Monthly Archives: December 2006

The YouTube President

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I heard about this and stole the title from Seth Godin, just so you know.

John Edwards pre-anounced that we would be running for president on YouTube. The image is small and the video quality is only so-so. If it’s a prepared speech, he did a poor job of delivering it as there are a number of incorrect pauses and double clutches throughout. I think I even caught a couple of “ums” and “ahs”. The lighting is bad. I had a hard time telling if his face was dirty from actually working or whether it was just a poorly lit image. It literally looks like he he just got pulled aside from helping the kids in the background so that he could say a few words.

In short, by normal campaign video standards, this one is amateurish and crappy. And it’s perfect.

Perfect because it takes the focus off the usual glitz and glamor and puts it squarely on what he is saying. Nothing in a campaign is unscripted, and I sincerely doubt this is the exception, but of all the scripted “unscripted” moments I’ve seen in campaigns over the years, this one hits the target the closest. There’s no music playing over it, no makeup artist, bad lighting, poor video quality and just about everything else that truly make this look like it’s some guy passionately delivering a message rather than a candidate running for office.

So far, I’m reasonably impressed. This actually indicates to me that Edwards’ team gets YouTube. It’s not a rebroadcast of his official announcement (though I’m certain that’s on there) and it’s not just a collection of his campaign commercials (though I’m certain those are coming). It is, instead, something akin to the extra contents on a DVD – something original just for the folks who find it.

Let’s hope Edwards is as good a candidate as his marketing team so far makes him out to be.

What are You Serving This Christmas?

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Let’s assume for a moment that you have not brewed your first beer yet. If you have, that’s by far the best thing you could serve this time of year, almost regardless of what it is. But if you haven’t, may I make a few suggestions?

The Samual Adams Winter Collection
Includes a black lager, winter lager, cranberry lambic (not a true lambic, but still tasty), winter porter, winter warmer and their standard Boston Lager. If you can’t make up your mind this year, buy a case or two and you’ll cover all of your bases.

Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale
Are you a hophead? Are your friends? This winter-themed IPA will serve you well.

Full Sail Wassail
A classic winter warmer, the wassail is warm and spicy – everything a good holiday ale should be. It will keep you toasty when the fire is almost dying.

Alaskan Winter Ale
Much is mentioned about the spruce flavor in this beer, but I must tell you that I didn;t really notice it too much. Warm, sweet and interesting, this ale does stand apart from the others and is well worth serving at your intimate gathering.

Lost Coast Brewery Winterbrau
My favorite brewery produces a slightly sweeter, warmer version of its Downtown Brown this time of year and, man, is it tasty. This one will surely be a crowd pleaser.

No matter what you serve this holiday season, enjoy the warmth and joy that comes from gather with your close friends and loved ones and sharing with them the simple joys of enjoying a glass of cheer. Happy holidays to you all!

All The More Reason to Brew Your Own

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Thanks to this nation’s weird history with prohibition, there are a number of odd laws on the books in regards to serving and selling alcohol. For instance, it’s illegal in Utah to sell beer that is more than 3.2% alcohol, which pretty much eliminates most of the craft brews on the market today. In Pennsylvania, it’s illegal to sell less than a case of beer in a regular store – you need to go to a tavern to get a six pack.

Suite 101 has a complete list of silly, strange and archaic laws regarding beer throughout our nation. Think on these as you uncap that winter warmer this holiday season.

Thanks, Darren and DeveloperCube!

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Looks like my post on the upcoming year in homebrewing won a nice award from Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger. The prize, a $100 Amazon Gift Certificate, was sponsored by the fine folks at DeveloperCube. Thank you both for the recognition, and thanks to everyone who paid us a visit and passed on the word thanks to this project. Keep checking in – this next year will bring with it a lot more great homebrewing information and ideas.

Looking Ahead in Homebrewing

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You should first know that this post is part of Darren Rowse’s latest group writing project, something I’ve participated in in the past and really enjoyed. So here I am, doing it again. I encourage you visit the home page of the Brew Blog to see what’s been covered here in the blog’s short life.

I started my trip in the homebrew hobby just a few short months ago, but I’ve immersed myself so deeply in it that I’ve lost much of the fear and trepidation that kept me from boiling my first wort for so long. It’s such a relaxing, enjoyable hobby with just a ton of comradery built right in. I can think of few other hobbies I’ve had that have brought as much joy.

The ranks of homebrewers is swelling, thanks in large part to the organized efforts of groups like the American Homebrewer’s Association, passionate hobbyists like those at The Brewing Network, and high-quality, super knowledgable companies like More Beer. The coming year will no doubt see even more people join the hobby and feel the joy of making something that is truly their own.

