Moved Hefe to the Secondary

Last week was busy and I had a wedding this past weekend, so I finally moved the hefeweizen over to the secondary after 2 weeks in the primary. Again, I’m experimenting a little… I went to a local flea market and bought a 5 gal. carboy for $6. This allowed me to split the 6 gallons into 2 carboys – 1 with 2.5 gal. and one with 3.5 gal. In the secondary carboy with 2.5 gallons, I added 1 can of Oregon red raspberries with juice to make a raspberry hefeweizen. Again, I’ll let you know how it turns out when I bottle it in a week.

I’ve already purchased the ingredients to brew an IPA this weekend… This is partly because of my excitment that my local homebrew shop finally has a new supply of hops. I bought several packs of Cascade hops for my upcoming IPA recipe. I’ll post the recipe next week after I brew.

Say No to Bud InBev Deal

I’m not sure if you’ve been following the news lately regarding Anheuser-Busch, but they could be taken over by InBev. Here’s the story…

Why discuss this in my media, marketing, advertising, online marketing, homebrewing blog?

Anheuser-Busch has been a pioneer within the digital media space. Despite the fact that Bud.tv failed, both AB and the online marketing community learned quite a bit from its branded online video effort. You can’t have continued success without a few failures, and AB took the failure in stride and appears to have grown to be better online marketers because of it.

From all accounts I’ve heard, InBev is good at making these types of companies work more efficiently. Most analysts are pretty sure that InBeb will implement its cost-cutting measures at AB if it purchases it. Most of the time, cost-cutting measures start with marketing budgets. You can be sure that if this is the case, you won’t see nearly as much experimentation coming from AB in terms of online marketing (and certainly not to the level of investment as Bud.tv). While it’s obvious that larger companies have still not completely jumped into online marketing, it will be disappointing if experiments like Bud.tv no longer allowed to take place.

Mars Needs Ditchdiggers Too

You remember this scene from Caddyshack…

Well apparently, Mars needs ditchdiggers too Danny. The Pheonix Mars Lander touched down on the red plant a couple weeks ago and has set out to doing work. It’s digging a ditch and then testing out the soil samples.

The reason I write is not that scientist working on the project lamely named the less than one square foot, 3 inch deep ditch the ‘Dodo-Goldilocks Trench’, but to report that they’ve struck a white substance believed to be ice. How exciting!

My Friends Can’t Read

I had to write a quick blog about this… A couple of weeks ago, I added a new application to my Facebook page called Visual Bookshelf. It lets me enter what I’ve read, or am reading, review things I’ve read, and even shows a graphic of the cover of the book.

The funny part is that underneath what you’ve read it says, “Kevin’s Friends who Read,” and it shows only 10 friends (out of the 97 friends I currently have in Facebook). So, according to Facebook, only about 10% of my friends can read… I guess that shows you the riff-raff I associate with.

Hefe Weizen

Brewed a Hefe Weizen. Here’s the recipe…

Steeped
.5 lbs Briess Wheat Malt crushed 6 row (lovibond 2.2)
.5 lbs Briess Dextrine Malt crushed 6 row (lovibond 1.5)
for 4 hours in 6.25 gallons of hot water from the tap
Brought water to 155-160 F and let rest for 30 min. and brought to full boil and removed grains
1 oz. Vangard pellet hops A.A. 4.4%
1/2 cup of Malto dextine
2 cups of corn sugar
Boiled for 30 minutes
3.3 lbs Briess Bavarian Wheat LME
3 lbs Munton’s Plain Extra Light DME (7 EBC)
1 cup of corn sugar
.75 lbs Munton’s Plain Wheat DME (55% wheat/45% barley, 9 EBC)
Boiled for 15 more minutes
.5 oz Willamette pellet hops A.A. 4.6%
Boiled for 10 more minutes
.5 oz Willamette pellet hops A.A. 4.6%
Boiled for 5 minutes and cooled
Pitched Munton’s Gold Yeast directly into Wort at 68F

This made about 6 gallons, and I forgot to measure my original gravity before pitching the yeast. I think I’m going to add a half can of Oregon canned raspberries to 1 gallon in the secondary for a raspberry hefe. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Brewed a Hefe Weizen

