Post by jack hamilton on Jul 7, 2010 15:33:15 GMT -5
Chapter 10.
Short Stories/Homebrewing
Gentlemen,
Great subject!
I drink beer if I have any,
and if I'm out of beer and 'have money'...
...I go get some.
It's just that simple.
Now, my old Coon hounds,
Cotton Joe and his sister Sue may,
didn't like me to drink.
We would be riding around in my truck
and Sue may would turn and look at me and say
telepathically to Joe:
"The boss is drinking again".
And Joe would answer: "I know".
In fact I never go to bars because
I don't like to be around a bunch of drunks.
{well, at least a bunch of 'other drunks'...}
But late in life at age 50...
I found 'the answer' to 'all life's problems'
related to alcohol consumption...
and here it is...
I am lucky to get disability.
I take my monthly check and cash it.
The first two or three days go to get the monthly supplies
I know I will need. The grocery store, feed store, auto supply,
gas station, hardware store, beer store, home depot, ect...
I spend about $100.-150. on beer and wine,
and the rest on poultry coop building materials, and knife making materials, ie. propane, sandpaper, ect... and go home.
Thats it till next month...
as I 'live alone on the farm so to speak' and don't go out,
to save on gas.
I am home for a month so...
I have enough beer to last 10 days to 2 weeks.
And no more.
So I sit around and drink beer till it's gone.
Admiring the 'accomplishments I accomplished'
the last two weeks of the preceding month.
Knife work, new poultry coop construction, firewood cut...
See?
'Two weeks on and two weeks off.'
I drink ten beers a day for two weeks,
and then 'let my liver heal up' for two weeks,
and do all the work I have to do.
I work a lot better not drinking beer,
but enough is enough!
A man need s beer every now and then,
but this sip, sip, sip all dern day is expensive
and one never gets as much work done.
It gets to where sitting around a old dirty, worn out old farm,
watching the same old movies,
and drinking beer all day gets old.
I work 2 weeks.
Then I sit around get drunk for 2 weeks
admiring the accomplishments of the preceding 2 weeks,
and watching 'the 'new' monthly movie.'
I get lots of work done because what else is there to do?
There ain't no beer...
I may as well go back to work!
And drink some water.
Its a good lifestyle.
2 weeks on and 2 weeks off.
Ballance is good.
Life is simple.
Thank you...
J. Winters von Knife
and his world famous coon hound
'Sweet Sandymay'
jacksknifeshop.tripod.com/
My best recipe vs... 'variety'
Howdy Ya'll,
My best recipe for homebrew ale,
'mein' 7Lb - 7.5 - 8Lb Hammerbier,
is the best I can produce,
its my very best.
Better than 'store bought' beer or ale,
half again as strong, and not over carbonated,
Its just my favorite.
'Fermintis Safale 56 and S-04 yeast, and DME.'
Besides quantity of DME and various combinations and amounts of hops, there is no variety, thats it.
Period.
Now ya'll I love variety and when I go to the beer store I get several different types of beer and wine.
And lately I have been throwing in a bottle of
'Casadores' tequila
or a fifth of 'Famous Grouse',
and next time I am going for a half gallon of rum.
But back to variety,
I love variety.
I told my disability judge that I brewed between 50-100 gallons every year between the first and last killing frost,
hog killing season, you know.
In order to minimize the incidence of air borne spoilage micro organisms.
The judge {who was ex military and had horses too} said:
" But Knife, why do you stop at 100 galons,
the max legal amount is 200 gallons?"
Well, you honor sir, you just get tired of it thats all,
{Variety, you know.}
The wise old judge looked down at me and said:
"Yes Knife, after 100 gallons of your homebrew ...
I would think I'd get tired of it too."
The judge laughed out loud and after a moment of that, I said:
Hey! ... its not that bad!
And he laughed at that too.
But back to Variety...
Like Rotell canned sauce... the original is the best.
