Linking to Madsen Cycles could get me a free cargo bike (fingers crossed, then taped together, sealed with epoxy, and blessed by hoodoo shamaan).

You can enter too… but don’t because my chances will be better without you.

Posting has fallen by the wayside, as of late, a chronic problem of mine. Lately my attention has been focused on a new project, Minneapoholics Anonymous. I’ve created a site for the group, here, but it is essentially a group focused on visit noteworthy Twin Cities bars in search of good food, drinks, and friends.

Newsworthy events for this blog include:

• The kegging of my Coffee Porter/Stout kit
• The brewing of my English Pale Ale kit
• The purchasing of supplies for my Old Ale experiment (which I will hopefully brew tonight)

If things go according to plan (read: if I muster the motivation to write), there will be a plethora of posts over the next week or so. Stay tuned.

If the world were a perfect place you could drink beer anywhere, at anytime. While it might still be a faux pas to drink during a funeral service or couples therapy, it surely wouldn’t be an immediate indicator of alcoholism. Drinking for breakfast, however, would be perfectly acceptable, even celebrated, encouraged, but most of all, delicious. Why? the simple, yet ingenious paring of coffee and beer.

Now I’m not one to drink before noon–unless I’ve yet to go to bed–but a coffee beer is an excellent way to kick off the morning. There have been many a great coffee beer passed down my gullet: Bell’s Java Stout, Surly Coffee Bender, and Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout come to mind. Soon, I’ll have one more to add to the list: the Peace Coffee Stout/Porter Kit from Northern Brewer.

A few months back, I stumbled upon this magical beast of a brew kit, and had to buy it. Okay, my mom was with me, and bought it for me as an impromptu gift, but why fuss over the details. Anyway, I brought the delectable kit home, over-brimming with excitement. Northern Brewer describes the kit as follows:

Peace Coffee Stout Porter Extract Kit

O.G: 1046 / Ready: 4 weeks

Peace Coffee and Northern Brewer have teamed up to bring you an amazingly simple yet complex stout porter. Peace coffee works with local cooperatives to bring in 100% fair trade coffee from the farmers that grow it and delivers the coffee, through all seasons, by bicycle messenger. We love Peace Coffee for all these things, but just as importantly the coffee is freaking amazing! The stout porter has notes of black currants, black cherries, and cocoa with mouthfilling bready malt flavors. The specially formulated coffee blend was created to lend a rich, muscular coffee backbone and provides a fruity and spicy nose. Usually 1 + 1 = 2, but in this case 1 + 1 = 1000x times more awesomer than 2.

Kit Inventory
Specialty Grains	0.5 lbs. Simpson’s Dark Crystal 0.5 lbs. Chocolate Malt 0.5 lbs. Black Malt
Fermentables	6 lbs. Gold Malt Syrup
Boil Additions	1 oz. Kent Goldings (60 min)
Special Ingredients	4 oz. Peace Coffee Stout Porter Blend (grind coarsely and add to secondary)
If you choose dry yeast	Not recommended.
If you choose liquid yeast	Wyeast #1768 English Special Bitter. Optimum temperature: 65-80° F.

A couple weeks back, I actually got to brew this fabulous beer, I took the following notes in my beer lab notebook:

Goal: To use the Northern Brewer kit to create an accurate representation of the coffee stout/porter style of beer.

Ingredients:

• Malt: 0.5# Simpson’s Dark Crystal, 0.5# Chocolate, 0.5# Black, 6# Gold Malt Syrup
• Hops: 1 oz. E. Kent Golding (5.4%)
• Yeast: Wyeast #1099 Whitebread
• Special: 4 oz. Peace Coffee

Theoretical Specs:

• O.G.: 1.046
• F.G.: ?
• ABV: ?
• Bitterness: ?
• Color: ?

While brewing, I accidentally activated my whitebread yeast packed instead of the ESB suggested by Northern Brewer. I guess that is the danger of having too many yeast packets in my fridge at one time. I bought a rolling pin a couple months back to make a pie crust, but also to crush the grains. I noted the following about crushing grain superiority, “Malt Grinder > Rolling Pin >> Coffee Mug.”

