Brew Day: Belgian Blonde

I've long debated with myself over adding brew-blogging to this blog. After all, the main mission here is self-sufficiency. On the other hand, I often do want to record thoughts and feelings about a brew day beyond the bare facts that I record in my (paper and pencil - terribly old-school, I know, but it works even when the lights are out) brew journal. So I thought to myself, "Let's give it a go!" And I really lack the energy or time to start yet another blog. Four of them is quite enough!
I'll tag all these posts with a "brewing" tag, so those of you who want to stay focussed on self-sufficiency, but have no interest in home brewing, can easily ignore these posts.

My target for today's brew is based on a Belgian Blonde, but a bit more hoppy than would be traditional. A malt-forward beer, not too sweet, and a dry finish. Should end up with a strong, white head atop a golden, fairly fizzy ale. Should play well in all seasons. Not sure how closely this conforms to the style guidelines; don't care.

One of my main reasons for wanting to brew this is to maintain and propagate the Duvel/Maredsous yeast¹ I recently cultured from the dregs of a very delicious Maredsous Trippel given to me by a friend. I am just guessing that, because both Duvel and Maredsous are brewed by the Moortgat Brewery, it is somewhat likely they use the same yeast. Of course it is always possible that they don't, or that the Trippel is re-yeasted upon bottling with a different yeast than is used for primary fermentation, but what are the odds? The first brew I ran with this yeast was an eye-opener. I brewed a Dubbel, and was completely blown away by this yeast's action. Rather than the usual, fairly aggressive fermentation action I have seen from most ale yeasts (including Wyeast 1214, another Belgian Abbey strain, allegedly originating from the Chimay brewery) this yeast had a very soft, gentle and sweet action. I am quite determined to maintain this strain in good condition, since it is one I will not soon be able to replace should I lose it. One trick will be to share it with as many other brewers as I can.

Today's recipe was a very straightforward one - no complications, decoctions, fancy malts or unusual hopping tricks. All-in-all the brew went very routinely. Mash temperature pretty much where I wanted it, starting at about 65C and falling to a finish at around 63C (a little further than I would have expected; one of the places where I need to work more is in these lower temperature mashes - when starting lower, temperature seems to fall off faster.) The sparge went without a hitch, as did the boil. I'm a little uncertain about the cleanliness of the yeast. I'd really like to plate up a bunch of it and select out clean colonies for longer-term storage. Perhaps if I go down to CT in a couple of weeks I can get to a lab-supply shop to acquire the necessary stuff.

Wort colour was suitably pale, with reasonably good clarity. I was a bit surprised (in a good way) at how much liquid I got out of the kettle, today. Usually I leave at least a litre or more behind, but today the trub had a particularly solid character and stayed well back while all the clear liquid went down the chiller-pipe, leaving little more than a half-cup behind.

The only sour note to the day was that I managed to smash my Hydrometer while drying it for storage. Bah!...

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[1] Not linking directly to the Maredsous website, since it is all-Flash, and that just sucks.

New Kid on the Block

An unexpected phone-call from Deborah next door a few mornings ago. "Do you want a Rooster?" A bit of discussion needed, there...

On the one hand our flock really does need a Rooster to look after them after the Tragedy On Honey-Badger Hill that resulted in the loss of our trusty knights. On the other, we've really been enjoying the peaceful mornings undisturbed by the crowing!

GMO Scam Followup

Quickly: A short article on how Monsanto's biotech maize which is supposed to be resistant to corn root worm attack, is "losing its effectiveness".

The article is pretty vague on just why this "effectiveness" is being lost, and Monsanto are naturally trying to spin this is "small numbers, minor incidence, easily managed". But I think it's pretty obvious what is going on here, don't you?

Alternative Energies

Energy is the defining measure of sustainability. For any organism, not just for 21st Century humans.

For the past 130-odd years we've been surfing a tidal-wave of energy gathered and stored in the geological past, and the party is finally coming to and end. The chief question is how we humans will manage the coming energy descent; the emerging opportunity to redefine our relationship with the universe.

Seed Screens/Making Sun-dried Tomatoes

It's seedy season. I'm in the midst of harvesting Lettuce seed, and something I've been lacking for a very long time is a good set of sieves for separating out leafy trash from the seed. Not just for Lettuce seed, but everything else, too.

Tomatoes drying on the roof. Fine seed-screen aft.

There are manufacturers of seed-cleaning machinery who would be happy to sell me a set of seed-screens, but they're very expensive. I've made do with something much simpler.

I made up a couple of wooden frames and scrounged around for various sizes of plastic mesh. Lettuce is a particular challenging when it comes to Right Sizing a screen. 1mm mesh is just a tad too small, but I've been unable to find anything with a (say) 1½ or 2mm gap.

Cleaning Carrot seed has proved to be  too hard on the plastic mesh, and tore gaping holes in the mesh, so I swapped it for a metal Mosquito mesh - also about a 1mm gap. But even that can't take the pace when it comes to Carrots. I clean the Carrot seed heads by rubbing them (gently!) around on the mesh, and the seed falls through, mostly leaving the burs and stalks behind. I quick threshing in the breeze gets rid of the dust, and Carrot seed is done.

