Thanks, Fred and Dave, for wishing me well, but nothing has changed much; the other side is being very difficult and uncooperative, and I believe they are deliberately trying to drag things out. Hopefully I can get the judge to straighten them out; I'll be filing some motions for that pupose this week.

As for our team, we are still crunching along very well -- 221 years of crunching so far. Fantastic. Still in the Top-100, too, although it's just a matter of time. It looks like we will slip from 91 to 92 in the next week or two.

As for brewing, I have three batches which I really need to get bottled before any autolysis sets in; they've been in the carboys for almost a month, but I haven't found enough time to bottle. I built my third trellis for my hops this past weekend; that had to take priority over bottling because the bines are getting long enough that they need some support and it's supposed to rain all this week. I have 24 hop plants now.

Well, I've got to go. Good to hear from you both.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

Bill,
I see we are back at 97 again, so we held on a lot longer than you thought. I keep having random systems flake out on me, last weekend one of my home systems decided to work on a unit for 45 hours before I noticed and killed it.

On the brewing front I will be brewing a Pale Ale tonight and putting it on top of the yeast from my Cream Ale of 9 days ago. It will be a long night since I usually brew on weekends. Was planning to brew on Sunday at the same time I was smoking some ribs, but the smoker died right when I started so I spent most of the afternoon driving around searching for a new smoker. Good thing I had not really started my mash! It will be good to have brew again, I have been out for a month now

Dave

Hello Fred and Dave and everyone else. It's been a long time since I've posted. Been extremely busy with things, as I'm sure you all have too.

Regarding our team, we've finally slipped down to #100, and it looks like we will probably be passed again on Saturday night, and there are a couple of other teams gaining on us faster than we are gaining on 'IBM Software Services', so it looks like we will be out of the Top-100 permanently. But we sure did make a VERY good run, especially thanks to the two of you -- Fred and Dave. I did make a final desperate recruiting run about two weeks ago in a few brewing forums including r.c.b., but I didn't notice any new recruits. But it did cause a member of our team to send me an email about his participation in MalariaControl.Net and our team not being listed there, so I did fix that. If you are not aware, our Homebrewers team is a participant on numerous other grid projects for those members who have diverse interests.

As for brewing, this is the first summer in several years that I have not brewed. As much as anything, I've just been too busy, but much of our summer here has been too hot and humid for me to even think about going outside to boil, plus I had a huge shade tree blow over in the spring and now I have so much sun on my roof that it is making a very noticeable difference. The AC seems to run constantly as it struggles to get the temp down to just 78F -- not a good ambient temp for fermentation, although I could add evaporative cooling to try to help. I just decided to wait until cooler weather.

As for ribs, for the past few years I have been fixing them just about exclusively by smoking them, and they are great that way. I'm no expert so I've experimented around with many techniques. One of the best things that I've started doing is trimming them to make them into 'St. Louis Ribs' -- by cutting the ribs along the joint where they connect to what is probably the sternum or breast bone ... whatever. That has always made cutting them into piece later more difficult, and also seems to go to waste because it's more difficult to eat. I boil the trimmings, cooling them off, pick the meat from the bone, and use the meat and broth for beans; most of the meat gets used that way, and the beans are great. I do want to add, in reference to how much I've been smoking them, that last week I didn't have time to smoke them so we just grilled them like we used to do; it was a very pleasant change of pace and they were delicious, so don't fall into a rut and constantly resort to the smoker.

Well, it was good to hear from you folks.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

Hello all!

I pop in here for a while 8)

I have just made my first home beer, recipe is ancient Finnish (except that I did not use wild yeast) origin called Sahti.

I receive canister of raw juice as gift and just added some yeast to it and you know.....
I did not use waterseal or any tank, just add some yeast directly to plastic canister and left cork open little a bit.
One day nothing, couple of days very rapid fermentation some heat and then slower going.

Funny part on sahti is that instead of hops, it is flavored with juniper berries.
Yeast is part of sahti, so it is not filtered out or anything, these give it quite original taste.
Alcohol content climbs very high (10 %vol) but it is not so notable as on those beers where yeast is filtered out. It is almost dangerously mild tasting.

I have hear horror stories how people turn to human bomb when drinking living yeast, but I did not have any problem what so ever.
No stomach ache, gas or anything.
I start drinking it after third day after adding yeast, so I think alcohol content was something like four on begin, so I think there has been lot yeast along, but really not any problem even thou I did drink it two litres on one day.

http://www.beerhunter.com/styles/sahti.html

Hi Joe!

I hope these fellows do not mind if we highjack their fine thread with newbie stuff 8)

I actually did some study about this and ordinary baking yeast indeed die on 12%.
Then there is wine yeast that can handle more than that, even 17%.
Then there is stuff called "Wyeast #4347", it can go all the way to 21%

Then there is very wide variety to very different kind of beer yeasts, but when I was brewing (I'm really sorry fellows, actually I just did add yeast) I did end up using ordinary baking yeast, it seems to be only right choice for sahti.
Wild yeast will go of course as well, but it could take months and I might end up having mushrooms 8/

This all is actually quite luring...