I’ve taken the role of unpaid, unsponsored evangelist for homebrewing because I just love sharing my experiences with people. In the coming year, I hope to expand my knowledge and, hopefully, my reach by introducing more friends and family to homebrewed beer. A large part of that involves expanding this very blog. I’ll be working on setting up interviews with the men and women who shape the community, from award-winning amateur brewers to new brewmasters just getting their businesses started to long time veterans with tons of tales to tell. For the time being I’m doing much of my work in a vacuum, though I hope to prove myself worthy of being even more involved with some of the established brewing sites out there.

Homebrewing isn’t just about the finished product – a fine bottle of brew you can call your own. It really is about the community driven by enthusiasts willing to openly share their knowledge and experience with anyone who asks. Even those who merely like to drink beer without ever wanting to make their own is welcome, though everyone is encouraged to try the hobby out. Homebrewing itself is the perfect marriage of art and science. Being able to share it with people and share your pride makes it all the more worthwhile. I look forward to sharing it all with you in the coming year. Cheers!

The Brewing Network

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The whole podcast thing has really past me by. Most podcasts – essentially verbal blogs – tend to be boring and don;t appeal to my visual learning nature. But every once in a blue, blue moon one comes along that I find not only interesting but extremely educational.

The Brewing Network is, essentially, brewer’s radio. Run by some of the luminaries in my local brewing community, the topics covered are helpful for folks in all stages of brewing. As I write this, as a matter of fact, I’m listening to the show about making fruit beers, and I’ve learned more in the last 10 minutes about fruit beers than I have in most of the books I’ve read on the topic.

Grab the MP3s and listen to them on your iPod on your way to work, or just pop it on in the background while you work. Very informative, fun and interesting.

The Brewing Network

Hoppy Holidaze

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When does infatuation become obsession? When you start writing and singing songs about it.

Carol of the Beers by Rob Zazueta [mp3]
Yes, that’s me. Yes, all three parts. Yes, my words. Yes, I actually do sing in a choir. No, not a single person has died or run screaming from the room because of my singing. At least not recently.

And, because I know you’ll be eager to go house to house duplicating my efforts, here are the lyrics:

Carol of the Beers
Words by Rob Zazueta

Here have a beer
Fresh, tasty beer
No, it’s not clear
I made it here

Mashed in my grains
It’s not a pain
Sparged it out clear
Fresh, homemade beer

Right in this pot
I got it hot
Boiled for an hour
then poured it out

Daily I drink
Here at my sink
Mugs of good cheer
All thanks to beer

Here have one more
see how it pours
thick creamy head
sweet liquid bread

cooled, pitched and waited
weeks ’til I’m sated
kegged and then cleared
now we have beer

water hops barley yeast
water hops barley yeast

Here have one more
see how it pours
thick creamy head
sweet liquid bread

Rest in Peace, Mr. Kim

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Like just about everyone else online, I’ve been following the Kim family saga with much interest. I never knew the Kim s nor even heard of any of them before this ordeal began, but when resucers found Katie Kim and her children, I felt some sense of weird relief. I’m embarrassed to admit that, in some tragic situations, I occasionally find myself hoping for the worst to feed that same macabre part of my brain that likes watching “When Animals Attack” and slows down to see car accidents on the freeway. I have no desire to see anyone hurt, but there’s a strange draw to disaster. In James Kim’s case, however, I found myself not only hoping they would find him OK, but actually genuinely caring and praying he’d turn out OK. So to learn that he died actually struck a small emotional blow.

More than anything, though, I find this whole incident completely confounding. In the days of exploration and discovery, maps were drawn containing as much information as was known. In some unexplored areas where stories and myths had unfurled but not been confirmed, a legendary mark was left on the map: “Here there be monsters.”

In our hyper-connected modern age, it’s rare that I enter an area with no cell phone signal anymore. With OnStar, GPS and any number of gadgets they keep plugging into our lives, the idea of a person finding themselves in an inaccessible bubble in the middle of civilization seems impossible, particularly for a gear geek like Kim. And yet, there they were. It was as if they were adrift on a cold, dark sea even though they were mere miles from modern life. Devastatingly remarkable.

The only real lesson that can be gathered from this, as far as I can see, is that the world still is a scary place and, in some areas – even in a country like the USA – there may still be monsters. I don’t belive the answer is to increase cell phone coverage or further push technology into our lives, but to respect that our technology, though useful and fascinating, still can’t be trusted to always save us. I don’t think this is a lesson James Kim failed – from all accounts, he did what any rational person would do to save his family, and it’s tragic that he wasn’t the one to bring the rescuers to the stranded car. But in watching the story unfold on TV with the constant reminder that he was an editor for C|Net, I think many of us are shocked that none of the gadgets Kim built a career on reviewing and exploring all seemed to fail him in his time of need. Technology is a tool, not a pallative. This is an awful way to be reminded of that.

