WWdN: In Exile

Notes on the making of my Polymorph Porter

Monday night, I opened a bottle of the first porter I brewed. I took a picture for the Internets that looks something like this:

(click image to embiggen at Imgur)

It turned out much better than I expected, considering there was a near disaster when I brewed it. Read on if you want to hear a story about making beer, and how it really is difficult to screw up, no matter how hard you try.

This is the Chocolate Maple Porter from Brooklyn Brew Shop. I had a few hours to myself one afternoon recently, so I spent it brewing. I was careful, made meticulous notes, compared what I was doing in the kitchen with what I'd read in books and online, etc.

It's only a one gallon kit, but I boiled it in the 6 gallon kettle I use for my regular 5 gallon batches. When I was finished, I put the lid on the kettle, and set it into my sink, which I'd filled about halfway with water to cool the wort. Physics happened, and the kettle started to float. I caught it, and weighed it down so it wouldn't try to bob around and tip over.

Whenever I finish brewing, I cool my wort by setting the kettle in the sink with some cool water, and after that water starts to warm up (yay thermodynamics!), I dump in twenty pounds of ice in two ten pound increments. (Can you see where this is going?) So I put in the ice, physics happened, and the kettle floated and tipped over. I caught it before the lid could completely come off, but I still lost about half of the wort.

At this point, I was pretty angry with myself for making such a stupid mistake, but it looked like the wort had only spilled out, without letting any water or ice in, so I remembered to relax and decided to go ahead and finish it. "At the very least, it'll be an interesting experiment," I thought.

So I cooled the wort, pitched the yeast, and let it ferment for a week. I kept expecting it to get infected, but it never did, and when I bottled it (I only got 5 bottles), it looked and smelled great, and it tasted like a porter.

So flash forward to Monday night. As you can see, it doesn't have much of a head on it, but it's really smooth and very, very viscous. It has a burnt chocolate/dark chocolate flavor, with a hint of caramel. I don't really taste the maple at all, but I also screwed up and primed with honey instead of maple syrup, so that may have contributed to that.

So, overall, considering that I really screwed up at least once in the process, I'm happy with it. I'm especially happy that I went ahead and took it all the way to bottling, and I'm interested to taste it in another week or so, after it's had even more time to condition.

If nothing else, I hope this an inspiration to other newbies like me, who may be afraid of screwing up their beer. If my experience is any indication, it really is difficult to mess up.

If you can make oatmeal, you can make beer. It's incredibly fun, incredibly rewarding, incredibly easy, and when you're finished YOU HAVE BEER THAT YOU MADE. If you're looking to get excited and make something, it's a great place to start.

FAQs:

For those of you who don't brew beer. Here's an oversimplified version of how I did it for the Porter:

• Soak grains in hot water for about 45 minutes. (This is called Mashing.)
• Remove grains from the water, leaving behind tasty stuff. Pour more hot water through the grains to get any other good stuff that's clinging to the grains. (This is called Sparging.)
• Bring the resulting good stuff, called your wort (pronounced wirt, like the kid in Diablo), to a boil with some clean water. Add hops according to a schedule for an hour to give it bitterness, flavor, and aroma. (This is called The Boil, and is the first and only step that has a name that sounds like what it actually is.)
• Cool the wort to about 70 degrees and add the yeast. (This is called Pitching the yeast.)
• Put it all into something to ferment for about a week or so. (This is called Fermentation, and it turns out that I lied in step 3.)
• Put it into bottles with some priming sugar, wait two weeks or longer, then drink. (This is called Awesome.)

You can get the glass as part of a set from Think Geek.

I used Beer Labelizer to make the label. So did redditor arkorobotics who did this one.

There are a ton of mail order places, if you don't have a local homebrew shop like I do. Check out the vendor list at Homebrew Talk if you're interested.

puppy love and the wiggle waggle walk

This is our dog, Seamus:

Seamus is in our lives because of people like you, who read my blog and supported Anne and me when we decided to celebrate the memory of our awesome dog, Ferris, and did the Wiggle Waggle Walk for the Pasadena Humane Society in 2009. Anne wrote:

Just over 8 years ago, I made a right turn instead of a left out of the Home Depot parking lot. That was a turn that would change our lives forever. In the bushes next to the bus stop sat a sad little puppy. She'd obviously been dumped there with a t-shirt as a blanket, and an empty cottage cheese container that probably served as a water dish.

