Knuttelbrau sees the lager picture

See what I did there?  Eh?

Anyways, yes, I have brewed my first lager.  It is dubbed "Dr. Knuttel's Lycanthropic Lager" (though I am neither a Doctor or a Lycanthrope).

Lagers, unfairly, have gotten a bad rap due to the saturation of the market (especially in the America) of the so-called Macro-lager -- a lighter take on the pilsner beers of Bohemia and, to a lesser extent, southern Germany.  America has its Budweiser, its Miller, its Coors -- and chances are wherever you are in the country, it would not be difficult to find at least two of the three, if not all of them.  Elsewhere there are still Molsons, Labatts, Heinekens, Stella Artoises, Mooseheads, Amstels -- but they're all pretty much variants on this macro-lager style.

Lady Gaga, as she were, May 2011

Anyone who knows me and my tastes in music knows that amongst the vast sea to which I listen, waves crashing upon the shore, Lady Gaga is certainly a larger wave.  More to the point, anyone who has read these two past articles (seeing as how the older one, a review of The Fame, is from 2009, I'm clearly digging).

Hah, remember when I used to open all of my posts with quotes from old plays and literature.  Those were the days, or I think it only lasted like a month or two, whatevs, it was a fun time.  It was just getting too forced and, well, difficult to keep finding apt quotes for whatever I was writing.  The Gaga one, however, was hella apt.

Symptom of the Brew-niverse and other beer-ings

I bottled my saison earlier today (Saisons dans l'abime).

My previous dealings with gushers were caused by one of two things -- too much priming sugar or not enough sanitation.

I decided to focus on the sanitation issue.  I made sure everything was cleaned twice, and I also sanitized my previously untouched bottle caps (I guess I thought they were too small to make a difference).

Osama Bin Laden...

So, as most of America (and probably the world) knows, Osama Bin Laden was killed last night during an attack on his compound.  A tip was given on his whereabouts last fall, following up on this, the attack order was given.  So I thought I'd give a few thoughts on the matter.

-- The reactions for this happening were varied, sure, but moreso than I thought they would be.  Elation was common, and not entirely uncalled for -- finding him has been an endeavor that has been going on full time for just under 10 years, and at least part time since the other WTC bombing in 1994.  So yeah, this has been going on for three administrations, not two.  Obama may (and rightfully so) get the credit for ending this, but it has taken a long concerted effort from three Presidential administrations and a whole score of people in the intelligence field.

-- Seeing such elation from the death of one man is still kind of strange to me though.  I guess I was just expecting something a little more along the lines of relief.  That being said, with the exception of the more uncouth elated remarks, I was more disconcerted by the ultra-pacifist anger of, well, killing him.  Misdirected anger definitely could be done away with, but I guess I just have an understanding of the world as a violent place, in pretty much any capacity.  Competition happens whether you want it to or not, and getting rid of someone who has actively gunned for the eradication of the western world (ironically since being supported by them to get rid of the soviets) would definitely fall under much more of a plus than a minus.

-- I wonder how much planning and plotting he has been able to get done while being on the run from so many different people.  I also wonder if he has been able to groom a successor in the 10 years since 9/11.

-- I find it kind of funny that he was found in a compound in a relatively affluent suburb of Islamabad when we've been given this image of him cave hopping across Waziristan.

-- I like how they gave him a proper Muslim burial (within 24 hours, no cremation), and doing it at sea was smart to prevent his grave from becoming some sort of shrine to his cause.  Not having any pictures of the event prevents an outrage from happening regarding this, but similarly it makes me feel like I am kind of taking this news for granted.

-- For anyone who cares, the mission was apparently to apprehend Bin Laden, preferably alive, though dead would also be acceptable.  More than being in custody, he personally needed to be stopped.  Capturing him and putting him under trial/in prison would have been a nice touch but apparently it was unfeasible.

-- I'm bemused by anyone who tries to attribute/divide credit among the administrations.  Clearly Bush had been doing this longer than Obama, but the end was in Obama's administration, so really he is the only one who can get any hard credit (both the operation and the intelligence tip to his whereabouts).  To try and figure out how much work was actually done under each administration would be long, pointless, and petty.  The deed is done, leave it at that.