My prayers and condolensces got to all of James Kim’s family and friends.

Recipe: Mendocino Weekend Ale

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It’s entirely probable that I’ve become a wee bit too obsessed with this hobby. A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary by taking a little weekend trip to Mendocino, where we stayed at the wonderful MacCallum House. The cost of breakfast was included in the room, so we ate at their Grey Whale Cafe every morning. Unlike most hotels, where the fare is rather paltry or seems like it was put together in a rush, the Grey Whale serves nothing but high quality gourmet meals using local, mostly organic, produce and meats. It was an incredible way to start each day. When we had dinner there, I ate venison for the first time in my life. Bambi’s mother tasted far better than I expected.

Every meal somehow involved huckleberries. I can only assume the chef got an amazing deal on a batch somewhere and was dying to find ways to use them. If they weren’t part of a syrah reduction sauce for the venison or grilled into buckwheat pancakes, they were served on the side as part of the fruit garnish.

While in Mendocino, I got the bug in my head to make a beer based on our trip. I purchased some local wildflower honey (bees know what’s good in an area better than anyone else), cherry fruit preserves from a local church craft fair and some candied ginger. I had planned on taking these three items and turning them into my Mendocino Weekend Ale, but as I began formulating the recipe in my head, I decided that these ingredients really didn’t do the weekend justice. After all, the huckleberries were what stood out most food-wise to us and they quickly became an inside joke.

On the way home from Mendocino, we stopped off at one of my favorite breweries, the Anderson Valley Brewing Company, where they were still serving one of my new favotire beers, Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema. It’s a standard light ale, but with a strong amount of vanilla which makes it taste incredibly creamy. It was the perfect capper to a great weekend.

When I finally sat down at ProMash to come up with my recipe, I took all of these things into consideration. I would still use the honey for its local flavor (it wound up being the only ingredient to actually come from Mendocino) and add a couple of vanilla beans to the secondary in homage to the Summer Solstice. Instead of the cherry preserves, however, I decided to try and get some huckleberries. I looked for hucklberries – fresh or frozen – at all of my local markets, including Whole Foods and Trader Joes, all to no avail. A quick Google search showed that a company called Oregon Coast Jams was selling a 1-gallon tub of Huckleberries through Amazon – to the tune of $40.00. After hemming and hawing, I decided it was worth it and placed the order, which with express shipping (required since they were frozen) came out to around $70. This was no cheap brew.

One gallon of huckleberries is roughly seven pounds or so. I decided to use six pounds for the brew so that I could use the remaining pound in some other food recipes. I based my recipe on an American pale ale and added the two pounds of honey at flameout. After the primary fermentation settled, I cooked the six pounds of huckleberries in about a quart of water or so to both pasteurize them as well as bring out the flavors a bit. I put both my huckleberries and two cut, scraped vanilla beans into my secondary and racked my beer under it. The huckleberries added no points to the gravity, so the fermentation did not restart.

After about five days, I racked the beer into a keg and force carbonated. The berries lent a gorgeous reddish/purple color to the beer. The taste is excellent – a very strong berry flavor with just a hint of vanilla. The foamy head tastes like berry cream. The hop character is a bit more assertive than I’d have liked – I wish I had pulled back a bit on the IBUs for this one. Still, it’s very drinkable and very enjoyable. My wife the non-beer drinker has not yet had the opportunity to sample it, but I’m willing to bet this is one brew of mine I’ll be able to get her to drink. At roughly 5% ABV, this should age reasonably well, provided I can keep enough of it around.

Mendocino Weekend Ale

6lbs. Ultralight LME
1 lb. Crystal Malt 10L
0.5 lb. Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt
1.5 lb. Wildflower Honey

1 oz. Cascade Hops (60 min.)
1 oz. Cascade Hops (30 min.)
1 oz. Amarillo Gold (2 min.)

2 Vanilla Beans, split and scraped (Add to secondary)
6 lbs. Frozen Huckleberries (prepared as mentioned above; Add to secondary)

White Labs WLP001 California Ale Yeast

OG: 1.064
FG: 1.024

Another Fantastic How to Brew Resource

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I’ve known about John Palmer’s How to Brew website for a while. I didn’t list it here as a resource initially, though, because it’s a bit overwhleming for the beginning brewer. For your very first time, I still recommend the one page instructions produced by Beer, Beer and More Beer [PDF] – it really can be as simple as they say.

Once you’ve got the bug, though, How to Brew is a fantastic resource. It will answer most of your technical questions and really help you make the leap from beginner to intermediate and advanced with very little hassle. Highly recommended.

HowToBrew.com