Thats why it is the original, it is the best.
All their attempts at variety are inferior,
as the original is the best and can't be improved upon.
Even the Rotell company itself can't possibly improve upon it.
Its the best.
The same with my homebrew.
'Mein Sieben Pfund Hammerbier'
at 6% alcohol is my best and to differ from what is best for the sake of variety...
is an exercise in futility.
I don't put coffee or grapefruit rinds in there either,
or make it too strong.
I still bottle because I like the experiance of walking into my brewery and looking up at all those shelves filled with hundreds of clean green bottles full of my homebrew.
But variety ...
I'll just go get me a homebrew,
and for variety...
a shot of Cactus juice...
or Scotch...
J. Knife and Sandymay
My Dad's winemaking 'attempt' ...
Howdy Ya'll,
That reminds me of a batch of wine
my Dad made 25-30 years ago.
I have been making homebrew for 15 years
but at the time had no idea how it was done.
I heard how 'Dad was making a batch of wine',
and assumed he had bought a book or something.
Or he at least knew what he was doing.
Wrong.
Some of it was good and most of it was bad. So he mixed it all together and added a bottle of everclear.
It sat in the pantry for years, lots of half gallon bottles,
and I ended up bringing a couple of bottles with me to 'Dew' Texas
to hunt some deer with my friend Randy and 'Cousin Joe'.
Now when we had drank up all our beer and Joe asked about something to drink, I brought out the 'wine my Dad made', "and its got everclear in it."
Joe said it was horrible but it gave you a buzz.
Randy and I were walking around the next day when I snapped my .06 to my shoulder as I thought I had seen something move,
it was cousin Joe.
Laying in the dirt drunk, a long way from camp with an nearly empty 1/2 gallon jug of 'the wine'.
Randy and I threw him in the back of the truck and brought him back to camp just leaving him in the truck all night.
Dad had, by mixing the good with the bad had not done anything at all for the bad and had ruined the good. Years later after I became a good homebrewer, I asked Dad on the way out to the Pecos wilderness area:
How did you make that wine ?
I questioned him and come to find out he had not even boiled it,
just let a bunch of grapes rot in a big bucket.
'No yeast or anything' ?
"Naw."
Haven't you even read a book on the subject, I asked ?
"Those people back in the bible days made wine."
Hell they didn't have any books,
they just made it."
{ Dad's.}
J. Knife
The Amazing, new 'speed' bottling technique !
Gentlemen,
beer and ale must be either bottled or kegged.
Think of all the different size beer bottles you have seen in your life.
One day I will be set up to keg a whole batch, 5 gallons.
Like in one big bottle.
On the other hand however
12 oz bottles while optimum from the user standpoint,
are way slow to bottle!
'50 bottles' can be reduced by half by using 22 oz bottles
as I proved the other night bottling up my first batch
of the cool, weather brewing season.
22-24 bottles are half as easy to wash, sanitize, rinse, fill, cap, and retire to the brewery, as 50!
To take this truth further,
I drink beer and ale.
There's no denying it.
I mean a gallon a day is a bit much but 9-10 beers is not unusual.
I mean I am the boss!
In other words what I need is bigger bottles.
Is there a 33 oz 44 oz 55 oz bottle?
A half gallon jug with 'a hole' the size of a beer bottle?
A quarter gallon?
Boys, this is what we need!
If one doesn't exist, lets make one!
A bottle which would last me for my entire 'before dinner drunk'.
Or a 'watch a movie drunk'.
A little one for the 'after coffee drunk', a 22 oz'er is perfect here.
An after dinner drunk!
The 'great bigg-un', half a gallon'er, at 65 oz's !
See?
I think, I am really onto something here !
Big bottles would reduce bottling time,
by, however big the bottles are.
5 gallons...
12 oz'ers 46 bottles !!!
{A lot of work.}
22 oz'ers 22-24.
44 oz'ers 11-12!
