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.

Use of Clients Products

Eariler this week, Microsoft announced that it selected Crispin Porter & Bogusky for creative on its consumer products.  In particular, they’ve selected Crispin to counteract Apple’s effective “Mac and PC” ads.  However, it got me to thinking… if Crispin is like most advertising and design shops, most of their machines are probably Macs.  Most ad people make a habit of using and living their clients’ brands so they can understand it better.  In fact, I have a friend who’s wife is an ad salesperson, and they won’t even buy products from a competing brand or advertiser – so they can show their loyalty to her clients. 

It got me to thinking, will Crispin switch over to PCs instead of Macs?  Do you have to be a user yourself to understand the brand and its customers, or is it better to be an outsider and come at it from an un-biased point of view?  Some would say that in order to sell a product you really need to believe in it… so do you think it’s possible to believe in a product, but at the same time, not be a user of the product because you’re not their target audience?

Wi-Fi on Weather Balloons?

I just read an article from the Wall Street Journal that discussed the potential for Google to utilize weather balloons with (essentially) cell-phone receivers attached to them so people in more remote locations could access high-speed internet.  Seriously… weather balloons?  You’d think with all the technological advances we have nowadays that there would be something a little more sophisticated than weather balloons.  However, I guess it’s right up there with a ship dropping its anchor and cutting whole countries off of the Internet.