New Toy

Homebrewing is an endless drudge. I work and work, and I have to order new gadgets constantly in order to feel adequate.

Today my magnetic stirrer arrived. "What's that?", you want to know. Here's an example. In fact, that's the one I bought. It's fairly cheap. I tried to nail some pricier ones on Ebay, but I kept getting outbid by other beer-brewing fatasses.

What does a stirrer do? It stirs. It stirs starters, to be exact. A starter is a yeast culture you make before you brew. Yeast comes in very small containers, and you're better off using a larger amount, but a large amount would cost tons of money. So brewers culture their own.

Today I mixed two liters of water with two cups of DME (dry malt extract, which is mostly sugar), and I boiled it to get it combined well and kill all the germs. Then I dumped it into a Pyrex Ehrlenmeyer flask and put it on the stirrer. I figure the stirrer will make it cool faster. When it gets down near room temperature, I'll pour half of my store-bought Trappist ale yeast into it and get it stirring again.

The stirring oxygenates the wort and helps the yeast get to the sugar, so you get more yeast, faster. Some time tomorrow or Sunday, I'll be ready to brew.

Using a big starter is a good idea. When you brew, it's not practical to truly sterilize everything, so you reduce the bacteria as much as possible and then pray the yeast beat them to the wort. The more yeast you have, the more screwed the bacteria are. If you pour the contents of your little White Labs or Wyeast yeast container into your finished wort, it will start fermenting noticeably one or two days later. If you make a starter using two liters of wort, it may blast off in two hours.

I have a lager ready to go into the secondary. It's my absolutely astoundingly good red lager, made with Nugget and Crystal hops. God, I can't wait. I need move it into the secondary today so the fermenter will be free when I brew my upcoming ale. I also have my tasty Death Hop lager chugging away in the primary.

I'm running low on wheat beer, so that's next.

I don't know if I'm going to make any more ManCamp Special Wuss Lager. Tommy and George seem perfectly happy with my other beers, and Val seems determined to stick with Bud. I like Wuss Lager a lot, but my other beers are somewhat better.

The stir plate works well, but it makes a racket. As I understand it, they make noise unless you order stir bars with smooth sides. A stir bar is a little Teflon-coated magnet that sits in the flask and spins. Some have raised rings around them, and I am told that they make the bars bounce around and make a racket.

What ridiculous item will I order next? Not sure. I might get a refractometer.

Ah, beer. I am living the dream.