Newsflash: BP to stop drilling relief well, will plug leak with Joran van der Sloot
I am going to start this post with a brief departure from beer, so I can rant about a couple of things first.
Let’s start with this Joran van der Sloot piece of crap. This “man” deserves to be put in general population of that Peruvian prison… and he must shower with powdered soap. This is the deal. This kid has built this entire persona as a perpetual liar. He has confessed and retracted and back pedaled on so many different allegations over just the past five years that no one at this point could possibly believe anything he has to say. As far as a scam artist goes, this guy has done pretty well for himself. Unfortunately, the Feds dropped the ball recently in Aruba, and another young lady is dead. He confessed to the second murder, then retracted saying he “was scared”… as Sherman T. Potter would have said “Son, that is a big load of horse puckey”. This kid is just following his M.O. in the hopes that the authorities screw something up and he gets let off on a technicality. Like I said, throw him in general population in a pair of ass-less chaps. He will quickly understand justice.
Next up is this whole “Big Oil is SATAN!!!!!” nonsense. It isn’t Big Oil that is evil, it is the administration at BP. I am actually a bit conflicted on this topic, because I started my working career in the oil and gas industry. For 18 long months, I worked in quality control on an exploration vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. We did not actively rape and pillage the Earth, though we did help acquire the data for our contracted companies to do so. I actually worked on a couple of surveys for BP (back when they were still mostly British). They weren’t overly demanding, and since we did not drill test wells or anything, my life was never in imminent danger due to explosion… except on chili night, but I digress. This is what I am taking out of this particular situation:
The oil industry is not bad in, and of, itself. Our particular operation was quite environmentally conscious. Any spill was quickly contained, we did not jettison non-biological material (and the biomass we did discharge was processed and treated before it became effluent), and from what I saw the very few times I was actually on a drilling platform, every process was performed with the utmost care to worker and environmental safety.
BP, however, in their quest to pull in a larger profit margin than their competitors cut very significant corners against the advice of the two companies that they were operating the Deepwater Horizon with (TransOcean and Halliburton). BP dug this hole for themselves, quite literally and figuratively. Now, unfortunately, an entire ecosystem will suffer for many years to come and many families will, for all intents and purposes, lose their livelihood. F-you Britain! At least when we polluted our own waters it was tea, and the fish and lobsters only got hyper.
Should the Gulf disaster lessen our search for alternative, renewable resources? Not at all. There were only so many dinosaurs and prehistoric flora that died and were compressed. We will run out of oil eventually. Oil shale extraction still is not a viable alternative, cars can’t run on NG, and bio-fuels are no more “green” than traditional fuels. I don’t have any solutions or suggestions as to where we go… maybe nuclEar (that’s for you, GHW) power and fuel cells and electric vehicles will start getting more funding….
OK. Now that that is off my chest, let’s get to the beer! As I mentioned in my last post, I have had a “trouble batch”. No matter what I tried, I just couldn’t get it brewed. Mishaps, commitments, sunburn, fatigue and hangovers were keeping this beer from being born. I took a step back from this recipe, re-evaluated it, and decided it wanted to be a Double IPA. I also knew that Father’s Day was looming. My lovely wife, Stacie, and I have an understanding: On Mother’s Day, she lifts not a finger for any reason. On Father’s Day, I brew beer.
Father’s Day was yesterday, and I really could not have picked a more beautiful day to brew. I started the weekend thinking I would get that IPA done, then I was requested to brew a batch of our Hippy Bro Nut Brown Ale for a friend. DUAL BREW DAY!!!! I actually kept a half-assed log throughout the brewday complete with times. I will list that out at the end so you all can see how the day progressed. First, here are the recipes:
- Hippy Bro Nut Brown Ale
recipe for 5.25 gallons,brewed on6/20/2010
- 8lbs Fawcett Optic Pale Malt
- 1 lbs British Mild malt
- 3/4lbs Cara-Amber
- 1/4lbs Crystal60*l
- 1/4lbs Crisp Brown Malt
- 1/4lbs British Chocolate malt
- 1oz Willamette whole hops (5.5%AA) as First Wort hops
- 1oz Nugget pellet hops (13%AA) added at 60 minutes… I just realized writing this that the recipe called only for 1/2oz…oooops!