-- I haven't heard anything about how the Muslim world has reacted to this.  Arguably he has killed more Muslims than Westerners, but those who align with him identify themselves as Muslim.

-- So there have been a lot of goings on in the Muslim world, period, these past few months.  From a western standpoint, this may be the apogee of these events, but hopefully this doesn't stop.  The civil war is still raging in Libya, and there are still rumblings in Syria.

-- Knuttel

Beer Updates

First things first

I have completed construction of my first wort chiller!

For those who do not know, a wort chiller is a device that is used to rapidly decrease the temperature of boiling wort so one may pitch the yeast into it, thus beginning the fermentation process of beer.  This is done for two reasons -- 1) Beginning the fermentation and sealing the tank earlier prevents other unwanted organisms (bacteria and such) from also taking hold in your sweet sweet wort juice. 2) Bringing the temperature down faster helps improve clarity.  Before I had the wort chiller, I used ice in various forms (but always barriered, you cannot let foreign water into your beer).  The first all-grain brew, if anyone remembers, used the snow that was still on the ground, except we ended up losing a lot to evaporation and had to re-add bottled water to bring it back up (and somehow we only ended like.1 off target gravity).

Knuttelbrau goes public

Ah, so it has been a week or two since I last wrote in this (I really don't know why, either) but what better way to get back into the swing of things than to talk about beer.  What's better than beer?  Nothing.  Nothing is better than beer.

So, this past weekend was Blue and White.  We tailgate every year, so what better venue to show the fruits of my homebrewing labor?

I brought down roughly 2 cases of "Spider-man" and the third case was approximately split between "Doppeldecker" and "Heart of the Sun-Ryes".

"Spider-man" is an American Amber Ale.  It is brownish (amber) in color, has a sweet bready malt backbone and a strong but not too assertive hop character.

"Doppeldecker" is a doppelbock.  I realize it looks like I bucked the tradition of ending doppelbocks with "-ator" but the full title has it, I assure you.  At 8% ABV it can knock you on your ass.  Due to the decocted mash, the malt is front and center in flavor and it has good head retention.

"Heart of the Sun-Ryes" is a roggenbier.  It will be changed in future iterations due somewhat to the impossibility (both physically and willingly) of me repeating the exact circumstances of it being created and due to its overwhelming thickness (70% of the mash was flaked).  The flavor is very good though, coming mostly from the rye and wheat.

Flavors were overall commended.  I did well there.

The issues were bottles foaming or fizzing too much (one even ended up being a bottle rocket) and clarity.  The foaming is rather inconsistent though.

Foaming could be by either over-carbing in the bottling process.  I bottle condition my beers, carefully measure the right amount of sugar and mix it totally in the bottling bucket before filling the bottles, so I don't think it's that.  The other cause is not sanitizing enough, and I think this could be the issue.  I guess I'll find out after my next batch.

The clarity issue is due to not cooling my beer very rapidly and not letting the yeast fall from suspension.  I could solve this by using a wort chiller (under construction) to cool it down faster and a bright tank in secondary fermentation to let more yeast fall from suspension.  I don't really care about the clarity of the rye beer, I kind of want it to be cloudy like a hefeweissen, but the other two definitely need to be clearer (murky brown doesn't exactly have an appealing look).

So that's where I am at.  I am currently making a wort chiller to fix the cooling issue, and may be in the market for a glass carboy to use as a bright tank.  My next brew will either be an attempt at re-doing/fixing the rye beer or doing a saison or something else I've been working on.

-- Knuttel

Beer-Fest 2011

I had the pleasure of attending Atlantic City's annual Beer-Fest last Friday night, April 1st.

The beer vendors could both be described as voluminous and varied.  It was mostly represented by American craft breweries, though there were some foreign brewers there (Unibroue, Spaten) and some of the bigger boys were also there (Sam Adams, Yeungling).

I was looking forward to Dogfishhead's offering, as they have often released very experimental beers (experiments which often go right), and are always pushing new stuff out.  Sad to say, they only had 2 beers there, one of which I already had (raison d'etre).  The beer I had was extremely thick and flavorful, though I forget its title.  We were beckoned there by the man who had offered to be my host for the night, and he is an even bigger Dogfishhead fan than I, so it made for a satisfactory first beer.

