Beer Diary...

I've been using pellet hops in hop bags in the boil since the beginning of my brewing habit. I first purchased the medium sized nylon type from MoreBeer and soon discovered how limiting the size was. After the boil, the hops had expanded into a fist tight ball that pressed against the constraints of the bag. No me gusta! So, I started using 5gal. paint strainer bags a couple years ago to give the hops some more room to be exposed to the hot wort. My thinking and hope was that I could achieve a higher degree of flavor and aroma. You can go here to see other ideas or here to see my 'hop spider' solution . But there were problems with using these techniques, mainly that even with the larger bags the expanding vegetative mass appeared to seal off the flow of wort through the hops. I haven't done any studies to prove this so don't hold me to this theory but just from the looks of it I'd say I'm not getting my fair share of the available goodness from the hops....

Sometimes I find myself suffering from high anxiety. I woke up late the other night from a dream in which I was flying around the countryside sitting on a pillow that was strapped to some sort of small wooden bench. As I blissfully moved through the air I followed the line of the street far below. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn't need to follow the road, that I was free to cut across the country side on my flying bench to get to my destination and save time. This I did and my new route took me over a large grassy playing field where some older kids were throwing a ball back and forth. The ball ended up landing in my lap and before I could return it the kids started chasing me from below, yelling at me as if I intended to fly off with their beloved toy. Soon I began losing elevation and was floating dangerously close to the angry kids who were jumping up to catch me. As much as I willed myself to fly higher and faster I kept dropping like a leaky hot air balloon. Jus...