The Latest — Steve Block

The Latest

  • Another Brewing Update

    Yes this is another post about beer. I’d apologize but I really enjoy brewing and I like sharing my hobby with others.

    I have two brewing things to cover today: an update on my SMaSH best bitter and a new batch of old ale I hope will be ready for the Christmas holiday.

    SMaSH update

    I wrote the last post at bottling time. I had tasted a sample before bottling but was still in the “hopeful” stage of the batch. It typically takes two to three weeks for a bottle conditioned beer to fully carbonate, but I am always impatient. I started trying bottles before a full week was up.

    The first bottle was undercarbonated, and while it generally tasted OK there was noticeable diacetyl. Ben had experienced a similar effect on a few of his brews but this was my first experience with it. I was a little worried but Ben had explained that it went away over time. The next few bottles improved slowly but surely, and by two full weeks into the process it was essentially gone. Good news!

    The end result is one of my favorite beers to date. I worried that the extreme simplicity of the recipe would lead to a result with no complexity. But in fact the simple ingredients and low alcohol simply made a nice beer that actually showcases the inherent complexity in the ingredients and process. It’s a very different result than I got with my overly complicated pale ale. That batch is quite drinkable, but is confused and muddied. This batch is pleasing and lovely.

    Old Ale

    So my simple English bitter turned out well and I have almost two cases left. Along with that I have a case of my farmhouse ale and another case of pale ale. That seems like plenty of beer to be getting on with.

    But of course I still want to brew. This seemed like an ideal time to make a strong beer that is meant to age. Last year I made a fairly strong, sweet Porter for the winter and it was a really excellent idea. Another strong beer like that seemed perfect. I could brew in August and have several months to condition a batch before the holidays.

    The style of choice this year is an old ale. I won’t be able to age it for a year or more like some have described, but that’s OK. I based the general recipe on Dry Dock’s HMS Bounty Old Ale with my own changes and substitutions as always. Like the rest of my recipes this is something of an experiment. I used an English yeast I am not familiar with and a new type of hops. I honestly don’t know what this will end up tasting like in a few months. But I am excited to find out.

    The brew day was completely uneventful and I came close to my recipe targets for color and original gravity. The beer has been fermenting for about 5 days now and has already slowed down considerably. I’m going to hold off checking how things are going until at least a full week has passed. I doubt I’ll have issues with stuck fermentation but I’ll check to be sure.

    The recipe

    Malt

    • 15.0 lbs Crisp Maris Otter
    • 2.0 lbs Simpson’s Dark Crystal
    • 0.5 lbs Briess CaraPils (Dextrin malt)
    • 0.25 lbs Belgian Special B

    Hops

    • 1.0 oz Challenger 6.2%, 60 min
    • 1.0 oz Challenger 6.2%, 30 min
    • 1.0 oz Challenger 6.2%, 15 min
    • 1.0 oz Styrian Goldings 3.2%, 10 min
    • 1.0 oz Styrian Goldings 3.2%, dry hop for 3 weeks

    Yeast

    Mash (Single infusion, 157F)

    • Infusion: 22 quarts at 174F
    • Mashout: 8 quarts at 200F
    • Sparge: Fly sparge 12 quarts at 168F

    Expected characteristics

    MeasurementBatchReference
    OG1.0811.060 — 1.090
    FG1.0221.015 — 1.022
    ABV7.9%6 — 9%
    IBUs4330 — 60
    SRM2110 — 22

    — Steve

  • Better, faster, lighter

    I started running last winter, and shortly after the new year I got serious about calorie counting again. For a while I was up and down, especially in March when I spent the whole month either sick or traveling. But since April I have been very serious about things, even if I am not perfect in the day to day.

    It can be hard to see the progress while it is happening. I don’t feel particularly fit nor that I am all that much thinner. Progress is little by little, and what stands out most is the day to day fluctuations on the scale. Longer time periods are fuzzy. I need external signals to help highlight the changes.

    As an example I went on a run tonight. I ran a little more than four miles. Two of those miles were relatively slow, and two were relatively fast. It felt hard, and I felt like maybe it should have been easier. But if I go back and look at my progression over time, it’s obvious just how far I have come. If I just think back to my first 5k in February it’s clear how different things are.

    It’s the same with my weight. I don’t feel particularly different or thinner than before. But when I chart the data over a longer period the change is both obvious and steady. Everything is going fine. And today I wore a shirt that hasn’t fit in years and it was perfect. I don’t see it, but it’s there.

    Here’s my progress so far.

    I still have a long ways to go. The last time I tried this I made it to about 200 and stalled. And I later lost all that progress. This time I have to do better. I know I can. It’s just a matter of motivation and dedication.

    — Steve

  • My SMaSH Best Bitter

    I have noticed a recent trend of brewing beer using a very simple set of ingredients. The extreme end of this is what is called SMaSH, Single Malt, Single Hop. These beers really try to explore the individual characteristics of the chosen malt and hop variety. This type of beer restricts what the brewer can do within the total range of possibilities, but restriction in materials often can bring other types of creativity.

