The Nitrog-inator

I may not be Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, but I've been known to whip up an -inator from time to time. No, I don't mean a doppelbock, though I'd like to at some point. I mean a contraption. A thingee that does something. None of them ever conquered the tri-state area, and not all of them have been particularly successful, but when it comes to homebrewing, most of them have worked out pretty well. I attribute this to the wealth of knowledge out there on the various homebrewing forums as well as the YouTubes. So far, I've built two kegerators, one based on a cheap fridge that was living in my house when I moved in, and one based on a Danby DAR125SLDD mini-fridge I bought online. I've also wired up a Control Products TC-9102D-HV high voltage dual-stage digital temperature controller, and assembled my all-electric brewery, including soldering together temperature sensors, adding twist-lock plugs to pump cords, modifying kettles, re-sweating a leaking chiller joint, and so forth. It's been a journey, with a lot of learning.

So when I was casually browsing Craigslist one day and saw a used mini fridge (a Kenmore 564.95499400) with no freezer for not very much money, and remembered that I was planning on brewing a Dry Irish Stout for St. Patrick's Day, I jumped at the opportunity. I want to put that stout on nitro!

Your Mom: A DIS

I seem to be on a dark beer kick. It's not intentional—at least I don't think it is—but my kegerator at work has a brown ale, a milk chocolate stout, and a schwarzbier on tap. Last year around this time, I found myself watching the "All About Stout" episode of BrewingTV (one of my favorites), but I hesitated to pull the trigger. Not this year. This year I will brew a Dry Irish Stout, and I will brew it in time for St. Patrick's day.

Super Lazy Ice Cider: An Experiment

In November of last year, I was reading the November/December 2014 issue of Zymurgy and I ran across an article named "Frozen: Making Ice Cider" by Nathan Williams (I also read an article in BYO). I've had ice wine before, I guess it had never occurred to me that one could also make ice cider. Ice wine is made by leaving grapes on the vine until they freeze, which does two things. First, it allows the fruit to develop more sugars (essentially becoming overripe). Second, it freezes the juice of the fruit, so that when pressed, much of the water is left behind as ice, yielding a very concentrated must. There's nothing particularly special about grapes in this case, and the same can be done with apples. As of December  2008, to be designated as cidre de glace (it originated in Quebec), a beverage must obey the following rules:

May The Schwarzbier With You

I was dismayed to find out that I was the fourth person on Brewtoad to name a recipe "May The Schwarzbier With You". But not dismayed enough to change it. I brewed this back on November 9, because I was going to be out of town for all of December and wanted to take advantage of the time away to do some lagerin'. Lagerin' always goes better when you can't go check on the beer, or you forget about it (or both!).

In developing the recipe I consulted a couple of sources, but mainly went with splitting the difference between two of Jamil Zainasheff's recipes from Brewing Classic Styles. One he admitted was far too roasty, but still seemed to do well in competitions. The other was basically just a black pilsner. I've never been one for "It's just like this other thing, only a different color!", so I combined the two, in the hopes of taming the roastiness of the first recipe. Here's what I wound up with:

Speckled Heifer

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine from Minnesota was over at my house, and we were digging into some beers another friend of mine from Wisconsin had brought back. Most of them were from New Glarus, a renowned brewery that only distributes their beer within Wisconsin. I had seen a bunch of their stuff before, as well as the episode of BrewingTV about them. Needless to say, I was intrigued. He brought back a bunch of stuff, including some of the more exotic offerings, but he also brought back their flagship beer, Spotted Cow. Upon sampling this beer, my Minnesotan friend remarked that he really missed Spotted Cow, and lamented its scarcity and lack of availability out here. So I said, "Why don't we try to brew a clone?"

He took me up on it.