It's funny, It's been a while. (Perspectives on Alex Jones)

I am sorry it has been so long since I have posted anything on here, if any one still checks this blog at all.   I am also sorry that this post has almost nothing to do with beer.  However with all the debate over gun control in the United States there is something I need to talk about, and specifically about the Piers Morgan interview of Alex Jones.
First of all if you didn't see the Alex Jones interview it is on youtube.&nbsp
A lot of people have had a lot to say about this interview on facebook and twitter since it happened.  The jist of it being "Alex Jones proves in 7 minutes why gun control is needed."  I agree, he loses it pretty quickly during this interview, but I have some incite in to Alex Jones.  (Did you know he has made quite a few movies.  I have seen some of them.)
So back in 2006 and 2007 I was heavily involved with a few of the anti war, anti Bush organizations that existed.  One of them, The World Can't Wait, I held office positions which included President of our local chapter.  (Latter I learned that organization was deeply entwined with The Revolutionary Communist Party.)  There was another member of our group that was always spreading the latest news to come from a website infowars.com .  This is Alex Jones' website.
This fellow protester I once stood with was always burning dvd copies of movies, "Lose Change", "Terror Storm", and "Freedom to Facisim".  The first two are both conspiriacy theroy movies made in a documentary style, suggesting that the terrorist attacks on 9/11 were organized by the government.  "Freedom to FacisIm" is a movie claiming that income taxes are unconsitutional, the IRS, Federal Reserve, and the Treasury take our income taxes and pocket them, and that there is a huge banking conspiracy to rob us and our country of all our valuables.
Alex Jones made both "Terror Storm" and "Freedom to Facisim".  I do not recall who made Loose Change.  So that is who Alex Jones is, a conspiracy theorist who believes the government and banks are trying to enslave us with phony money that has no real value.
I was cleaning out my apartment this past weekend, to get ready to brew beer later this winter, and happened to come across a copy of Terror Storm by Alex Jones while I was cleaning, and that is when all this suddenly hit me.
I was drinking his Kool-Aid without question when it suited the emotions I had about George W. Bush and the Iraq war.  But now that I am not in that scene anymore and my emotions have calmmed and I can see him for the unstable scared white man he is. This is what has gotten me to thinking about what else my emotions may have clouded my judgement on and what everyone else's emotions have done to their judgement concerning the recent debates on gun control.
Emotions are running high on the gun control debate for sure, there have been a lot of horrible shooting tragedies in the news the past year and a lot of other news stories that scare us all in to feeling the need for increased self protection.  But if we could set the emotions aside and just look at the facts we would see what real problems and solutions are.
I just had a conversation with a coworker, an avid hunter and sportsman who grew up in the inner city of Detroit in the 60's.  I learned a lot from him just now about the gun control debate that makes me rethink things and some of it that I would need to look in to. What strikes me the most is that the majority of the gun control laws we need are already on the books but law enforcemnt is so under funded in these areas that these laws are uneffective.  In many other instances common sense is simply lacking on the part of gun owners.  As my coworker and I discussed if everyone that owned guns was required to safely store them in a un safe or other lockable area to prevent theft and child endangerment a lot of te recent gun violence would prevented.  We also discussed how there really isn't an effective way to track second hand gun sales, which is the way most criminals aquire guns.
So in conclusion it sounds to me like the logical solution is beef law enforcement so they can enforce the laws already on the books as well as re-educating the gun owning public on the responsibilities of gun ownership and how to safely store guns and prevent gun violence in their community.
I would like to thank Alex Jones for unintentionally awakening me to how my own emotions can cloud my better judgement and my logical thought processes.

Half an apple per acre

Making hard cider?  Maybe not this year.

It is October now.  We should be in the thick of apple cider season but thanks to the weather extermes of this year apple cider is in short supply.

There is a 127 acre apple ochard 6 miles from my apartment.  I went to pick up some apple cider, I need like 6 gallons to make a batch of hard cider, and found out that through all 127 acres they found a total of 6 use-able apples.  They have no fresh pressed apple cider this year.

There was an irregular warm spell in late Feburary early March that was strong enough to start the apple trees blooming.  Then mid March and April the weather went back to normal and destroyed the apple blossoms.  Then were was two weeks this summer of temperatures over 100 degrees and no rain.  All of this adds up to apple cider only being availble in chain stores, and for over 6 dollars a gallon.

I am now rethinking my brewing plan, Mead is now looking like the fall brew of choice.

Whiskey Barrel Stout. Yummm!

I cracked open my first bottle of Whiskey Barrel Stout and it is yummy.  Of course I am drinking this within an hour of leaving the dentist office from a deep cleaning and my lower right mouth is still numb, but what I am tasting right now tastes really good.

The whiskey flavor is definitely there but it is not so strong to overpower the typical beer flavor that one would expect from a Stout.  Of course you taste with your nose before with your mouth and the whiskey aroma coming off this beer is really nice too.  Over all I really like the way this beer has turned out and I expect I will be trying to brew another batch of this in the future.

As you can see from the picture this is a dark beer.  I would put the IBU's rating around a 20 or so I think, it is not very bitter at all.

P.S.  I am a bit of an indoor garden fan too and those are all bonsai in the back ground.

Bottling Day, Whiskey Barrel Stout.