    I was introduced to this idea by Scott Witsoe up at Wit’s End Brewing, and it led me to some reading and exploring on the internet. After I finished my relatively complex American pale ale something this simple was a very attractive idea, and I chose to create a SMaSH recipe for my next brew.

    I wanted to explore a traditional style using traditional ingredients, but with a restricted palette. After brief consideration, I chose a British Best Bitter as my recipe type. Crisp Maris Otter or Simpson Golden Promise were the obvious choices for malt, and East Kent Goldings or Fuggles the obvious choices for hops. I’ve created several excellent brews using Maris Otter as the base, making it the choice for me. I selected Goldings for hops, basically on a coin flip. I spent a lot more time thinking about what yeast to use, as there are dozens of choices of English yeast available. Eventually I settled on the Fullers ESB yeast, as it has lovely characteristics and results in a very clear finished beer.

    A Best Bitter is intended to be a session beer; good flavor but not very strong, a beer you can sit and have a few of without much danger. My original target was a flavorful beer with less than 4% alcohol. When I brewed though I ended up with better mash efficiency than planned, and so the final beer is estimated to be about 4.3%. Still quite a bit lower than my recent pale ales.

    My system is actually not very well suited for a 5 gallon low-gravity batch. My mash tun, which is great for brewing a strong beer, is a little too large for a low gravity ale. It works fine, but it can be hard to establish a good grain bed for filtration, since it is only a couple of inches deep. The large air space above the grain can also lead to more rapid temperature loss in the mash. A strong beer like my farmhouse ale needs much more grain and helps with both of those things.

    I wanted a relatively high finishing gravity for more body and malt flavor, so I targeted a mash at the higher end of the temperature range. I also chose a less attenuative yeast for the same reasons. The beer was bottled yesterday, and my measurements show that this worked out quite well. The taste of the warm, uncarbonated beer at bottling time gives me great hope for success. I’ll know for sure in 2 or 3 weeks.

    The recipe:

    This recipe was tuned for my simple brewing system where I can get a 75% mash efficiency consistently. Since I got 80% efficiency in the actual mash I was actually slightly higher than my recipe target. I used a single infusion mash at 154F to extract more unfermentable sugars for more body.

    Malt

    • 9.0 lbs Crisp Maris Otter

    Hops

    • 1.5 oz East Kent Goldings 6.6%, 60 min
    • 0.5 oz East Kent Goldings 6.6%, 20 min
    • 1.0 oz East Kent Goldings 6.6%, 5 min

    Yeast

    • White Labs WLP002 (Fuller’s yeast) in a starter.

    Mash (Single infusion, 154F)

    • Infusion: 13.5 quarts at 169F
    • Sparge: Fly sparge 23.0 quarts at 170F

    Characteristics

    MeasurementExpectedActualReference
    Efficiency75%80%N/A
    OG1.0431.0461.040 — 1.048
    FG1.0141.0131.008 — 1.012
    ABV3.8%4.3%3.8% — 4.6%
    IBUs393925 — 40
    Color (SRM)5.4Gold5 — 16

    — Steve

  • My first 10k

    As I have posted before I started running last November and have managed to turn it into a habit. From 3 days a week I’ve pushed to 4, and have been steadily improving both my speed and distance.

    My first 5k was back in February, and then I did several more. None were official: I was timing myself based on my phone’s GPS. Eventually I was able to do a 5k run at a 10 minute pace, one of my major goals. In my post discussing this, I concluded that it was time to enter some official events and get some official times.

    In May I signed up for the 10k run at the annual Midnight Madness road race in Ames. I was going to do the 5k, and made the choice for the longer run at the last minute. I felt like I needed a new goal to keep training and improving, and a 10k seemed properly ambitious.

    From there it was time to train, a lot. When I signed up for the race my longest run was under 4 miles. Shortly into training I failed to reach 4 miles more than once. But in the 2 months I had I slowed down a little and steadily increased my distance to 4, then 5, then 6 miles.

    By a few weeks before the race I was running at least a 5k four times a week, and thinking of a day where I “only” had to run 3-4 miles as an easy day. What a huge change from when a 3 mile run was a distant, difficult goal!

    Eventually I ran a 10k in training, about 3 weeks before the race. I did it in 67 minutes, and felt like I had enough to go slightly faster. I set a personal goal of running the race in under 65 minutes, breaking the 10:30 pace barrier for over 6 continuous miles.

    That was my goal, and although I was nervous I was sure I could do it if I just pushed on. It helped that I had so much support from family and friends, and that my mom, older sister, younger sister, sister’s boyfriend, Ben, and Sam were all running too. It wasn’t just me out there, it was an event filled with family and friends.

    On the night of the race I watched the 5k, cheering on my friends and family with my dad and little sister. I watched Ben and Sam cross the finish line of the 5k, though they were blurry streaks on my camera.

    Shortly after I found my way to the 10k starting line, standing with my little sister and her boyfriend on one side. I was nervous, but her enthusiasm helped tamp that down. Sam was there too, but I missed Ben.

