I am sure it can be argued that a Thermapen is the best way to go, but I  can’t see us spending over $80 on a thermometer. We use this small digital one now for almost everything.  We are just careful not to fully submerge it into our liquid.  For the price it sells for, its a pretty good deal and we like how it gives us a faster read than the other thermometers.  We still keep the floating thermometer for sticking in the mash but this digital one seems to handle everything else we do with it pretty well, so we are satisfied with it.

Wordless wednesday our week in review

At the park we saw a bunch of birds footprints that had been  set into the concrete.

At the dollarama I found these and thought they were “udderly” ridiculous.

At the hockey game.  OTTAWA VS CAROLINA

The Barleys Angels were in the newspaper this week.  I had a few quotes. Fun!

We brewed 5 times this week.  Lots of beer!

I got free tickets to see Oprah live!  George Strombolopolous was also there to interview her.  A very inspiring show!

She spoke about her life and asked us very important questions we should ask ourselves.  Great show!

The best seats I have ever had at a show.

An awesome hairstyle for Loveliness

Spent Grain Recipes- Do Something Delicious with all that Grain!

This week after a freakishly crazy 5 days of brewing, we had a ton of spent grain left over.

I hate to think that all this grain just goes into the green bin.  I like to use as much of it as I can.  I usually save some of it from each brew session and try to make something delicious with it.

This week when we had some Barley’s Angels brewing with us, I gave some of the spent grain to Amanda and Katy to take home and make something delicious with it.  Check out Katy’s Granola - I can’t wait to try this next time!

I have made all kinds of things with spent grain.  You can pretty much pop it into your recipe, but it can be a bit tricky since it depends on how moist your grain is.  Cooking times for certain recipes may vary.  I usually place my grain inside a zip lock bag and place it in my fridge in an upright position.  This way most of the liquid that may be left in the grain seeps to the bottom of the bag and I just use the contents on the top.  For some recipes I dry the grain out completely in my oven first then add it to the recipe.

Here are a few recipes I have done- i hope they inspire you to create your own

Pizza Dough, Pretzels, home made rustic bread (click and check it out)

You can pretty much add it to anything, I have even added to some Meatballs and Beef Satay “kababs”.

But, what I usually use it for is to make Banana Bread, and I have modified my Chocolate Banana Bread recipe slightly and thought I would post it here.

Spent Grain – Banana Bread

• 1-1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tsp.  Baking Powder
• 1/2 tsp.baking soda
• 1/4 tsp.salt
• 1 tbsp crushed flax seeds
• 1 egg
• 2 black banana’s
• 1 cup spent grain
• 1 tbspoon of coconut oil melted and cooled down (or 2 tbsp EVOO)
• 1 tsp.vanilla

 

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, flax seeds and salt in large bowl. Beat egg in medium bowl; stir in bananas, grain, water, cooled coconut oil and vanilla.  Add to flour mixture; stir just until moistened. (Batter will be lumpy.)

Put mixture into a greased loaf pan

Bake for 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes or until wooden toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 min.; remove to wire rack. Cool completely.

 

 

For more ideas  and the recipe check out The Brooklyn Brew Shop ‘s Spent Grain Chef.

I have made the recipe for the burger’s on their site.  I slightly modified it by adding Flax seeds and some Onions and Garlic.  They taste delicious!

Brewing Beer with Angels

This past week I was lucky enough to get across town and be a part of the first ever meeting of the Barley’s Angels Ottawa Chapter.  On April 6th we had our first meeting at Kichesippi brewery and I discovered there were other women like me with a great love of beer.  Of course I knew I wasn’t alone, but it was pretty impressive to be in the same room with over 30 of us.

Barley’s Angels Ottawa

playing Jenga with Katy after she called me out for a “spontaneous Jenga Challenge” on the Kichesippi beer bike.

After a few beers and some Jenga  I left with a growler of 1855, some new glasses for home and a few new connections made with some pretty cool ladies  Two of those women had been invited to come over to our house for a brew session to see how we do things in our kitchen.  We planned on brewing a 5 gallon of Janets Brown Ale.  This was to (probably) be the last kitchen brew of the season since the weather is getting nicer.  The next day we planned to brew on the back porch; a  13 gallon  Scheißen Weizen .  Our weekend was jam packed with brewing fun with these two brew days back to back.  Just in time as our fermenters were getting empty.

When Saturday came along I was really excited to show  Katy  from Sheltered Girl Meets World and Amanda how to brew in their kitchen and that it was possible to make great beer.  I am hoping to write up a bit more of a “Play by Play brew day” in a later post at some point in time.  I just summed up our day to give a general idea of how we do a kitchen brew day.

So here is a little snippet of how our day went…

Brewing a Janet’s Brown Ale from the book Brewing Classic Styles  by Jamil Zainasheff and John J. Palmer

 

 

I told Katy and Amanda to be prepared because it usually takes us about 7 hours to do a brew.  I invited them by around noon and asked them to bring a few commercial beers to sample since we don’t usually have an opportunity  to try many commercial beers.

We got to work pretty much as soon as they got here.  I explained that there would be time to sit and chill while we were mashing, but we needed to get started.

I got Katy and Amanda to help me with the weighing and crushing of the grain.  I knew I would not be able to keep track of how much grain I had weighed while I was explaining stuff, so I am so happy Amanda was writing everything down for us!  (thanks!!)

Once the mash process was underway we had an hour to hang out and have some beers.  Unfortunately the keg blew on the Ice Picking Snow Melting ESB, so Katy got about a half a glass of it.  Then we switched to a nice APA that we had on Tap.  I was hoping to have on tap some of the Janets Brown Ale that we had brewed a few weeks ago, unfortunately the yeast was not finished cleaning up after itself.

