Matthew Kocsis

So I’m trying to browse the internet, and my new PC is really slow. This shouldn’t be the case, so I open up Task Manager to find out what’s going on. Hrmm, my pagefile is 1.9 GB. That’s a bit high, especially since I have 4Gb of RAM. So, I look at individual tasks, and what a suprise, firefox is using up 1,337,608 KB of RAM. That is unacceptable for any software. I haven’t even browsed through that much internet content yet using it. Great work guys, good job writing crappy code. If this software would have been submitted in my ECE 264 class, it would have gotten a zero.

Well, it’s the first brew of the season for me… or rather the first brew of the year. Come to think of it, I haven’t brewed beer since 2005. Anyways, It’s time to start again. Today’s goal: a full flavor ESB.

I searched the BrewBoard online and came up with a reasonable recipe – a good malt/grain/hops combination. I decided to go with an extract recipe this time so I can get back into brewing without too many new things.

The Recipe I picked:
10lb Maris Otter malted barley
1/2 lb malted wheat
1/2 lb Crystal
1 oz Goldings @60m
1/2 oz EKG @60m
1/2 oz EKG @30m
1 oz fuggles @2m

I found a place down in Iowa City on 2nd street that sells beer making supplies, however unfortunately it’s only a small selection of ingredients and supplies that another shop brings by weekly. Since they had nothing on my list, and wanting to start the next day, I decided to make the recipe up as I went. Here it is :)

3:00 PM Sunday 4-22-07
Cleaned carboy, started water on the stove.
 

5:16 PM
Mashed grain at 161F for 30 minutes (out at 5:46PM)
1/2 lb Briess 60L Crystal Malt, 6 Row
1/4 lb Briess Black Patent Malt, 6 Row Lovibond 480
I didn’t have a mill, so I used my blender. This was a mistake, it made it far too fine. Next time I will use a rolling pin or something similar to crush the grain instead of making it into a puree.
  

8:03 PM
Added malt extract.
3.3 lb Muton’s Light LME
3.3 lb Muton’s Amber LME
1/2 lb Munton’s Wheat DME
 

8:46 PM – Hop Schedule:
60m: 1 oz Kent Goldings pellet (alpha 6.9 %) – 8:46pm
60m: 1/2 oz Saaz pellet (alpha 3.6%) – 8:46pm
30m: 1/2 oz Perle pellet (alpha 7.6%) – 9:21pm
02m: 1 oz Cascade Leaf (alpha 6.0%) – 9:45pm
 

I cooled the wort by putting it in a cold water bath (which I refreshed periodically) and using a fan to blow cold air over the pot. Yes, there was a lid.

2:00 AM Monday 4-23-07
I transfered the wort into my carboy and pitched Wyeast 1056 American.
 

There was something wierd about the iodine I used for the airlock, but then again, it’s iodine. I think it was cloudy doe to temperature or a small amount of starch that somehow got in it.

The wort did not begin to show signs of fermentation until thursday 4-26-07.

More Pictures

Updates will follow…

I finally went shopping and installed the basics for a workbench to continue developing the DRINK system. I have my development PC, 2 lights, networking, and some work area rigged up. My plan is to hook a bucket-fed water system to simulate beer for the rest of the development process.

A picture will be linked to shortly.

Another fun storm rolled through tonight – but this time I had the random idea to grab my camera, a tripod, and brave the weather and shoot aimlessly into the sky until something came out. Actually, I tried to time it a bit more, but I still ended up with over half of my pictures black. Oh well.

The only issue I had was keeping steady – while shooting out my back door (it was raining, so I needed to be inside) the tripod didn’t fit, so I held the camera. Since I was shooting at 1/10 sec, some blurred. Sorry, I still think they look cool.