For the next 8 years, we would have the best addition to our family: a dog who was dumped by someone who didn't care or appreciate what a smart, loving animal they were leaving. Ferris was like a sibling to our boys, a part of the family going on vacations and getting toys in her stocking at Christmas.

Ferris knew she was lucky. She appreciated all the love and care her new family gave her. Not every dog left on the street is so lucky. Some get hit by cars or left to starve. Fortunately, the Humane Society does everything they can to rescue these homeless or lost animals by giving them food, shelter, vaccinations and a chance to be adopted.

A month ago, we lost our awesome dog Ferris to cancer. Her happy face is one I'll always remember. Doing something positive in her honor is something we can all do together.

People like you made small and large donations, and within a week we blew our fundraising goal away. When everything was counted up, you guys donated over $13,000 to the Pasadena Humane Society!

Your contributions were so generous and added up so quickly, the Pasadena Humane Society asked Anne and me if we would like to walk one of their shelter dogs in the Wiggle Waggle Walk, as a way of saying thank you. We love dogs, so of course we accepted their offer. On the morning of the walk, we put on our Team Ferris T-shirts, wiped a lot of tears out of our eyes, met our friends at the Rose Bowl, and after a wiping a few more tears out of our eyes, met the shelter dog we'd be walking. He didn't have a name, because he'd only been at the PHS for a week, so I named him DOG, after the giant robot who loves everyone in Half Life 2.

He was affectionate, friendly, happy, and seemed to love every person and dog we encountered. Anne leaned over to me while we were walking and said, "this dog is going to be awesome when he grows up."

Anne and I were pretty convinced that we shouldn't get another dog until at least after the holidays, but during the five hours we were at the Wiggle Waggle Walk, we completely fell in love with DOG (who eventually was named Seamus, even though I really lobbied hard to call him Batman), and we decided that we would adopt him.

(Here is the exact moment when I fell in love with Seamus.)

I have a bunch of other pictures on Flickr, if you want to fall in love with Seamus, too. In fact, go look at them, and then come back.

I know right? Isn't he the most adorable dog in the world? Pictures don't capture his personality that well, and I hope you'll trust me when I tell you how amazing he is, and how grateful I am that he is part of our family. Ferris was such an awesome dog, and though we knew we could never replace her, Seamus has been a worthy heir to her spot at the foot of our bed, by my side when I go for a walk, and under my feet when I'm working at my desk.

We never would have met Seamus if we hadn't decided to honor Ferris' memory by raising money for the Pasadena Humane Society. We wouldn't have met Seamus if you hadn't given so many donations, large and small, and pushed us into the top few fundraisers -- in less than a week, even -- in 2009. We wouldn't have met Seamus if the Pasadena Humane Society wasn't there to save dogs and other animals like him who are abandoned by their owners, and need a safe place to live until they can find a family.

Last year, Anne said:

Seamus was a 7 month old puppy, found running around the streets of Pasadena. He had been in the shelter for a week. No one claimed him and no one asked to adopt him. But thanks to the Pasadena Humane Society, he was safe, fed and protected until he found the right home. Support from people like you makes it possible for the PHS to maintain this care for all of their animals while they wait for their new family.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know how much I love Seamus, and how much he loves being part of our family, so you probably understand how important it is to me to help the Pasadena Humane Society care for other pets like him, so they can find their families, too.

Here's Anne again, to tell you all about this year's Wiggle Waggle Walk:

"We did our first Wiggle Waggle Walk weeks after losing our dog Ferris to cancer in 2009. Ferris was a rescue dog (I found her abandoned at a bus stop, and rescued her myself) so we felt doing the walk to help other rescued animals was a great way to honor her memory.

"People we never met, from all over the world, joined our friends and family to sponsor our team. In less than ten days, we surpassed our goal by thousands of dollars, and ended up being one of the top three individual fundraisers for the Pasadena Humane Society. To thank us for our fundraising and to help raise adoption awareness, the PHS asked us to walk one of their shelter dogs. Of course we said yes, and we walked an amazing seven month old puppy. We choked back tears the entire walk -- we missed Ferris terribly -- and though we weren't sure we were ready to adopt a new dog, about halfway thought the walk, we'd both fallen in love with the little guy. Wil took the "adopt me" bandana off of him, and one week later, Seamus joined our family.