I was also looking forward to Unibroue's offerings.  They brought 4 kinds of beers, and I periodically kept stopping by to try more and more of them.  I've already had their most famous beer "La fin du monde" (the end of the world), so I skipped that, but they also had "Trois Pistoles" (three guns) and a whitbeer whose name escapes me currently.

Flying Dog also had some excellent brews available.  They perhaps are more known for their "gonzo" imagery, but it's all backed up.  They had a coffee stout and a rauchbier available.  Both of these beers were perfectly balanced -- the coffee stout not tasting too much like either coffee or beer, and the rauchbier not tasting like a cloud of smoke.

Of course I feel compelled to mention Yards' and Victory's excellent offerings as well, but I don't feel much need to go further than that.  I did go back for a second sample in both though.

In the "ok, I'll go with it" category, I was kinda shocked to see displays of both Four Loko and Colt 45 (who wasn't showing their classic malt liquor, but rather a four loko kind of beverage).  Technically they are both malted beverages, so i cannot say they couldn't be there.  It was just interesting to see.  I couldn't really get a straight answer from either of them about the caffeine content though.  Worth mentioning is the replacement of Billy Dee "goes down smooth" Williams with Snoop Dogg as the spokesman of Colt 45.

Besides that, most of the booths were offering I guess what I'd call "an IPA plus 1".  The American IPA has simply dominated the American craft brewing scene -- it's so simple yet so complicated, mess with the hops.  Imperial Stouts and various Belgian styles are also starting to cut their way into the scene.  What do the three have in common?  They all can have really strong flavors and really high gravities (of course this doesn't apply to all the beers of Belgium, but you get my point).

I wish every day were Beer Fest
-- Knuttel

Mallrats answered

Hooray Journalism: Someone Asked Stan Lee About The Thing's Junk

I think it's more interesting to see he goes on to mention Reed Richards.  Clearly he's been thinking about it all along.  Maybe I should have done that entire blog devoted to this kind of stuff -- I mean, who doesn't think about the implications of Jamie Madrox being able to multiply penetrate someone singlehandedly with his ability to split into many many people. 

RIAA says "Please sir, I'd like some more"

I find this funnier and more pathetic than anything else.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9215074/RIAA_request_for_trillions_in_LimeWire_copyright_case_is_absurd_judge_says

Talk about an industry that has simply not adapted to something that's so commonplace as ... the internet.

In happier (beer) news

Most Bizarre and Strongest Beers Ever [PIC]

Fun Fun Beer

Death to Monsanto

Group Challenges Monsanto's Patent on Genetically Modified Seeds - Slashfood


I hope it holds this time.  I do have to give them credit for basing a business model on how slutty plants are, but how it was ever legal is beyond me.  Not to mention Monsanto represents scientific hubris at its worst.  Like the injunction claims -- growing efficiency is down, microbes are catching up to the changes faster than the scientists are, and more money is being spent on fertilizers than before.  Not to mention I doubt anyone ever thought it was healthy to eat vegetables that have been soaked in herbicide (of course being genetically engineered to be immune to Monsanto's own roundup), sure the plants survive, but what are the long term implications for people?  Assuming we've only been doing this since they claimed their patent in 1982, that's just under 30 years of this.

Like I said in the previous post -- corporation vs individual.

-- Knuttel

United States and Conservatism

The Conservative States of America - Richard Florida - Politics - The Atlantic

An interesting article, to be sure, this is.

I, too, find alarming the homogenization that has been occurring geographically, which exacerbates things such as political views.

If someone goes their entire life hearing about one political view, then they are very inclined to agree with it.  If they do not agree with it, they are likely to be ignored and/or move to an area where people would agree.

The sad thing is this nation is too large to be governed by either the left or the right.  Recent primaries have done a good job of eliminating moderates -- both Specter's party switch and subsequent primary defeat were directly because of this.

Honestly, I think the old left/right liberal/conservative paradigm is fundamentally changing, as is the whole international political scene.

Statehood based on the Westphalian model is becoming increasingly outdated with the ever growing reach of globalization.