88 oz'ers 5-6 bottles to fill!
Hell! That would be done in...
well, see, I'm already done!
Faster and cheaper than bottling 12 oz'ers
or kegging!
Is that cool or what?
Knife
Knife, you are a genius!
I am like totally stunned!
A new age of homebrewing is happening as I am writing these words.
Big bottles!
Dern!
I just need some big bottles.
jacksknifeshop.tripod.com
'Knife' himself
I called up old Andy at the 'HomeBrewHeadquarters'
{N. Dallas}
and asked him about growlers.
Bingo!
He has different sizes of 'big bottles'.
With screw caps and he said they were alright.
And I think about the 2,000 12 oz bottles I bottled last year.
They look good on the shelf in the brewery.
I was trying for a record 1,000 bottles of
"alcohol what don't taste too bad",
and have them all in the same place and at the same time,
for documenting them photographically,
and came close.
But hell,
I missed a lot of coon hunting.
A miracle!
I can put up a batch in...
its already done.
Dern, that was fast!
See, I can spend more time brewing.
More time drinking!
Thanks for the info.
I have been going in there for 10 years and never knew about a growler.
Still have no idea what they will look like,
but bigger bottles= faster bottling.
http://homesteading7.proboards80.com...oard=mystories
'Lets git ignert and go coon hunting!'
Knife
The End
'Poultry and Homebrewing don't mix.'
Howdy Ya'll,
I have been homebrewing for 15 years,
and my brewing skills have evolved to where
my 6-7-8 Lb Hammerbier is a masterpiece.
More recently, since my last near fatal motorcycle wreck,
I have gotten into poultry again.
Clean legged silver Marans, OEG Bantams and Gunieas.
Now my problem is that my homebrew is,
of course, brewed, reracked and bottled in my kitchen.
But my 'egg incubator' is under the kitchen table.
And I have a new one for when #1 gets full in the spring.
A cardboard box, a 'homebrew brooder box',
is by the door and I need another.
My poultry empire is expanding, as the weather gets colder,
into my brewing space.
Now this is not funny.
I lost a young hen outside this morning,
she was alright, if a little cold looking this morning at 7:30,
and by 8:00 was dead.
Dern.
They get cold too, and the kitchen is nice and warm,
but what is the end result of bringing poultry 'in for the winter'
as it were, and into such close proximity to ones special precious homebrew, specifically the airborne spoilage micro-organisms,
into the place where I don't even like my friends to come into.
What do ya'll do about such?
Thank you
J. Knife
jacksknifeshop.tripod.com/
Quantity {brewed with a cheap set up}
Well Howdy Ya'll,
This mornings discourse will be on the subject of 'quantity.'
Quantity of ale or beer brewed with:
Basically a cheap set up.
My 'set up' consists of six glass carboys,
7.5 gallon primarys and 5 gallon secondarys.
Three primarys and three secondarys.
I can brew 15 gallons per week.
A week in the primary and a week in the secondary.
Then to bottles where 2-3 weeks renders them palatable,
but 2-3 months renders them classics.
This = from three primarys and three secondays.
15 gallons in 7 days.
Or 60 gallons a month.
{Total capacity}
Don't have an old fridge yet so ale is what I am brewing.
Fermintis Safale 56 is what yeast I use and am so excited with it,
I am really getting into homebrewing again after 14 years brewing.
Today, having brewed the 15 gallons within a day of each other,
I am reracking all three primarys,
{ 15 gallons, }
[using the same idophor,]
into three secondarys.
I am realizing that to satisfy demand:
{Mine}
would take a gallon a day.
Hmmmm??? ......
{...Carry the '2'...}
uh....Six batches a month!
It is true then,
'during the brewing season',
that if I drink a gallon a day,
it follows that if I keep three primarys full...
even half the time...
1. Then 99% of lifes problems could be solved.
2. I could rule the world.
3. The initial problem of having ale, good ale, always,
with a minimal amount of expenditure will be a thing of the past.