Brewed a Hefe Weizen. Here’s the recipe…

Steeped
.5 lbs Briess Wheat Malt crushed 6 row (lovibond 2.2)
.5 lbs Briess Dextrine Malt crushed 6 row (lovibond 1.5)
for 4 hours in 6.25 gallons of hot water from the tap
Brought water to 155-160 F and let rest for 30 min. and brought to full boil and removed grains
1 oz. Vangard pellet hops A.A. 4.4%
1/2 cup of Malto dextine
2 cups of corn sugar
Boiled for 30 minutes
3.3 lbs Briess Bavarian Wheat LME
3 lbs Munton’s Plain Extra Light DME (7 EBC)
1 cup of corn sugar
.75 lbs Munton’s Plain Wheat DME (55% wheat/45% barley, 9 EBC)
Boiled for 15 more minutes
.5 oz Willamette pellet hops A.A. 4.6%
Boiled for 10 more minutes
.5 oz Willamette pellet hops A.A. 4.6%
Boiled for 5 minutes and cooled
Pitched Munton’s Gold Yeast directly into Wort at 68F

This made about 6 gallons, and I forgot to measure my original gravity before pitching the yeast. I think I’m going to add a half can of Oregon canned raspberries to 1 gallon in the secondary for a raspberry hefe. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Bottled the Dunkel

I’m not sure if it would be considered a dark hefe weizen or a dunkel weizen, but anyway, I bottled my Dunkel Weizen today (I always put the month it’s ready to serve as the month it was bottled on the label so friends don’t think it’s too old). I decided to call it “1474 Dunkelweizen” in honor of an upcoming fraternity event at the end of July at which time I hope to finally crack one open. It’s currently being aged in basement at around 65F. It smelled and tasted pretty good when I checked final gravity. Based on some very basic calculations, I’m estimating the final alcohol by volume to be around 6.5%.

I’m also experimenting with a different way to label my bottles. The logo to the right is my label for the Dunkelweizen. I printed it off on the computer on regular paper, cut it out and then covered the entire thing on the bottle with packing tape. Hopefully the packing tape won’t stick too much when trying to take the labels off, but will prevent water from getting to the label if I decide to put these on ice. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Bottled the Dunkel

I’m not sure if it would be considered a dark hefe weizen or a dunkel weizen, but anyway, I bottled my Dunkel Weizen today (I always put the month it’s ready to serve as the month it was bottled on the label so friends don’t think it’s too old).  I decided to call it “1474 Dunkelweizen” in honor of an upcoming fraternity event at the end of July at which time I hope to finally crack one open.  It’s currently being aged in basement at around 65F.  It smelled and tasted pretty good when I checked final gravity.  Based on some very basic calculations, I’m estimating the final alcohol by volume to be around 6.5%.

I’m also experimenting with a different way to label my bottles.  The logo to the right is my label for the Dunkelweizen.  I printed it off on the computer on regular paper, cut it out and then covered the entire thing on the bottle with packing tape.  Hopefully the packing tape won’t stick too much when trying to take the labels off, but will prevent water from getting to the label if I decide to put these on ice.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

Memorial Day Sales Event

I enjoyed the long Memorial Day weekend and, even though it’s Wednesday, I’m still trying to get back into the swing of things at work.  Decompressing from getting caught up on email, I watched some TV last night and couldn’t help but to notice all of the (mostly car) commercials telling me not to miss their “Memorial Day Sales Event!”  I’m was confused, since Memorial Day was over.  That’s when one of the commercials said, “sale ends June 7.”  I can appreciate a sale as much as the next person, and stretching a sale into a 2 week long event is fine… however, I just can’t see calling it a Memorial DAY sales event when it lasts 2 weeks.  Come up with something better, like the “Kickoff to Summer Sale,” or the “More than just Memorial Day Sales Event.”