"Our home has 4 rescue pets. Every time I feed them, snuggle them, and play with them, I think of what their life would have been like if a shelter didn't care for them and help find them a good home. It's a daily reminder that these shelters need help from all of us so they can take care of pets who need food, medical care and a chance to live in a loving home. Everyone we know (and millions of people on the Internet) hears stories from us about our awesome pets and how we adopted them. This can happen for other families and pets because of the Pasadena Humane Society, and the generous support of people like you.

"Right now, there's a dog like our Seamus or Riley, or a cat like our Watson or Luna, who is waiting to find a family to love them and care for them. Please join us and help the Pasadena Humane Society -- or your local Humane Society -- make it possible for them to find each other."

If you can support us at all, it will add up to a HUGE difference. I figure that I reach about two million individual people every day, so if just 1% of you sponsored our team for five dollars ... well, math is hard, but you get the idea.

I never ask people to share posts, but please share this post on Facebook and G+, put it on Tumblr, and RT it on the Tweety Box. As of this morning, before I hit publish on this post, we're almost 1/3 of the way to our $15,000 goal. We have the rest of this week to make it, and I know that we can, five or ten dollars at a time, because you guys are awesome.

You can find out more, and join us at the official Team Wheaton Homepage.

Thank you, everyone, for your support.

 

So... this is happening.

I spent a lot of time at Warner Brothers last week.

While I was there, I saw my friend Kaley, and we took a silly picture:

 

Then I remembered that I'm Evil, so we took another picture:

 

And if you haven't solved the puzzle by now, this is why I was there:

Check out how I totally play this cool, and don't let on that I'm squeeing like a tween meeting Bieber. Awww yeah.

The Poet and the Painter casting shadows on the water

Beer stuff!

I wanted to make Jaime Paglia an oatmeal stout, because that's his favorite. When I went to the shop to get supplies, though, Greg (who owns it) told me that you really have to do a partial mash or all-grain to get it just right. I'm not quite ready for that, yet, so I went with my backup plan, and made a Southern English Brown Ale (this is a brown ale style that's smoother and sweeter than the northern style, and not as hoppy as the American style). It went off without a hitch, and it looked and smelled wonderful when I put it into the bucket to start fermenting. I'm really excited to see how it turns out.

I also have an IPA that's dry-hopping with an ounce of Cascade in the carboy. I checked the gravity on Friday, and if I did the math right, it's about 7%, which is exactly what I was going for ... and holy balls does it smell and taste great. It's got exactly the right amount of floral and citrus notes, with some hop bitterness behind it all, and it hasn't even conditioned in bottles, yet! I'm seriously considering entering it into a competition, so I can get some good feedback on it and find out if it's as good as I think it is. For those of you wondering, it's called Critical Hit IPA.

Speaking of beer, the most frequently asked question at DragonCon and PAX was some variation of "How's the beer you made with Ryan?" Oh, you mean ... this beer?

In a word: awesome. It exceeded our wildest expectations, especially considering that I think I made some mistakes in the brewing process. There was an amusing moment last week when I opened a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (the beer it's based on) and after a few sips I thought, "It's okay, but it's no Wheaton's Own Going To California!" Here's the label that Joel Watson did for us. It was my idea to base it on the Sierra Nevada label and Ryan's idea to include something from each of us (a d20 for me, an atom for him). I know we left Yeast off the ingredients list, but we decided that yeast could be awesome in this case.

For those of you scoring at home, Wheaton's Own was suggested by Grant Imahara. We almost went with his revised name, Wheaton's Pwn, but I can't remember why we didn't. It's called Goin' To California Pale Ale because we listened to Zeppelin IV while we brewed it, and it's a California-style Pale Ale. It's very low alcohol -- I don't think it's even 5% -- but it looks and tastes great, and that's most important to me.

We did a 5 gallon batch, and split the bottles, so we each got around 22 for ourselves. As of this morning, I'm down to 8 bottles, so I'm rationing until the IPA is ready.

I've officially found a hobby that I love, and will do for the rest of my life. I'm excited to get a kegging system, learn to do all-grain, and start designing my own beers. I've even reached into the stars and plucked out a new dream: to own a brewpub someday. When I told Anne that, she said that she thought it would be awesome to do that, but I'd left something out.

"What's that?" I said.