The four keys of this are territorial integrity, border inviolability, supremacy of the state, and lawmaking supremacy of the sovereign (yeah, I stole that from wikipedia, but I don't feel like looking it up in Leviathan, so sue me).

Territorial integrity and border inviolability are the most rapidly decaying from all of this.  Borders simply don't matter that much nowadays -- USA and Canada is not defended at all, Europe exists more as a series of states than sovereign entities, and global corporations carve out their own niches independent of borders.

Going with the latter point, these corporations dig at both the supremacy of the state and the lawmaking supremacy of the sovereign.  Using lobbyists to write their own laws and pass them, they gain more and more influence over governments, and have an increasingly large stake in the state's lawmaking abilities.

Thus the shifting paradigm is no longer the state vs the individual or the state vs the federal, but rather the corporate vs the individual.  The state is becoming more and more meaningless, more and more toothless.  The healthcare insurance industry wrote the "Obamacare" health care bill themselves, then trashed it when they realized they could do better without it, and perhaps more importantly, realized they had a very good chance of taking it down.  The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was a result of corporate negligence that should have been picked up by regulators, but the regulators are often past and future employees of these entities, and curry favor more than report instances.

The state had its opportunity in both of these circumstances to right a wrong, and failed to correct a lot of major problems in both of them.

The issue isn't more government or less government.  Less government gives corporations carte blanche to do whatever they want.  More government lets them write the laws to do whatever they want.

No, what needs to happen is a fundamental take-back, a declaration of individual sovereignty.

Annual Coin Flip Bracket 2 part 2: Sweet 16

OK, so here's the updated coin flip bracket results after the first two rounds

Yeah, it's pretty ugly.  I only have 2 elite 8's remaining, and one final four -- the coin's selection of UConn as the national champion.

Like last year, I decided to do a retake after the sweet 16 had been set for the same reasons -- a more competitive field should produce more 50/50ish results.  Plus I had like no one left, I had to do a retake.  This time I used an old school JFK half-dollar, though the heads/tails rules were the same.

So this time, BYU is winning it all.  Kinda weird to see Kansas leave already, and BYU as a 3 seed just seems weird to me, I dunno why.

-- Knutel

New Brew -- Spider-man

So monday I decided to make another batch of beer (full batch + this time -- 6 gallons).

I decided to make it in the style of an American Amber Ale.

The history of the style is rather contrived if you ask me -- coming not as a result of supply, but rather business need.  It has its roots in the brewpubs and microbreweries of the west coast.  A lot of them had very dark beers and very light beers, but not many in between -- maybe a pale ale crept its way darkly up to the lower shades of amber, but that was it.  In order to create an appealing trinity of beer colors they created the amber ale.  Never the less, I like amber colored beers, and I kind of wanted to do something simpler and straightforward than my last two.

Muammar Gaddafi, Libya and the End of Post-Colonialism

Post-colonialism is something I personally define as beginning in the mid 20th Century when lands that were controlled (directly or indirectly) by Western powers were re-appropriated by the native populations.

Libya, which had been held by the Italians since about 1911, was administered by the French and English for a few years after World War II (news flash, Italy lost) before it was returned to Libyan rule, where a monarchy was established.  Gaddafi led a military coup in 1969 and has held power since then.

Libya's colonial history goes way way back though -- it has pretty much been a perennial colony.  The Phoenicians and the Greeks were the first to set up colonies in modern Libya, in order to establish trade with the native Berber people.  After them it was the Romans, then the Arabs (who brought Islam), then the Ottoman Turks, who were a decaying entity by the time the scramble for Africa enticed Italian interest in the region.

The Second Annual Coin Flip Bracket (2011 edition)

There it is, my 2011 bracket, as determined solely by flipping a quarter.

I followed the same rules as last year (I think) -- tails is the higher seed, and heads is the lower seed.  The tails side of a quarter usually weighs more than the heads side, though I have no idea how the whole state quarter thing affects that (I believe the quarter i used was a Texas State quarter, though clearly it's from San Antonio, as all the love was for UTSA, and it gave none to traditionally good Texas (Austin)).

I'll put an updated bracket up once the first two rounds are through (I realize the first round is almost through as I post this, but I assure you, and you can clearly tell by looking at it, that I flipped prior to any of these games being played, play-ins notwithstanding).