My hydrometer reading gave an Original Gravity of 1.032, quite a bit short of the mark. I used less than three gallons of water for the boil, which leads me to believe that the specialty grains may not have steeped as well as expected. I may be possible that the water became saturated at a low level of total starch/sugar, and that a longer than normal steeping period was necessary to extract the expected moles of starch/sugar. I don’t know if steep rates are dependent on the saturation of of the liquid… If any organic chemists out there know, spread the word.

Not long after, unless you consider 68 days long after, I racked the beer into the secondary. On 5/22/09, I recording a corrected Specific Gravity of 1.014. I racked the beer, added the coffee, tasted a sample, and recorded the following observations in my notebook:

Racking: Today the beer was transferred from the primary carboy to the secondary. The beer appeasr a dark black with brown particulate throughout, and a small amount on the surface. The coffee was coarsely ground and added the carboy [sic] before racking.

I tasted the beer after racking and already the flavor of coffee was detectable. The beer had malty undertones and was slightly acidic but I believe that was due to the coffee grounds in my mouth.

It has been almost exactly two weeks since I racked to secondary. This weekend should be an excellent time to transfer the beer to the keg and carbonate the sucka. I will probably naturaly carbonate this batch, as my Carbon dioxide regulators are a little wonky from a fall–I think it’s time to invest in a ragulator cage. I read quite a while ago that priming sugar is not a linear function of the volume of the beer vessel. Basically this means that the amount of sugar necessary to adequately carbonate a 12 oz bottle is not porportionate to the amount necessary for a 5 gallon keg. I’m going to scour the Northern Brewer forums (an awesome resource and meeting place for homebrewers, by the way) for a more reliable source than my memory. Poorly structured research shows that about half the priming sugar is adequate for a 5 gallon corny keg.

Updates, when I keg…

Leftover EPA v2.0 LifeSpan

Originally uploaded by foambrew

This is a test of Flickr’s blogging utility… At right is a picture of of the lifespan of my “Leftover EPA v2.0″ It was long ago kegged and consumed.

I’m not sure I like this… I would prefer an integrated flickr photo addition to wordpress. I’ll probably add picture’s manually in the future.

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve finally updated the “Now Brewing” page. I’ve also included that I drank the Leftover EPA v2.0, which I brewed many moons ago. I don’t rightly remember how it tasted, but here’s what I wrote about it, a week or two after drink it (FAIL):

Beer was tasted on two occasions, once at home and a second time at Andre’s apartment at NU. Both times were served from the keg.

This is written long after the fact…

I remember that the hop character was more pronounced, probably due to freshness, and the sweetness was considerably less than the previous batch.

Wow, what descriptive tasting notes. Anyway, I somewhat achieved my goal of improving the recipe, even if I can’t remember much of the details. I obviously plan on tweaking the recipe again to see what I can improve upon. If I change the beer at all for the upcoming batch, I will probably swap the belgian yeast for a typical English strain, hopefully something dryer. Otherwise, I’ve got plenty of other brewing left to do before Summer draws to a close.

On a rainy weekend day last month I completed two lifelong goals. Okay, one goal was only a couple years old, and I’ve only had the other for a couple months. Regardless, I completed two goals in one day, give me some credit.

For the last couple years, my main mode of transportation has been an old Novara road cycle. I bought it geared, but within a year, converted it to a single speed. Originally, I was just letting it ride on a specific gear on the rear cassette. Then my rear wheel was stolen, so I replaced it and used a single speed freewheel gear. That lasted for about two years, until my breaks (originals I presume) started to not stop, if you catch my drift. As oppose to buying new brakes, I opted for a wheelset with a fix/free flip/flop hub on the rear wheel.

On the aforementioned weekend, I swapped on the new wheels and made some aesthetic repairs to the ride, which I now call Lightning (I call my KM Thunder). The wheelset I bought is as good of a flip/flop I can get for 27″ wheels, according to the Hub salesperson. They cost about $150 for the pair. I ride with 42t on the front chainring and had 16t on the rear. I kept the same ratio when I bought my fix and free cogs. I was able to keep my old tires, but had to buy new tubes with presta valves.

After the wheels, I removed the old, decrepid braking system. I then cut off the “drop” portion of my drop bars, converting them into time trial bars. This was a long sought after change. Then I added a simple black cross brake lever, and wrapped the bars with some hot, eye-blinding-yellow, perforated grip tape. I added a new, bright blue dual-pivot calliper brake, from some company I’ve never heard of. I tried to swap in my pedals from Thunder, but I could only remove on of those pedals. Instead, I took the power grips off, and added them to Lightning’s pedals.