APA with some Citra and Amarillo

Next we sampled a Bog father by Beaus.  I really enjoyed it.  This was a hopped Gruit -and I have to say that this one was quite yummy!

Bog Father by Beaus

Amanda brought over some fresh Jamacan Patties that she picked up from The Piggy Market they were so delicious.(thank you)  we played wii fit games and had some laughs while things were Mashing… see kitchen brewing is pretty easy going. We hit a bit of a snag as we waited for the water to reach its prime temperature – it was too hot, so i tried to cool things down, then it got too cold.  Sooner or later it became just right and we were mashing in for 60 minutes.

mashing in – getting rid of “dough balls”

Next step was to Fly Sparge – We set up our Sparging so we could drain with gravity helping us out.  We fed our first bucket with the correct amount of water we needed and then just made the adjustments to our spigots on our buckets so they ran at the right speed.  We tweaked it a few times, but it was pretty smooth sailing.

All the action started happening when it was time for boiling the wort.  Things get a little hairy when you are standing over a pot that is about to boil.  We had two pots on the burners, lucky we timed it so they would boil at about 10 minutes apart.  A boil over is very stressful and a bitch to clean.

This particular beer had 4 hop additions.  We weighed everything out and placed them in small bowls so they were ready for each pot.  We were also trying to get supper ready and finish making  a wort chiller (ya – we leave things for the last minute )  so Amanda was in charge of one pot and Katy was in charge of the other.  I was on the BBQ making rice because I couldn’t use the stove,  this was going to be the best rice we had ever had!

Rice on the BBQ for the Burritos with Chicken Verde

Once it was all done on the stove it was time to chill our wort.  Our chiller was a bit overkill, but that is because it is also used for our giant pot outside.  We realized that our adapter for our hose didn’t fit on our chiller, so we needed the 100 foot garden hose brought into the kitchen.  There was barely room for us in there – with the giant chiller, the coil and all four of us, but the wort cooled down quickly. Sorry I couldn’t take a picture of the calamity - but my hands were quite full!

This is the immersion chiller. this photo was taken before a giant copper pipe was added to the bottom piece and soldered in place – giving it more stability and a way for the cold water to shoot out

We siphoned what we could from the two pots into one carboy.  We then attached a fizz x to a drill and aerated the wort so there was plenty of oxygen in it.  All that was left to do was pitch the yeast and then add the air trap.

Here it is bubbling away – (i took the picture yesterday)

We ended up finishing everything a little bit later than we had intended.  Over all it was a good brew day with only a few snags (water for the mash was too hot, then too cold, then too hot again – immersion chiller was not ready and hoses didn’t fit)  These are all little things that just happen on brew days though.

Tired and hungry we sat down to enjoy some burrito’s with home made mexican rice, guacamole, salsa and Chicken Verde that had been cooking in the slow cooker all day.

I wanted to say thank you once again to Amanda and Katy for joining us on our brew day! It was a lot of fun.  I am also eager to hear about what you decided to make with the spent grain you brought home.  I think I am going to make some spent grain burgers  to go with some of the hamburger buns that have been preserved so well by the hops in my freezer (mmmm still fresh after 5 weeks on my counter )

Wordless Wednesday – my week in review

I thought these orchids were dead, but they started blooming a year later

making some beer with mom and dad

Simon le bon

hops for the janets brown ale

continuity! !!

in this one he has a peg leg!! loviliness spotted this

amazing beer I will probably only get to have once in this lifetime

For a little bit more than a month I can say I was a runner!

March 1st was my first day running.  I had downloaded the app couch to 5 k  I bought cute little running pants and new shoes.

It was glorious, I felt so empowered.  I felt like I was accomplishing something.  If the zombie Apocalypse would happen I had slightly better chances than the other guy.  Life was good.

That is until I felt the sharp “PING!” in my big toe as I “Costanza” leaped over a slushy puddle.

It felt like my big toe had cracked and as I continued to run I didn’t think it was a big deal.  I kept running and walking and as I got closer to my house the pain got a little more intense.  At this point Zombies would have a human buffet with me for sure.

I got into the house and removed my shoes.  It cracked again and holy mother of God it hurt.  I limped upstairs to show handsome my toe and get a bit of sympathy.  I thought the shower would also make it feel better but I was wrong.  At least I was right about the sympathy part.

This weekend I have been limping around like a jerk and feeling sorry for myself.  My knee hurts from overcompensating from my toe and standing for long periods of time is causing much pain.  Everyone here has been really helpful despite my moodiness.

The swelling of my foot has gone down, so I think that is a good sign.  It is just tender now, but I still have a limp.  I am hoping it gets better and I am looking forward to be able to run again.  I was actually feeling a huge boost of confidence from it.  I loved the fresh air, and seeing my progress as I started running for 1 minutes and now I can run for 3 minutes straight without dying.  Sure it sounds like a little accomplishment but for a girl who always had a note to get out of gym class, and wheezed tremendously while doing the grouse grind, this was something to be proud of.

Now I am unsure if I will be able to run anytime soon.  Such a let down  for now you will find me with my ass on the couch, my leg propped up, wallowing in my own despair and being eaten alive by zombies.

the toe on my left is called “my Marilyn Monroe” toe – for obvious reasons, and  the one on the Right is my “cracky” toe named because I used to be able to crack it 100 times in a row, but now it doesn’t crack anymore, well when it does it really hurts.