IBU Calculator Finished

The IBU Calculator is now finished! It took a while to decide upon which formula to use. Ultimately, I decided upon Jackie Rager’s Formula since most brewing isn’t full wort. It also seemed like it would be easier to program.

There is still the option to code a second calculator that uses Glenn Tinseth’s Formula, but we’ll see how this one works. So far I’m pretty happy with the numbers its gets. I’ll probably work on improving the layout, but since I’m working over the command line right now, I’ll wait until I get home.

What tool should I add next? ABV calculator? A second IBU calculator?

Double Chocolate Espresso Stout

So a month ago I finally tried the Stout that I made in December, and I thought it was great. I was a little worried that the flavor of the beer would be over powered by the espresso, so I let it sit in secondary longer than usual to mellow the taste. I bottle conditioned it and after about 4 weeks in the bottle I thought it tasted great. I got the recipe from BYO and made a few modifications but kept it pretty close to that recipe. Here it is:

  • 8 # Dark malt extract
  • 0.5 # Crystal malt 20L
  • 0.5 # Chocolate malt
  • 0.5 # Roasted Barley
  • 1 # Ghirardelli Premium Sweet Ground Chocolate
  • 2 oz Northern Brewer 7.4% AA
    • 1.5 oz @ 60 min
    • 0.5 oz @ 15 min
  • 0.5 # espresso ground espresso beans
  • 1 pkg. White Labs Irish Ale Yeast WLP004
  • 1 tsp heading powder (for head retention when bottle conditioning)

Procedure:

  1. Steap grains @ 150F for 30 min.
  2. Heat to 17F and add extract
  3. Add hops at designated times and add chocolate at begining of boil
  4. Add yeast and ferment and water to make 4 gallons in primary.
  5. At secondary add espresso that has been brewed to a gallon of coffee

OG-1.072, FG-1.020, ABV-5%, IBU-56

Yakima IPA 3

I reformulated my Yakima IPA for a 3rd time this weekend. I’m taking advantage of my abundant hop supply to experiment with different boil times and post boil techniques. This time I used 2oz of Centennials for 60 minutes, 1.5 oz of Cascade at 15 minutes, and .5 ounces more at 5 minutes. Then I used .5 ounces of Cascades in a pseudo-hop-back, by putting the hops into a strainer and pouring the warm wort over them into the carboy. We’ll see what happens. Here’s the Recipe.

Changes to page, looking at different content manager

While I was sick, I validated the entire site for XHTML compliance. At the time, it passed.
Valid XHTML 1.0!
Also, I’m looking at a different content management system to replace Moveable type. Hopefully something in PHP. You’ll probably notice that this page doesn’t validate correctly. I’m not sure how that happened. I’m getting tired of MT.

Bert on Tap

I’ve moved my Yakima IPA 2 and Michelle’s Scotch Ale into the kegs, and they’re carbonating.

Also, we’ve got a new addition to the kegerator: a bronzed Bert Grant tap handle. Its cool. Pictures forthcoming.