- 1oz Willamette whole hops (5.5%AA) added at 5 minutes
- WYeast 1028 London Ale yeast
- Expected starting gravity: 1.054 with 5.75g in carboy
- SRM(color) 31
- IBU 67 (would be 37 but for adding too many Nugget hops)
2. WWW.IPA.COM (original recipe may be found here)
recipe for 5 gallons, brewed on 6/20/2010
- 15lbs Fawcett Optic Pale Malt
- 2lbs Vienna Malt
- 3/4 lbs Dark Munich
- 1/4lbs Crystal 60*L
- 1/4lbs Cara-Amber
- 1lb Light Muscovado sugar added with 10minutes left
- 2oz Willamette whole hops (5.5%AA) as First Wort hops
- 3/4oz Warrior pellet hops (17.2%AA) added at 60minutes
- 1/2oz Perle pellet hops (8.3%AA) added at 60minutes
- 1oz Willamette whole hops (5.5%AA) added at 20minutes
- 1oz Amarillo pellet hops (8.7%AA) added at 10 minutes
- 3/4oz Warrior pellet hops (17.2%AA)added between 5 and 0 minutes
- 1oz Willamette whole hops(5.5%AA) added between 5 and 0 minutes
- 1.5oz Perle pellet hops (8.3%AA) added between 5 and 0 minutes
- WYeast 1084 Irish Ale yeast cake from Smoked Irish Red
- Expected OG: 1.092 with 5.5 gallons in carboy
- SRM: 15.3
- IBU: 132 (human taste threshold is 80-90, anything above is for bragging rights)
Now, this is how the brewday went down:
- 9:30 got woken up by a kid yelling in my ear that it was time to get out of bed
- 9:45 showered and dressed, strike water has been measured for the Double IPA (DIPA)
- 10:00 Burner is lit to heat the strike water for the DIPA. Begin crushing grains for both batches to be brewed. Water is measured for the Brown Ale and set aside until burner is free
- 10:38 The DIPA is mashed in into the Igloo cooler-tun. Strike water was heated to 164*F so the mash stabilized at 150*F (Our oldest daughter was kind enough to inform me at this point that I had already added the 5.2 mash stabilizer to the strike water. She will be a brewster yet!)
- 10:55 The Hippy Bro is mashed in right in the kettle. Strike water was heated to 165*F so the mash stabilized at 154*F
- 11:50, sparge water put onto the burner to heat for the Brown Ale
- 12:20 Sparge water for Brown Ale reaches 175, and sparging begins and runs for the next 45 minutes
- 1:00 Burner is turned on after 3 gallons have been collected for the Brown Ale
- 1:20 Brown Ale reaches a boil
- 2:20 Brown Ale boil is complete, chilling begins. Sparge water for the DIPA is put on the burner to heat to temperature
- 3:00 Brown Ale is done and in the carboy
- Vital Statistics for the Brown Ale
OG measured 1.052 with 5.3gal in the carboy for system
efficiency of 71%
- 3:20 IPA Sparge is started. The first runnings were absolutely clear of grain particules before I had even run off a quart of liquid. All hail the braided hose!!! Sparging runs for next 50 minutes
- 4:00 Burner is turned on after 2.5 gallons have been collected for the DIPA
- 4:30 DIPA reaches a boil
- 5:35 DIPA boil is finished and chilling starts
- 6:15 DIPA is done and in the carboy.
- Vital Statistics for the DIPA
OG Measured 1.092 with 5.6 gallons in the carboy for system
efficiency of 70%
- 7AM 6/21: DIPA has begun blowoff. Additional cold water added to container bin, airlock replaced with sanitized AL foil. No signs of life from Brown
- 7PM 6/21 DIPA blowoff finished. Still nothing from the Brown (no starter was prepared
So, that was my brew day/ Father’s Day this year. A good, solid 9 hours of brewing under absolutely crystal clear skies. The slight breeze off of Lake Ontario made it bearable to stand next to large volumes of boiling liquids all day. It also made the sunshine seem much more innocuous than it really was. Another weekend, another sunburn, but I just consider it job security since the company I work for designs and manufactures microscopes for non-invasive skin cancer imaging.
We will update on these beers once they are near or at their completion. Until then, Cheers, brew well and live even better.
RYW