All in all, she’s a good ride. Using your legs and feet to brake is definitely a change, as is resisting the urge to coast on declines. After the learning curve, though, it’s as natural an action as any. My one gripe is that the spokes on the rear wheel were extremely loose and I had to true the wheel around half a dozen times in the first two weeks. I’ve tightened the spokes to a more reasonable level now, but it has just slowed the problem. I may need to buy a spoke tension meter to make sure the spokes are not only at a similar tension, but at an adequately high tension. I have yet to figure out how to skid using my puny leg muscles. Practice is required.

My other bike goal accomplished was modifying my Specialized Hardrock into a legitamite bike polo rig. If you’ll remember, the bike was an old, stock Hardrock. I bought new tubes and inflated them shits. Then I ripped off the front and rear derailleurs. I attached a chain tensioner to the rear hanger to make sure the chain is taught and doesn’t switch cogs on the rear cassette. I removed the front brake, cable and lever as they will not be used whilst poloing. I cut about two inches of each end of the handlebars, then moved the rear brake lever to the left-hand side before replacing the grips. Having the rear brake on the left will allow me to polo with my right hand and be able stop without going head over heels.

I can’t remember what gear ratio I settled on, but it’s low. I was told to pick a low ratio, presumably so I can accelerate quickly on the polo court (it’s not like you have very far to go). The problem is that the max I can go without spinning like a maniac is pretty low. I may bump up the ratio a tooth or two. The seat is pretty miserable, and the seatpost is a good four inches too short. The pedals are also crappy plastic. I’ll replace those as money dictates; none of those issues are a priority right now.

Otherwise it rides well. I can move quickly, stop on a dime, and pedaling is quite smooth. Maybe I won’t suck at polo while riding this guy. I’ll call him Rocky, after the Hardrock birthname and his ability to KO Apollo Creed.

More photos are available at my new flickr page.

This doesn’t really have a point besides being awesome. This is one of the singles from P.O.S.’s new album Never Better, my current “Now Playing” selection. The track is called “Optimist.”

P.O.S. is an artist Minneapolis’ own Rhymersayers Entertainment record label. The label is throwing a HUGE concert next sunday at Canterbury downs, where they will showcase all their rappers, plus some guest appearances (Pharcyde). I’d would like to go–they’re even providing free buses from MOA to the show–but I am more broke than… than, uh… well that didn’t really go anywhere.

As you may have noticed, I changed the site up quite dramatically. The first day of Summer saw me drinking a Furious while making changes to the blog. The most notable, and will probably be the shortest living change, is the theme. I Like the streamlined look, but there isn’t much horizontal space…

Other improvements include the new banner, which will have to change again if the theme does. The sketch from the drawing is a snippet from a symbolic self portrait I drew for my visual arts class (same class I made “Follicle Follies” for). The full picture is a stick figure, with epic wings and a mug of beer in hand, standing on a mountain bike, on top of a skewed image of Minnesota. Of course, the figure is spitting a huge plume of fire.

I scanned my original black and white sketch, cleaned it up and added color in Photoshop. I then cropped it, added the phrase “cerevisiæ ergo sum” and a gradient to make the banner itself. The full (color) picture is below:

I also updated the links section to be more cohesive. The “Beer Podcast/Mags” section is for the more professional beer sites, either geared toward beer information or brewing. The “Beer Sites” section is for any bloggers, news feeds, or other beer related sites.The “Bike Sites” section is for bike sites, phew. “Now Brewing” will feature any beers I am currently working on, and will link to the “Now Brweing” page. Hopefully this will change on a more frequent basis. The “Now Playing” section will still show whatever the album of the moment (I need to update it for “The Bake Sale,” by the Cool Kids) and link to the artists’ websites.

Oh, there will also have to be an “Other Pages” section to link to the “About,” “Now brewing,” and “Cellar” pages. The cellar page doesn’t exist right now, as it sucked and needs to be reconsidered.

