1820 Authentic IPA

Ingredients

300 g Medium Crystal Malt
200 g Amber Malt
4.3 kg Light Malt Extract

38g Northern Brewer (30min)
14g Fuggles (8min)
42g Goldings (1min)
28g Fuggles (1min)

Nottingham Dried

Primary 4 days
Secondary 10 days

Bee Cave Brewery Haus Pale Ale

I made the extract version of this beer featured at Home Brew Talk

Ingredients

6.5# Extra Pale LME
1.5# Munich LME -> changed to Carapils
8 oz. Crystal 10L (steep) -> changed to 30 L Crystal

1.0 oz Cascade 7.8% at 60 min. (original recipe called for 6.6% but I used 7.8%)
0.5 oz. Cascade 7.8% at 30 min.
0.25 oz. Cascade 7.8% at 15 min.
0.25 oz. Cascade 7.8% at 5 min.

3/4 Cup Corn sugar

Nottingham Dried Yeast

Primary 3 days
Secondary 1 week

Pumpkin Ale

I began making a pumpkin ale featured on this website.

Ingredients

1 lb Vienna Malt, 4L
1/2 lb Crystal Malt, 40L
1/2 lb Malted Wheat
6 lb light malt extract

1 oz Mt. Hood hops (60 min)
1/2 oz Hallertaver Hops (15 min)

Wyeast American Ale

(At end of boil)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp all spice
1/4 tsp mace
1/4 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup corn sugar (bottling)

I bought a pumpkin below, not sure the weight. Probably 11-13 lbs and cut it up into small square-like pieces. I soaked and left a bit of the pumpkin seeds and slimy stuff in there as well. I steeped the pumpkin and grains at roughly 155 degrees F for approximately 30 minutes.

Afterward I removed the grains, strained the pumpkin (well most of it) and added the malt, 1 cup of brown sugar and 1/2 cup of table molasses. Afterward I brought the wort to a boil (212 degrees F) and added 1oz Mt. Hood Hops. At 15 min left of the boil I added the finishing hops, 1/2oz Hallertauer.

I cooled the wort by using ice packs and water in the sink. During which I added my spices.

Below are some photos

Windows Vista Defrag - Fail

Yet another stupid user interface design by Microsoft. This time I attempted to defrag a machine. The last time I remember defragging a system was with windows 2000/XP. I recalled it would give you a screen showing you a percentage of the disk that was fragmented, so you could evidently make a smart decision on whether you need to degragment the disk.


Well unfortunately simply going to the defrag UI in Vista is not the same. When I loaded the defrag utility from the start menu (which is another pain in the ass UI I won't discuss) I was presented with the following.


Yet another User Interface designed for apes! I am really tired of Microsoft hiding advanced options to avoid confusing their users. I didn't think that a simple color chart showing the fragmentation on disk would confuse people. Hell, they went even further and took the easy route and didn't display a progress bar. Instead it simply says

"This may take from a few minutes to a few hours".

I don't know about you, but whenever I ask my computer to do something I like for it to have somewhat of an accurate time frame on when its going to complete the task.

Who is Microsoft hiring these days? Who is overlooking these design decisions? Does Microsoft even care anymore or are they more focused on making a new search engine to compete with Google (which is a total piece of crap)?

If anyone knows who the developer for the defrag UI please have them contact me. I hope to god it wasn't more than one developer, similar to the shutdown menu, if so Microsoft is in trouble.

Goodbye defrag!

Sharp's Doom Bar

Really enjoyed this beer. It is from a company in the UK.

http://www.sharpsbrewery.co.uk/

Canadian Red

Purchased this kit from Noble Grape for around $30 CDN + tax.

Ingredients

?

Review

This red was incredibly tasty and had a small fruity apple after taste, but its colour was not red but rather a more golden. From my experience it didn't classify as a Canadian red from my standards of drinking Rickards Red. Perhaps they gave me the wrong kit?! I likely will have to try this kit out again to verify.

Conclusion

I am not confident this was a red kit that Noble Grape gave me. Nevertheless I am determined to find out what kit this was because it was very good. I definitely will be brewing this again for the summer months.

Festa Brew Apricot Wheat

A quick and easy way to make apricot wheat beer is using a Festa Brew Wheat kit and a can of Apricot Puree from Oregon Fruit Products.

Ingredients

Festa Brew Wheat Ale + dry yeast from kit
Oregon Apricot Puree

Review

I brewed this a few months ago and tasted it about a week after bottling. The apricot at that stage had somewhat of a plastic taste to it and really wasn't a good beer to drink.

After about 2 months the beer matured and the apricot began to blend into the beer. At this time the apricot taste was suttle and the beer was much better! The beer was a bit crisp and was best served with a strawberry added to the mix.

Conclusion

In the beginning I was not very impressed with this beer but the more the weeks pass this beer has become much better. I was also impressed t I how well it turned out considering I didn't use a WYeast but rather the dry yeast that came packaged with the kit. Definitely would make this beer again as it was very easy to make and required little or no work.