Got Beef?

I smoked about 6 to 8 pounds of beefs this week to keep around for good protein rich meals. I just got the cheapest beef at the store for like $3.50 a pound or so, which means it’s real tough.

I seasoned them with a rub that contained salt, sugar, cayenne, cumin, chili powder, and garlic powder, and let it sit out for an hour or so with the rub on it. Then cooked it on the grill with some hickory smoke at about 250 deg F until the internal temp of the beef was 160. It’s a little tough and a little dry, but it’s edible and has some good flavor.

Here are some pics:

   

Check out that smoke ring! If you’re normal and don’t like eating beef that’s tough and dry by itself like I do, this works great for bbq sandwiches.

Belgian Tripel Brewday

Three days ago I gave my first shot at a Tripel, and it was quite a blast. Not only did I brew a lot of beer but I also drank a lot of beer. Anyway, here is the recipe I made:

Malts – 13 lb Maris Otter, 2 lb Munich, 1 lb Aromatic, 12 oz Crystal 10L

Other fermentables – 1.5 lb Turbinado Sugar (added at 30 min in boil)

60 min boil – added .6 oz Northern Brewer hops at 60 min, .4 oz bitter orange peel at 30 min, .6 oz Sterling hops at 15 min, .05 oz clove at 30 sec, .25 oz coriander at 30 sec, .2 oz Jamaica allspice at 30 sec

Yeast – WLP500 Trappist Ale Yeast

Targets – 60 min mash at 152 degrees F, pre-boil gravity 1.073, original gravity 1.090

Brew day numbers – 60 min mash at 154-155 deg F, pre-boil gravity 1.073, original gravity 1.097

If anyone doesn’t know what this stuff means then let me know and I’ll explain. Moving on, here are some brew day pics:

  

After extracting 5 gallons of the tripel from the mash, we went ahead and extracted another gallon into a separate pot for a lighter beer. This one came out too light though, so we added 1.5 lbs of honey into the boil along with some Sterling and Cascade hops and a little bit of Jamaica allspice; the original gravity came out to be 1.078. We used the same yeast in this as we did for the tripel, here is a pic:

All of that sediment floating around will filter out during bottling. Thanks to Brian, Rich and Taylor for their help. Here is a picture of all the beer we were drinking while brewing, the two on the right are from our last two batches of homebrew, one is a pale ale and the other a stout:

New Fermentation Chamber

I recently ordered a Johnson Controls A419 Temperature Controller for an old fridge that I got for free from a friend that moved across the country.  I wired it up and now I’ve got a nice little fermentation chamber that I can use for either ales or lagers. Right now I’ve got it set up to not go any higher than 73 deg F, and it’s been sitting right around 71 for the most part, which is perfect for the beer I will be brewing tomorrow which is a Belgian Tripel using the WLP500 Trappist Ale Yeast. Here are some pics:

        

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Homebrew Closet

Check out the new beer closet!

Got 90 beers bottle conditioning on the shelf and 2.5 gallons of a cider-mead combination in the carboy on the floor. We will be doing a partigyle brew within the next couple weeks so that cider-mead will soon be joined by 5 gallons of a Belgian tripel and a gallon of some sort of session beer.

We also have a temperature controller on the way to wire into our spare fridge we picked up from a friend, so we’ll also have a nice little fermentation chamber for the summer.

HA

Belts in the Weightroom

You know what really chaps my ass? People not realizing how retarded it is to wear supportive belts throughout the duration of their workout routine. Wearing a belt every once in a while for very heavy lifts is one thing (although I still disagree with it), but wearing one while doing bicep curls pretty much makes you a douchebag. Not only does it look stupid, but certain parts of your body will become extremely over-developed if you never take off your belt because you will no longer be involving your core muscles in the exercise.

Think about it like this: your core is a child, and your upper-body and lower-body are its parents. The parents are always fighting because they both want to shine in their own way and they both want the support of the other for selfish reasons (you want to be jacked and you spend a lot of energy figuring out how much time to spend working out your lower body and how much time to spend working out your lower body). The parents would be divorced by now if it wasn’t for their kid, which is the glue holding the family together (your functional strength starts from your core, when your core is weak your athletic abilities are extremely limited no matter how strong your other muscles are). The parents know that their kid is the glue of the family, and now they have a choice on how to raise the kid. If they hire a chaperone to be with the kid 24-7 and always keep an eye on him and not let the kid take on any risks or challenges (always wearing a belt), the kid will become weak and may rebel from the parents (you will have a weak core), and then the parents will lose their glue and the family falls apart (the different parts of your body will not learn to function together as a team). If the parents teach the kid good morals and let it think for itself and take on challenges (not wearing a belt), the kid will grow strong and the family will stick together and the parents will work out their problems maturely (your core will be strong and you will be able to use all of your body to achieve maximum athleticism).

So that’s how I feel about that, I see people like this way too often at the gym.

Brewday Redemption

So after our brewday disaster, my brother and I gave it another shot yesterday and it went very well. We now have a brown ale in the primary fermenter with the airlock happily bubbling. We have cocoa nibs soaking in chocolate vodka and 4 pounds of strawberries in the freezer, all waiting to be added to the beer once the primary fermentation is complete.

I don’t know what style beer this will be when it’s finished, but I do know it’ll taste like the best chocolate covered strawberry you’ve ever had in your life. WOOOO!!!

brewday disaster

My brother and I had a brewday last Friday for an interesting beer that we’re extremely pumped for (I’ll post what the beer is when we have a successful brewday for it).  Anyway, the day was going along as planned, we had everything organized and sanitized and ready to go, we did a 1 hour mash, by the end of which we were at a total of about 4 hours of work on the brewday, and then we went to vorlauf and get ready to sparge and found out that during the mash, the hardware in the mashtun had come apart and therefore the wort wouldn’t drain. So we had 10 pounds of grain and about 4 gallons of wort and we couldn’t figure out how to separate them! It sucked! So we put our yeast starter that we had prepared the night before in the fridge along with the hops we were getting ready to use, and pretty much just dumped the wort and grains so now we have to go drop another 20 bucks to get the grains again and restart our brewday probably this coming Monday after repairing our mashtun and making sure that won’t happen again.

Moral of the story: always check your equipment beforehand!

POOP

This beer is going to be awesome though.

warm ups

Something that I have been experimenting with lately in my workouts is my warm up routine, and I realized that my warm ups in the past have not really been sufficient. My warm ups used to consist only of stretching and maybe a little jog. Lately I have also been doing agilities and Elliot Hulse’s bio-energizer routine along with my normal stretching. Generally I do the bio-energizers first, followed by stretches and then about 5 or 6 different agilities that I feel are appropriate for the workout that I’m getting ready to do. I’ve noticed that my workout performance has increased significantly since I started doing this.

walk

Go for a good long walk every morning (like 1 hour, not as a substitute for usual exercise). It’s a great way to get your mind and body ready for the day, give you energy, put you in a good mood, and keep your metabolism up.

So wake up, put the ipod in, and start walking!