-- Knuttel

Extolling the Virtues of Cold Brewed Coffee

As perhaps it is known (though more likely unnoticed and therefore unknown), I am an avid drinker of coffee beverages.  It can also be attested that I dislike hot coffee (mainly because it is, well, hot).  Using ice cubes to bring the temperature down waters the coffee down, requiring a delicate balance of creating mud-like coffee to be diluted with the right amount of ice.  Even when planned perfectly, it can end not well.  Leaving coffee out can make it stale sometimes.

There has to be a better way.

Well, while doing research for using coffee in beer, I came across a method that is known as "cold-brewing".

Basically, one lets coffee grinds sit in cold water for an extended period of time.  Substituting water, one can cold brew coffee in beer in a secondary fermentation.  Basically, though, cold-brewed coffee can be added in any part of the brewing process (substituting for parts of water or simply being added by itself).

Enough about coffee in beer, cold-brewed coffee is a very different drink from regular coffee -- hot coffee has more in common with its concentrated brother, expresso, than cold-brewed coffee.  By using a cold-brewing process, the acids from the coffee are not extracted, making the final product not as bitter as regular coffee (the reason people add sugar and/or cream to it).  The final product is also more concentrated than regular coffee, so it can be added to something like milk as a flavoring.

In order to make cold brewed coffee, you need a container (mason jars are perfect), a filter of some kind, coffee grounds, and water.
-Add 4 parts water to 1 part coffee to the container (for example, for every cup of water, add 1/4 cup of coffee)
-Make sure all of the grounds are in contact with the water
-Place container in the fridge for a minimum of 3-4 hours, though overnight works best
-Filter coffee grounds out by pouring the container through a filter into a different container.  Repeat as necessary

And boom, it's there, concentrated not-bitter coffee

Adding ice to this beverage works moreso as a pure temperature regulator than a diluter, making this a perfect choice for iced coffee beverages.

-- Knuttel

Libya Stuff

In non-Charlie Sheen news, there's a civil war going on halfway across the world, looking to oust one of the longest serving dictators in the world.  For some reason I was stockpiling a bunch of links on the matter.

Against Libya's rebels, Gadhafi controls the skies - Yahoo! News

Congressional leaders push Obama administration for more aggressive Libya response

Gadhafi forces barrage rebels in east and west - Yahoo! News

U.K., France draft 'no-fly' resolution for Libya - World news - Mideast/N. Africa - msnbc.com

aaand one article that vaguely has to deal with the issue

Yes, the world still has plenty of oil, but ... - Business - Oil & energy - msnbc.com

-- Knuttel 

And Here We Have...

NASA Scientist Finds Extraterrestiral Microbial Life In Meteorite [PIC]

I wish this had a legitimate article attached or linked to it so I could follow the actual story.  It would definitely be interesting if true, but this is just a series of sourceless pictures so far.

... yeah, so reading the comments section...

"Correction: Scientist finds formations that sort of suggest former presence of microbial life in meteorite, but the formations may have been caused by a number of other forces that are not a life form. Author has published a similar paper 14 years ago. Article was published in The Journal of Cosmology, a now-bankrupt publication with questionable peer-reviewing standards."

and the link 

http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html

I bet there's already alien life on earth, but cos of these dipshits we'll never know.  They totally have the scientific secrets we're looking for too, like string theory and penis enlargement.

-- Knuttel

I Don't Think My "Comparisons to Ohio" Tag Does Enough Here

Ohio St suspends Tressel 2 games for violation - Yahoo! News

Seriously?  Does the NCAA have no teeth whatsoever?

Cam Newton's father sought explicit verbal consent for his son to play football for certain schools.  That's one step away from being able to broadcast Major League Baseball Games (just get it written).

This is weaker than when a group of Ohio State's players were suspended for the first few games of next season for improperly receiving benefits for football related services (in this case, tattoos for merchandise), as opposed to the bowl game these allegations appeared a few weeks before.

You see, when I first heard this story (the tattoo one, not Tressel), I was working under a few assumptions -- This had just happened recently, mid-season at the latest, nobody was aware they were violating any codes, and Jim Tressel and the University were both completely (or at least very) unaware of the whole thing.