Back to Brewing - 10 Gallons of American IPA

It has been a long winter.  The cold that shook the south put me in a serious hibernation mode.  It was all we could do to get out of a warm bed every morning, get to work, get home, get dinner, get cozy, get in bed, repeat.  The last couple of months I've done very little in the way of anything extracurricular.  I needed a break from brewing and frigid temps only further encouraged me.

Well it's started warming up here again and today was a picturesque day to brew a batch of beer.  Temps swelled into the upper 60s while the ground temperature (and ground water temperature) is still recovering from winter and in the 40s (ground water temp coming out of our faucet is almost exactly 50F).  There were 8 ounces of various hops residing in my freezer that I thought would go towards a delicious IPA.  Dry yeast was an easy way to get back into the swing of things and US-05 is always a good yeast.  All I needed was water and grains.

I've read all kinds of good things about floor malted Marris Otter.  I know it's not an American malt, but it gets rave reviews in all beer styles, including IPAs.  Here is how the scene unfolded:

24# Floor Malted Marris Otter
1# Carapils

Mash at 151F for 60min
Raise to 170F for 15min

Preboil OG on 13 gallons (only 1.046...I missed my goal so added some DME to bump it up to 1.051)

2 oz. of Northern Brewer (10.6%AA) at 60 min
2 oz. of Chinook (11.8% AA) at 15 min
1 oz. of Willamette (4.7% AA) & 1.3 oz. of Simcoe (12.2% AA) at 5 min
1.7 oz. of Simcoe (12.2% AA) at 0 min

The beauty of this time of year is ground water temperature.  I use an immersion chiller with a recirc pump to push my hot wort across my cold coil.  I was able to chill this 10 gallon batch to 60F in 20 minutes. That's some serious chillin, Batman!

A nice addition to my brewhouse is a 16 gallon plastic fermentor I grabbed off of MoreBeer.  It's german made and seemingly of very good quality.  The plastic makes it easy to move 10 gallons around, and the wide lid makes it easy to clean.  I've read very good reviews on these fermentors, so hopefully it serves me well.

Picture time!

The mash.  My 10 gallon batches really push the limits of my 12 gallon mash tun.

Hop Spider in action.

The fermentor.  I'm excited about this addition to the brewhouse.

One of my favorite ways to end a brew day.

I plan to dry hop this batch of brew with another 2 oz. of Simcoe hops.  Hopefully I will be kegging this batch up in about 2 weeks and tasting within a month.

My old hop stash is all gone.  My next couple of brews will be a little funkier (Belgian Wit?, Bavarian Hefeweisen?).

I know I'm bad about keeping my blog up-to-date.  But between a renewed passion for brewing, and a lot of excitement in daily life in Fayetteville, I hope to be writing again soon.

To Build a Tube Pre-Amplifier

Those who know me, know I've been known to dabble in high-end audio equipment.  It all started when my old man entrusted me with a system he had purchased/built in the 1970s.  He had built the speaker enclosures to pair to a Pioneer receiver and BIC turntable.  While the definition of what is truly 'high-end' can be debated, his system was nothing to blink at when he had his records spinning.  That system has since been adopted by my tchwin, Mark.  In it's stead I bought a smaller system better suited for integration to our TV and Blu-ray player.  I won't go into the details here but it is also a very good sounding system.  I simply enjoy good sounding music.  But the 'tinkerer' in me won't let me just sit idly by and listen.  I have to wonder, 'What makes good audio?'.  So I read about these sorts of things when the mood strikes and when I have the chance to tinker with equipment, I do.

I stumbled upon a company called, 'Bottlehead', that deals all things DIY audio kits.  They have a very well regarded tube pre-amp kit called, 'The Quickie'.  It's $99 of components that, with a solid list of instructions, you are left to assemble/solder.  I decided to jump in and try my hand at building me one of these tube pre-amps.  It all went pretty smoothly and was completely built in about 4 hours.

This is the back of the board where all the hardware mounts and the wiring connections are made.

What good is a project without a beer?  I've been enjoying smoked beers lately.

All wired up.  Resistors, capacitors, potentiometers, tube sockets, etc.

This is the board 'right-side-up' with the tubes (cylindrical glass things on the left and right of the middle knobs) installed.  The board is sitting in a wooden base that I also bought from Bottlehead for $40.

Ashley snapped a picture of me in action with my soldering iron.  Notice the glasses.  Safety first, people!

So what do you do with a 'pre-amp'?  Well most audio receivers have a pre-amp section and a power-amp section to take line-level audio and amplify the signal enough to drive loudspeakers.  My Outlaw RR-2150 receiver is one like this.  But there are jumpers at the rear of the unit that connect the pre-amp section to the power amp section.  When I removed these jumpers I was able to run my CD player (Blu-ray player) through my hand-built pre-amp and then run cables from the pre-amp into the 'Main-In' (i.e. power-amp input) on my Outlaw.  The results were pleasing.

In side-by-side comparison with the pre-amp section in my Outlaw using a CD track of Wilco's 'Impossible Germany' as my reference I was able to see just how good this little 100 dollar pre-amp is.  The truth is, I struggled to differentiate between the two set-ups.  If anything, the tube pre-amp was a little more warm and maybe slightly more 'fuzzy' than the Outlaw.  But 'Impossible Germany' was impossibly delicious every time I listened.

All in all this was a great little 'tinkering' project for me.  I learned a lot and got to practice soldering. All said and done, it was $150 very well spent.

If any of you decide to swing past the house I'll be more than happy to give you a listen.