"You need to combine it with your dream of owning an 80s arcade. Think about that: it's a brewpub where you make your own beer, serve a little food, and have the 80s arcade games you love for people to play."

Does my wife know me, or what?

 

Doctor Manhattan and Galactus, together at last.

After months away from home (with occasional 12-24 hour visits), I'm finally in my own house, enjoying something resembling a summer vacation. I'm not too keen on doing anything that isn't goofing off, and I'm really okay with that, because I think I've earned it.

Until I feel recharged enough to write more than 100 words at a time, I present the following, taken by my friend Yuri at the comic book shop yesterday:

 

If you can't see the image for some reason, or you would like to emgiggen it to all its magnificent glory, here's a linky-link: http://imgur.com/yXOEOl.jpg

My Dragon*Con Schedule

Here's my schedule for this weekend's Dragon*Con.

Friday

1pm -2pm - The Guild Panel with Robin and Amy in the Sheraton Grand Ballroom

2:30-5:30pm - Autographs in the Walk of Fame

6:00-6:30pm - The Guild Photos in International Hall North at the Marriott.

6:30-7:00pm - Star Trek Photos in International Hall North at the Marriott.

Saturday

10am-1pm, then again from 1:30-3:30pm - Autographs in the Walk of Fame

4-5pm - Star Trek TNG Panel with Brent and Gates in the Sheraton Grand Ballroom

5:00-5:30pm - The Guild Photos in International Hall North at the Marriott.

5:30-6:00pm - Star Trek Photos in International Hall North at the Marriott.

Sunday

11:30am-12:30pm Eureka Panel with Colin, Jordan, Chris, and Kevin in the Hyatt Centennial Ballroom

1:00-2:00pm - Autographs in the Walk of Fame

2:30-3:00pm - The Guild Photos in International Hall North at the Marriott.

3:00-3:30pm - Star Trek Photos in International Hall North at the Marriott.

4:00-7:00pm - Autographs in the Walk of Fame

Monday

10:00-11:00am - A panel that illustrates I was not consulted about what panels I wanted to be on, titled Wesley Crusher, Boy Genius. I tell you what: instead of rehashing something I did when I was 14 that we're all tired of talking about, I've asked Paul and Storm to join me for a dramatic retelling of a turgid tale some of you may know as the WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER story, and then we'll do soem Q&A for the rest of the hour. This will be in the Sheraton Grand Ballroom.

11:30am-12:30pm - Final signing of the con, in the Walk of Fame

Boy, I'm exhausted just looking at this, but everyone keeps telling me that this is a great con, attended by great people, and that I'm going to have a great time, so that's become my "Krusty will come" mantra.

I sold out of all my books at PAX, but I did bring some 3-Wheaton Moon posters and a crapton of 8x10s. I also have a few Compleat Workes of Me Wil Wheaton(e) DVDs left that were not purchased at PAX, if you're interested.

I may extend or reduce the signing hours, depending on how I'm feeling.

Finally, this is important, so I'm reprinting it from my post about GenCon last year:

I got the Swine Flu at PAX Prime in 2009, and it was the worst two weeks of my life. When we went to PAX East, all of us (Jerry, Mike, Kurtz, Straub, Paul and Storm, The Professor and Mary Ann) all agreed that we wouldn't shake hands, give hugs, or engage in human contact with people, to limit the introduction of infection vectors. Most people understood, and we gave each other the old Iron Guard Salute (not the fascist thing, the gaming thing that looks like like "love" in ASL). The result: a few people were cheesed off, but none of us were too upset about that, because none of us got sick. It was the first con I've gone to in my whole life where I didn't get some form of Con Crud, and I'd like to repeat that until we turn out the lights on Planet Earth.

So, tl;dr: I'm not going to touch people at the con. I know it seems weird, but I hope you understand why. I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm trying not to get sick. (Edited to add: in comments, a non-zero number of readers seem to have a real problem with this, and people on the rest of the Internets are already giving me a hard time about it in very unkind terms. This makes me really sad; I hoped for a little more empathy and understanding. Not that it should matter, but I have Epstein-Barr, so my immune system isn't as robust as a normal person's; it is very easy for me to catch viruses and other nasty things. I'm not going to apologize for not wanting to get sick, especially after two weeks of Swine Flu. If you can't understand that, it's your problem, not mine.)

Thanks for understanding. I'll see you at the con!