For God’s sake, if there’s anyone reading this blog in Bavaria, please return your empties!
Monthly Archives: September 2012
What is it?
So, back in the spring when I got all those goodies in a local Kijiji buy I spent some time sorting through things in order to keep or sell some of the items. I came across many things that I didn’t realize that I had purchased and then I came across this piece of equipment:
I’m really not sure what it is.
There’s a marble inside of it.
There is also a spring which you can’t really see but my true inner artist has altered the first photo so you can see the inner workings:
The only additional information I can provide is that the stamp on the side of it, visible in the above picture reads “Profix”.
The only thing I’ve come up with is that it’s some sort of check valve but I can’t think of how or where it would be used.
So, my readers, what is it?
Bits and pieces…
Hop Harvest Time: It’s that time of year again! Sometime this week I’ll be harvesting my crop of Hallertauer hops from my hop bine out back. It’s hearty and has produced a decent crop despite the dry summer. The only thing I’m not looking forward to is the amount of work versus the amount of hops harvested. The two are inversely proportionate to an extreme! Commercial hop harvesters have machines to do the work but I’m not there yet.
Pumpkin Time: Scott and I will be brewing a pumpkin beer this year but I’ll be doing in time for Fall/Thanksgiving/October instead of last year which was in time for Christmas. Same recipe but this year I’ll be adding a touch of vanilla which has been soaked in The Balvenie for a few weeks. It’s already started so by the time the beer is ready to have it added there will be no waiting around. It will be added in secondary or to primary when fermentation is quite done.
Oktoberfest: My next solo brew will likely be an Oktoberfest-type beer. I’ll be using a mix of 2-row and Munich I along with my Hallertauer that I’ll be harvesting. It should be a decent malty brew in time for the fall. I do cheat a little bit in that I use an ale yeast (US-05) instead of a true lager yeast. I’ve done it before with lager styles and it’s worked fine. I’ve even submitted to competition and had the beer entered into the lager category with very favourable comments.
Bad Beer: Had a batch of my Citra Pale Ale that didn’t work out so well. Had that brewing blitz at the beginning of July where I did four batches in four days. It was warm that week and my basement fermentation temps were not great. The first batch I did that week I moderated the temperature with a swamp cooler, the other batches I didn’t bother. That one batch that got moderated turned out phenolic and clove-like. Definitely not to my liking. The other batches are just fine. Go figure.
Citra Pale Ale (the good one), it’s what’s on tap…
It's what's on tap... 