4. Of having control over ones life and not being a slave to store bought
beer which is 90% profit and tax.
5. Of being a free man and having ones own ale.
6. Good ale and cheap ale!!!
7. It feels like stepping off a boat onto a new continent.
8. I could actually have a surplus of ale,
if I had enough money to buy all the stuff.
9. God Bless Jimmy Carter.
10. Boys, Keep your carboys full.
Over and out
J. Knife
jacksknifeshop.tripod.com/
Why do I brew?
An interesting question it is...
All the reasons given by others, were very good reasons.
The reasons 'I brew my own' are ...
All the reasons given above, and also basically:
The reason I learned how to cook food.
Control over my own life, to not be a slave!
I remember when I was a kid, I asked Mom how to cook.
She said:
Men don't cook food,
they get married and have their wives cook for them.
Oh Mom, your cooking is so good I want to learn how you do it, I told her.
When actually I wanted to learn how to cook food,
so I didn't end up with a {censored} like her,
but if I told her that... she wouldn't show me how to cook.
It was one of my first tactical lies.
But it worked.
I am single and a good cook.
Life is good, now to the subject at hand:
One homebrew of mine costs about .68 cents.
But, at 6 3/4% alcohol,
it is half again as strong as store bought beer,
I don't have to get in a truck with tags, inspection sticker, insurance, expensive gas and all and drive to the beer store, dodging cops,
idiots and accidents all the way there and all the way back.
In order to pay a dollar + tax, for a beer.
I just walk in to my brewery, {the former pantry,}
and 'select' or just, 'get me' an ale.
I have 200 full, green glass bottles on the shelves.
6Lb Hammerbier, -7, -8 Lb Hammerbier.
Different batches different flavors and amounts of alcohol.
I gives me control over my life.
It gives me Power!!!
A friend of a friend was over bumming my homebrew.
'Mikey' was lots younger than me and hadhad a severe head injury too.
I was trying to inspire him and show him the value of brewing your own buzzzz...
I took him into my brewery, {the former pantry}
We looked up at the shelves filled with rows and rows of full,
clean, green glass bottles with my special brews in them.
A beautiful and inspiring sight it was.
{And thats why I bottle rather than keg ya'll}
I told Mikey about the wino who came up to two friends as they were opening the door to a rooming house, 'room', they had rented just to have a place to smoke pot in back in the 60's. Here the old wino came with his broom as he helped out around the old house to help with his rent.
James was saying hurry, hurry open the door, while Steve was fumbling with the keys. The wino came up to them and opened his mouth and with his scratchy old wino voice said:
"Cherish your youth boys, cherish your youth."
Whereupon the old wino started coughing and hacking and grabbing at his chest. He wheezed and hacked and staggered around and collapsed in the hall as Steve got the old door open,
and they went in and locked the door.
The wino was gone when they came out.
I have always remembered the old wino's admonition.
And said you can learn something from anybody.
Then I was telling Mikey about 'wealth'.
Some men view 'wealth' as owning lots of stuff.
Two or three beautiful women with the biggest tits.
The fastest car and the biggest house.
Others view wealth as land.
Thousands of acres of grassland, mountains and lakes,
owning a ranch is owning a piece of the earth,
a place to spend your life improving,
to plant grasses and trees, heal gullys and erosion,
build fences, to make it more fertile and raise animals.
To leave it better than it was when you found it.
Its your land and "land is the only thing that lasts".
But Mikey, the poor old wino would go for a bottle of wine.
That was wealth to him.
All that property and those women are just a big hassle.
I looked up at my shelves filled with the aforedescribed rows and rows of clean, green glass bottles, filled with my special precious homebrew.
I took a deep breath and held up my hands.
Mikey dude, this...
This is wealth.
J. Winters Knife
' Sandymay got two coon last night ya'll '
' Thats wealth too '