Barbells and Beer 1/9/2015

525# 1RM Squat on 1/5/2015

What a great day. After a couple hours of catching up on work for my client, I jetted off with the wife to get our first batch of grain for our all grain recipe we plan on attempting next week. I found a good basic Porter recipe that I felt pretty confident in how to make. I say pretty confident as I have watched numerous videos on Youtube in hopes to ramp up my education. Regardless, it will be an interesting experience and one that I am excited to make.



Oh, and Youtube brought me a new band to start listening to. Check out Alestorm...

One thing about extract brewing is that it is pretty simple. Easy to duplicate, and do again over and over. The kits you can buy take a lot of the worry away from home brewing. Up to now, I have been absolutely happy with the extract process and the beer tastes awesome. I have been told that all grain brewing is like Starbucks coffee compared to instant Folger's coffee. I will say that after sampling some all grain brews during the last meeting of The Ohio Valley Home Brewers Association, that there may be some truth behind this. While I am extremely happy with the beer we are making and drinking on our own; I still can't stop thinking about the bourbon barrel aged stout they offered.

Our Porter Recipe Jennifer and I will be trying:

Porter Type: All Grain Date: 4/16/2003 Batch Size: 5.00 gal Boil Size: 5.00 gal Boil Time: 60 min Equipment: Brew Pot and Igloo/Gott Cooler Taste Rating(out of 50): 40.0 Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 Taste Notes: Smooth tasting complex English porter. A bit on the "robust" side. Ingredients Amount Item Type % or IBU 8.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) Bel (3.2 SRM) Grain 72.73 % 1.00 lb Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) Grain 9.09 % 1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 9.09 % 0.50 lb Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 4.55 % 0.50 lb Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 4.55 % 2.00 oz Fuggles [4.50 %] (60 min) Hops 28.8 IBU 0.25 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min) Misc 10.00 gm Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 min) Misc 1 Pkgs English Ale (White Labs #WLP002) Yeast-Ale

The beer we will make tonight is the Brewers Best Milk Stout. I will outline how that went in a minute. But first, we cannot skip the Barbell session of today's blog. I have converted my garage to a home gym. I have dumbbells, barbells, olympic weights, squat racks, benches, bands, kettlebells, weighted kegs, strongman log, a prowler sled, and cardio equipment. Training for Obstacle Course races and strong man events is what really excites me (outside of beer of course).

Tonight was 80% 1 RM on Deadlifts at 410

My gym is always open to friends and family. My lifting partner is my cousin Jason. He started lifting with me almost two years ago. He was able to finish his first Spartan Race after dropping thirty pounds and become a whole lot stronger. Now, he brings out his two boys and his family and mine will get together and lift.

I am a huge fan of the Stronglifts 5x5 system. You can download a free manual online. I read it and started following the program a year (yeah, I know) after reading it and deciding it was what I really wanted to do. The reason I like it so much is due to the simplicity of it. It is five basic exercises that are total body strengthening exercises. Plus after doing it for over a year and a half, I have grown very strong. Since starting to train for Strongman, I switched to the Cube Method for Strongman. I like this program because it is like the stronglifts system because it focuses mostly on the same lifts, but it switches up intensity like the West Side Barbell Club to allow you to train yourself to make the progress, recover, and hit max lifts when you want. As for the kids and Jason, they are doing the Stronglifts system.

My daughter training with the log 130#

My Training (Cube Method) for 1/9/2015

Repetition Deadlifts – 80% x 1 x 8-10

& 45° Hypers – 3 x 10 with weight

& Seated Rows – 3 x 10

& Pull-ups – 3 sets x 8-10 (use a band for assistance if needed)

& Shrugs – 3 x 15 (Barbell, Dumbbells, Farmers,...)

& Rear Delts – 3 x 15 (face pulls, rear delt raises...)

& Barbell Curls – 1 set with bar to failure

The lift session was a success. I felt pretty confident hitting all 8 reps on my deadlift. I have been struggling making gains on anything past 500 pounds on the deadlift. A lot of it is my form. I find myself when things get heavy, my form goes out the window. Just need to work on form at sub maximal weight and trust that things will work out. In particular, I focused on engaging my glutes and hamstrings more in the lift. When I do that, I don't arch much lower back which has been the cause of injury and pain in the past. I have been doing some stretches that my chiropractor told me to do which seems to help.

Now time for beer... Are you ready kids?

I took over the old Hoosier Cabinet for brewing supplies (Raspberry Melomel bubbling away)

So, this night is the night of Milk Stout. It has been sitting on the shelf for a month or so. Whenever our brew supply (Posey County Co-Op) or other places in Evansville have sales, we like to pick them up. They are good extract brews that are easy to make. While less Artisan, Jen and I make them as we find it fun, creative, and something we do together. The other upside is that we get to sample the fruits of our labor over time. Brew nights often become our date nights and we love it.

Step 1: Opening the package and see the contents. Next add anything that will touch the beer into get washed and Sanitized.

Step 2: Bring water up to temperature 150 - 160 F to steep the grains. So, we took the grain bag and poured the contents of the grain into it. We tied a knot at the top and then cut off the excess to use for hops. This step is not necessary, it was an innovative method of having to strain the hops out of the wort. The instructions don't tell you to do this, however we have read over and over that once hops are added, it really isn't necessary to have them in the fermenter. So, we created hop bags as you will see later. For now, time to steep these grains for 20 minutes.

Step 3: While the grains are steeping, we warmed the LME (liquid malt extract) so that it is easy to pour into the Wort (What we are making by steeping the grains).

Step 4: Wait for 20 minutes and drink a beer. Our choice tonight is Winter is Coming Ale which we made from a Winter Ale extract with Mr. Beer with a double LME added.

Step 5: Pull the grains out, and bring the water to a boil.

Step 6: Once, the water is boiling, add the liquid Malt Extract (both cans). Stir continuously as you do.

Step 7: We added our first hops in. Jennifer stitched together the bottom of the excess of the grain bag and we made two bags for the hops. One is added at the time of boiling.

Step 8: The wort has to boil for 50 minutes. Beware that the boil can and often times does want to over boil. Watch this carefully. I use a lid to help bring it to boil faster, but the downsize is wort spilling over the sides.

This is also a good time to make sure everything that will touch the wort after boil is strictly sanitized. This includes transfer buckets, ladles, strainers, the fermenter, lid, bubbler, thief for gravity reading, and hydrometer. Oh, and don't forget to drink a beer.

Step 9: At 50 minutes, the timer went off and now it is time to add in the second (aromatic) hops. Let this boil for an additional ten minutes.

Step 10: Now it is time to crash cool your wort. I have a big blue rubbermaid tub that I fill with cold water and ice. Putting the kettle in the tub (I cannot use a wort chiller with my current kitchen sink and will remedy this by building a brew lab in my basement later), I crash chill the wort as quickly as I can down to 70 degrees Fahrenheit.


Step 11: Pour cooled wart into fermenter. I use a double strainer and catch anything that might have gotten loose as well as the two hop bags we left in the boil.

Step 12: Take your gravity reading

Step 13: Pitch the yeast

Step 14: Add your lid, bubbler, and label it.

In honor of Terry 'Effin' McCormack