After 4 weeks in ferment I finally got around to bottling my batch of whiskey barrel stout Monday morning.  There was an interesting cloudy film over the top of the beer when I opened up the bucket to prime the beer; I wish I had taken of picture of it so that I could actually show what it looked like.  I have never used oak barrel chips so I am hoping that this is okay.  I have also never let a brew sit in a bucket that long before, nor have I ever exposed a brew to temperatures like we have been having. I tried a small swig of the brew before I started pouring it in to bottles and thought it had an amazing taste, even warm and flat I kind of liked the little bit of flavor that I was getting.  The whiskey smell was surprisingly strong and in fact there is still a hint of that smell around, I have not yet thoroughly cleaned the bucket. 

I have also upgraded to 22 oz. bottles.  I love making beer, but I hate cleaning bottles.  So by going to 22 oz bottles from 12 oz bottles I have almost halved the number of bottles that I need for bottling and CLEANING!!!!!!!!

I am also pretty happy that 24 bottles takes up less space then 48 bottles.

I will be cracking in to one of these maybe this Saturday, so I will be updating when I know what they taste like.  I have an extended family get-together happening at the end of the month and if this beer doesn't kill, or make me sick before then I will introduce my family to this one at the end of the month.

I also recently bought the first of two 6.5 gallon glass carboys that I need to attempt hard cider this fall.  Any good recipes for that?

Catching up the blog

In an effort to make this thing a little bit more fun for me and more interesting for anyone that would happen to stumble across this blog I bought a new Nikon to start adding pictures.

June 24 I went with my sister to Chicago for the annual Gay Pride Parade, one of the original gay pride festivals in the country.

I don't know this ladies name but this is the second year in a row that I have spend Chicago Gay Pride with her and her group.  They are really nice, funny, and a blast to be around.  See even let my sister use her chair for a while and keep some of our Gatorade cool in her cooler.

Went to South Haven Michigan, a resort town on Lake Michigan for the 4th of July.  You can't tell it but just to my right the beach was packed.  I even witnessed two fights that had to be broken up by the police.

Since I am putting pictures of total strangers up here I guess one of me couldn't hurt.  This was totally an accidental shot of me while I was working out how to use this new Nikon, but what ever I am naturally ugly and this one doesn't look half bad.

South West Michigan, Beer Capitol.

I recently, about 2 weeks ago, tried two different Founders Brew's that were on tap at my most frequented local bar.  Both brews were good although neither were for the commercial beer drinker.  The first was amazing for its ability to reveal flavor in layers.  I might have the name wrong but I believe it was called Dirty Bastard.  It had a strong initial malt flavor that had hints for chocolate and coffee malt.  As the malt gave way you tasted the initial hop flavors and as the beer finally washed past the back of your tongue there was a definite final note of Cascade Hops, those being the only hops I can currently ID by taste.  The other Founders brew I tried I am even less sure of the name, but based on what I know about the beer and the descriptions on their website, www.foundersbrewing.com, it was probably Curmudgeon Old Ale.  This beer is aged in oak barrels to give it a hint of Scotch flavor.  I was totally in to this beer.  While it wasn't as complex as the Dirty Bastard it was smooth and would probably be more palatable to wider range of beer drinkers.  I would say they were good beers, but not beers that would make my top ten favorites.  (Two of my top ten favorites are beers that I make.)
Founders is based in Grand Rapids MI.......
 BUT......

In Kalamazoo MI, there is a beer renaissance going on.  Bell's brewery, by far the largest brewery in Michigan, keeps building up and getting stronger it would seem.  The have been more and more capable of bringing live music and entertainment to their Tap House in downtown Kalamazoo, acts such as The Verve Pipe and Dark Star Orchestra to name a few of the recent bands.  http://www.mlive.com/kalamabrew/index.ssf/2010/04/kalamazoos_bells_brewery_inc_r_1.html

In the local news, however, there are two new breweries expecting to open up shop in Kalamazoo, one of them stating they expect to be open by this fall.  Arcadia Brewing, so named for the Arcadia Creek that runs through downtown Kalamazoo, announced they would build a second tap house on on the edge of the downtown area right next to the Kalamazoo River.  (Kings Highway and Michigan) Here is the news link to this story.  http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2012/06/arcadia_brewing_co_1.html

Another brewery, Boatyard Brewery, is set to come to Kalamazoo and hopes to be open this fall.  This one is a totally new brewery, we will have to see what their beer offerings are when it happens.  Here is the news link to their story.  http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2012/06/kalamazoo_to_get_new_brewery_b.html

Racking the whiskey beer

Holy Shit ya'll, that smelled amazing.  I transferred my beer to the secondary fermenter and added the oak barrel chips to the secondary fermenter.  The oak barrel chips have to be boiled in a small amount of water for about 5 minutes before being added, and man did that smell good.  My entire apartment smelled amazing. 

Upon checking the beer when I openned up the first fermenter it definately did have a much more vigorus fermentation than what I usually see.  The specific gravity reading was a waste of time for me because I totally forgot what its initial reading was and never wrote it down.

I am going to let the whole thing sit for another 3 weeks, the longer it sits the stronger the whiskey flavor will be, before bottelling.

The in kit instructions kept using the word Racking or Rack in reference to this step in thebrewing process and even though this is my 20th gallon of home brew so far this year and probably almost my 100th gallon over all, I still had no idea what Racking meant.  So I looked it up in The Joy Of Home Brewing.  Racking is nothing more then the process of transferring beer from one container to another.  It seems kind of stupid that, that process has it own name but for how often, no less than 3 times per brew, that is done I guess it makes sense to condense that idea down to one word.  I still don't understand why the word is Racking when Pouring, or heaven forbid Transfering would have been just as good a word and made more sense.