Speaking of the cellar, today was “double discount day” at the liquor store my mom (and I occasionally) works at.  Naturally, I met her at work and used her discount to buy much more beer and booze than needed. If you’re going to overdraft your checking account. it may as well be on something worthwhile. Anyway, I’ve got an impressive new colletion of brews on hand. Highlights include:

• 16, 17 and Terrible from Unibroue
• 3 Feet Deep from Furthermore (mmm, dirt)
• Bourbon County Stout from Goose Island
• 2 Mikkeller Stateside IPAs
• A couple saisons
• Hedricks Gin (Fuck yeah! Best Gin in the World)
• Buffalo Trace straight Kentucky Bourbon

I know the last two aren’t beer, or really belong in a cellar, but don’t worry. They are both incredibly delicious, and my cellar is really my bedroom. One of my (many) goals for the summer is to make a simple bottle rack, so I can store my beer in the basement with class. A couple slats of wood and some varnish and BOOM, I’m pretty much a self-made cicerone.

Updates a plenty for sure, and expect more to come.

School has once again gotten the best of me, distracting me from the important things another time. Luckily, I am in the last throws of the school year and will be done with finals this Friday. That means more time for beer, biking and well, more beer, I guess.

Here’s a little taste of what I’ve been up to, hopefully this will be the first of many more posts over the coming months.

And hopefully the last of poorly grown facial hair.

Now that I’ve managed to assemble my bike polo mallets, it is time to have an accompanying bike for said polo. I currently have in my possession my old Specialized hardrock from middle school. A similar bike is pictured below, but mine is different in that is unsuspended and has those weird twist shifters on the handles.

My bike is probably also smaller, as I was also smaller at the time. I plan on ripping out the gears, throwing a surly singleator on back, probably getting skinnies for it, replacing the plastic pedals, and switching the brakes so that either the rear or both are controlled by my left hand. I will probably also shorten the handlbars, and a new saddle is definitely in order. Maybe I’ll take the one from my novara single speed and get an actually decent one for that rig…

I have recently become infatuated with the sport of Bike polo. Although my schedule has limited any actual playing of the sport to one game, I plan on playing many more in the upcoming months.

For those of you who are not familiar with the sport, a really good place to learn is at Legit Bike Polo. The site is run by a friend of mine, Gus, who introduced me to the sport. Basically, two teams of bikers try to get a small ball through the opposing team’s goal using mallets to move the ball. If you’ll notice, the sport requires three pieces of equipment: a ball, a bike, and a mallet. Up until today I had no ball, a non-functioning polo bike, and two ski poles. Now, I have no ball, a non-functioning polo bike, and two polo mallets!

Most bike polo mallets, that I know of, use old ski poles for the shaft and ABS plastic pipes for the mallet head. The handles vary from mallet to mallet, but are commonly made from hockey tape or handlebar tape. For my mallets, I used my old alpine ski mallets. They have a fashionable white base with black and yellow spikes and small orca stickers (free willy!).

The process to convert ski pole to polo mallet is relatively simple. (The steps I took are outlined by Gus on his site, here) First, I had to remove the cages and straps from the handles and the baskets from the ends of the poles. My understanding is that the mallet cannot be attached to the player, so the straps were pointless. The cages and baskets were just in the way. Next, I measured the mallets to 40″, as recommended by Gus, and cut off the tips with a hacksaw. Then I drilled a hole through the tip of the pole where a bolt will affix the shaft to the head.

The head is made from a 5″ section of ABS pipe. I have no idea what ABS pipes are normally used for, but I know that they are found in the plumbing section of Home Depot and are supposedly less brittle (thus less prone to breaking) than PVC pipes. Using apiece of paper and a neat trick from Gus, I marked four points around the pipe where I would drill holes. One set of holes is for the bolt holding the pole to the head, and the second set for the pole itself.

I managed to cram the pole into the pipe, aligned the holes in both, and threw the bolts through. Gus mentions the bolts are just shy of reaching far enough through to easily attach a lock washer and nut to the bolt. He was not kidding. He suggests bending the pipe until the two are able to fit. I was scared of breaking the pipe, so I ditched the lock washers and bent the pipe just enough to get the nuts on. I then tighten them with crescent wrenches.

For the handles, the two mallets are different. One one pole, I used Gus’ hockey tape technique to give some good grip. On the other, I left the original pole handle to compare with the tape method. If it doesn’t work, I can easily remove the handle and slap on some hockey or bar tape.

Next up is acquiring some street hockey balls, souping up my old mountain bike to a polo rig, and playing.