I find it funny that people who have never saved their own Carrot seed don't realise that the seeds are prickly. They've only ever experienced machine-cleaned Carrot seed which has had the burs rubbed of in the process. I was there, too, once upon a time. In fact when I tried to send some seed to a friend in Australia some years ago, they never arrived. Instead he received a short note from the Aussie customs to say that the seed was "contaminated with unknown weed seed" and had been burned. I guess we can't really expect customs officials to be seed-recognition experts, too.

Like everything else in a self-sufficient permaculture setup, we aim for "every design element to support multiple functions," and so it is, too, with the seed-screens! We're presently using a couple of the screens to sun-dry our surplus Tomatoes on the roof during hot days. A wide mesh supports the Tomatoes, keeping them off the roof, and the fine mesh forms a lid to keep bugs off while the Tomatoes dry. It takes about 2 or 2½ good, hot days around this time of year to get the Tomatoes good and leathery, though we're experimenting with slightly thicker slices, so this batch might take a little longer.

Black March

I like this idea. It doesn't speak much of self-sufficiency, but does speak to several issues at the heart of the self-sufficiency movement. Since it is allegedly already on Facebook, I assume it might reach a wider audience than here, but I guess every little bit helps to spread the meme. Please copy, paste, link and quote. (I've taken some liberties with the wording; the intent remains the same.)

BLACK MARCH

Thursday, 12 March 2012 to Saturday 21 March 2012

Bees: One More Time

Despite our best wishes and intentions,... despite acquiring all The Right Gear,... despite some brave attempts at catching Bees as documented on the Blog,... we have, to date, been spectacularly unsuccessful1 as Apiarists. It's all very strange, really, since we are surrounded by neighbours who have acquired Bees without any such difficulties2.

Well, we will not be accused of quitting, though it does, admittedly, sometimes take us a while to get around to retries. (Like about 4 years!)

The catalyst has been some new neighbours moving in next door. Owen is a well-known professional local apiarist, and has long offered to help us get catch-boxes set up so that we can acquire our own swarm or two. I finally got around to taking him up on it this morning.

I took one of our catch-boxes for Owen to "paint" with Propolis - the sticky, resinous stuff that Bees manufacture to glue their hives together and protect them. The smell is (supposed to be) irresistible to them when a young swarm is looking for a new home.

Propolis melting. It has a strongly resinous, tarry aroma.

The catch-box is just a half-size box holding 5 frames of wax instead of the normal 10. Swarms that split off from established colonies of Bees tend to be quite small, so it is very difficult for them to maintain their preferred hive temperature if they are placed in a full-sized box, hence the use of the smaller catch-box. The box I'm using lacks a metallic protective cladding on the cover. I'll rectify that over the coming weekend. Owen also believes - though he freely confesses a lack of hard evidence - that the reflective cover usually placed on beehive lids also helps to attract Bees and help them orientate themselves on the hive. He says that the few times he's used other-colour lids are the only times he's been unsuccessful in catching swarms.

Cleanup of frames. Catch box in the background.

The 5 wax-frames were first cleaned. Old wax was hacked out, the support wires tensioned up to banjo-playing twanginess, and new wax strips placed in the frames. It is better to put only a small strip of wax foundation into the top of the frames, since full-sized foundation sheets restrict the movement of the Bees too much while they establish (hopefully!) their new home, refurbishing to their own preferences and spreading the aromas of their queen about the box. A touch of current from a car battery across the support wires heats the wax foundation just enough that the wire becomes embedded in the wax. Too much heat and the wires will melt all the way through the wax, breaking the foundation sheet. The top edge of the wax strips are fixed into the wooden frame by pouring a little molten wax (or Propolis, as in our case) along the groove that seats the wax sheet.

Newly rewaxed frames.

The box itself was them liberally smeared with the sticky, tarry Propolis, paying particular attention to the corners, edges and hive entrance.

Finishing touches.

Not neglecting Propolis under the hive lid, we're now ready to place the hive in a good catch location. Some discussion with Owen indicates that the top of the Pergola on the west side of the house is likely our best bet. Right outside my office window, where I can easily keep a close eye on the box. That part of the house is also right smack in a long-established Bee-path. For reasons not well understood, Bees tend to repeatedly swarm along fixed paths. Some magnetic field line? And we had the poor judgement to place our house right at the edge of one such path.

Right, now everything's in place. Surely we can't fail this time?

You'll notice that, unlike past reportage, this post is not titled with some weak Bee pun. I'm not superstitious; I don't believe that the twee names jinxed things in the past. But I'm taking no chances.
Keep your fingers crossed!

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[1] More charitable critics might say "unlucky".

[2] And, in some cases, without much clue about what they need to do, either. We, on the other hand have researched extensively and read widely in an attempt to become reasonably educated about the care and feeding of Bees. There seems to be some sort of perverse inverse-square law at work, here.