Applebees UGC

I know that everyone’s trying user generated content (UGC) nowadays, but the latest attempt by Applebees left me shaking my head.  How many times do you find yourself at Applebees and someone decides to bust out their video camera?  It’s not something that probably happens often enough that it deserves this campaign.  Perhaps Applebees is hoping people will now bring their video cameras with them and will videotape, but this has the potential of easily backfiring… all it takes is one person to videotape what the food looks like when it arrives and compares it to the great looking picture in the menu.  Based on their recent commercials, it looks like Applebees is planning to use the videos submitted to change up the first few seconds of their new commercials.  It’ll be interesting to see how many videos actually get submitted.  I guess you never know… there are plenty of aspiring actors and videographers out there.

Brewed a Dunkelweizen

This weekend I brewed a very wheaty wheat beer. It’s my first use of my new turkey fryer (my wife wanted me out of the kitchen and it allows me to do full boils). Here’s the recipe…

.5 lbs of Briess Dextrine grains
.5 lbs of cracked wheat
Steeped and brought 6.5 gallons of water to 155F and set at 155 for 30 minutes
Brought water to a boil and removed steeping bag
3.3 lbs Briess Bavarian Wheat LME
1 cup of corn sugar
1/4 cup of malto dextrine
1 tsp of Irish moss
1 oz of Tradition hops (A.A. 5.8%)
Boiled for 30 minutes
3.3 lbs Briess Bavarian Wheat LME
3 lbs Muntons Wheat DME (55% Wheat/45% Barley)
.5 oz of Willamette hops (A.A. 4.5%)
Boiled for 15 minutes
.5 oz of Willamette hops (A.A. 4.5%)
Boiled for 15 minutes and cooled

Here’s the interesting part… I’m fermenting 5 gallons in my carboy with Munton’s Gold Ale dry yeast, and then I’m fermenting 1 gallon in couple half-gallon growlers. In the growlers I’ve tried my first attempt at yeast harvesting (from a Schlafly Hefe). The original gravity is 1.070. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

St. Louis Brewers Heritage Festival

This past weekend I went to the St. Louis Brewers Heritage Festival (well, in St. Louis, obviously). There were 8 breweries (Alandale Brewing Company, Anheuser-Busch, Schlafly, GriesedieckBros. Brewing, Augusta Brewing Co., O’Fallon Brewery, Square One Brewery, and Morgan Street Brewery), with over 60 beers to sample. Unfortunately, I was only able to try about half of the beers. I’m only disappointed that I was not able to sample beers from Alandale, Square One, or Griesedieck (in all fairness, Griesedieck only had 1 beer to sample). One interesting thing about the festival is that the brewers did not give the “brand name” of their beers, only the brewer and the style. That’s why I made fun of my wife, since the first beer she “tried” was A-B’s “American Light Lager” (Bud Light).

I did enjoy the Schlafly beers alot, in particular the Bavarian Style Dark Wheat (which my friend who went with us tells me is their “#15”) and their Kolsch (for a winter day, I’d go for the Schwarzbier). I only tried two of Morgan Street’s beers, and one was good (the Dusseldorf Altbier) and one was terrible (Vienna Lager). Although each brewer brewed a St. Louis Dark Lager (with the same ingredients) and I have to say that my favorite there was Anheuser-Busch’s version. In the Witbier/Wheat Beer category, I enjoyed Schlafly’s (#15) and Augusta’s Blegian Witbier (A-B’s version was a little too lemon-orangy for me, and O’Fallon’s was a little bland). In the “alternative” (fruit beer) category, I still like Schlafly’s Pumpkin Beer. Although the version they had at the festival seemed to have more spices than the one i had at “The Tap Room” (their restaurant) last October. As far as “hoppy beers” I’d have to go with O’Fallon’s American IPA (I think it’s their “3-Day IPA”) which kicked in a minute or two after I drank it – followed closely by Augusta’s American IPA which had a little bit of grassy taste. The surprise of the day for me was A-B’s Sorghum Beer. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it wasn’t bad – quite barleyey. Overall, if I had to choose a “Best of Show” I’d have to go with Augusta’s German Pilsner… but only because it was a Pilsner kind of day. Each beer was pretty good on it’s own and it was a pretty good day… and props to the staff at the festival for handing out huge soft pretzels and bottles of water as we left. I hope we’ll be able to go again next year.