    Then the gun went off. We all started running, and with one last squeeze of her hand I watched my little sister take off with her boy to run a much faster race. Within a mile I dropped from the middle of the group to farther back, but in my headphones the pace coach I had set up said I was doing fine. I was a little ahead of my target time.

    The Midnight Madness 10k is two loops of a 5k circuit, and shortly before the halfway point the fastest runners were passing me on their way to 30 minute times. Meanwhile I was building a slight lead on my personal target, just in case.

    When I got to the last turnaround, at the 5 mile mark, my pace coach tried to get me to speed up, to go from a 10:25 mile to a 10 minute mile. I managed for a while, but the long uphill was too much. I was losing ground. Soon I was closer to an 11 minute mile, and feeling tired. At the top of the hill I was 30 seconds down on the last mile’s time, and losing all the margin I had built early in the run.

    We came over the last bridge, and I could see the finish line. On the left were two of my closest friends cheering me on. On the right was my family, cheering just as loud. I could hear the announcer calling out times. 63 minutes. I was almost a quarter mile away.

    I pushed hard, as hard as I could with what I had left. 64 minutes. I heard my friend Beth’s name called out. I kept running. Crossed the line.

    Then my name. Then 65 minutes.

    I had done it! I ran a timed 10k! I beat my target time! I didn’t stop to walk!

    The official times were posted the next day. Confirmation.

    261 32 M30 Steve Block, 33, Denver, CO 1:04:51 10:26

    I was near the back, 261st out of 277 men, and 32nd out of 35 men in my age group. But I don’t care. I set a goal, trained hard to meet it, and then did it.

    And the next one will be faster.

    — Steve

  • The Sand Dunes

    I find it hard to get off my butt to make an adventure happen. But often it only takes a little push from a friend to overcome my inertia.

    Alex’s visit provided just that push. He and Danielle spent a week in Denver, and planned to head to the Great Sand Dunes park to camp overnight before heading on to Utah to start their vacation. They invited me along, and although I initially hesitated, I couldn’t argue with the appeal of the dunes and the logic of going there with a good friend.

    I’ve lived in Colorado for 6 years, but hadn’t been out to the Great Sand Dunes since my college trip with Robert and Liz. A long time, and the Sand Dunes are less than a 4 hour drive away.

    I drove south from Denver on Saturday morning, and met Alex and Danielle at the Oasis store just outside the entrance to the park. The main camping area was full, and so they had found a spot at a campsite a few miles up the Medano Pass Primitive Road. They came down to pick me up, since the road requires a high clearance 4×4 to get through. The Focus would never make it.

    But we couldn’t get back to the site for a while. A small plane, a Piper PA-28, had crashed that morning in the mountains up the primitive road, and they had closed it while search and rescue did their work.

    The weather looked threatening, and Danielle decided to hike up to the campsite to put the rain fly up on their tent. Alex and I decided to hike out onto the dunes instead.

    Danielle never made it to the camp site, at least not on foot. The sand on the road is soft and it was over 5 miles back to the site. Alex eventually got permission from a ranger to drive up to our campsite, along with a stern warning to not go any farther. I left the Focus down in one of the parking lots, with a permit from the rangers for overnight parking, and rode in the Jeep with Alex towards the campsite. We picked up Danielle on the way, just short of the river crossing and at least a mile from the site.

    Later in the evening we walked about a mile down the road and then hiked up into the back side of the dunes. There were a few steep climbs up soft sand, but we made it. Unlike the main dunes area it was completely empty. We had the dunes to ourselves.

    The evening started out grey and cloudy, but slowly changed to a strong golden light that highlighted the textures and patterns in the sand. Fantastic golden light for photography. We planned to stay until dark and try to get some star photos, but it got cold and we left shortly after dark.

    It was a good trip.

    — Steve

  • Twin Cities Memorial Day

    It was time to take a few days away from work, so I flew off to the Twin Cities to hang out with Ben, Sam, and Liz instead. Memorial Day weekend seemed like a good time, and I took two days of vacation to make it a 5 day trip in total.

    I thought that by the end of May the cold and wet weather would have passed, but I was wrong. The weather was perfect when I arrived, and pretty good when Ben and I went on our nice bike ride, and then dreary and cold the rest of the weekend. We didn’t even make a good effort at Memorial Day grilling; we went and got pho instead. Cold weather food!

    But that’s OK. The trip was less about the weather and much more about spending time with friends.

    Together we built a mash tun for Ben’s first foray into all-grain brewing, and made a clone of Bell’s Oberon.

    We ate delicious Kramarczuk’s sausages, grilled by Ben. We drank several beers, including Ben’s own brew and beers I can’t buy in Colorado. Ben and I visited a couple fairly new tap rooms on our bike ride. We had a semi fancy dinner at the Happy Gnome. We had pizza, and pho, and Liz made us pasta. We drove to Wisconsin for beer and watched episodes of Sherlock.

    I got to unwind a bit. But now I’m home and back to work and back to running and trying to work off some of that food and beer.

    Zero regrets.

    — Steve

  • Even my APA isn’t simple…

    At least, not by simple “number of ingredients”, “different kinds of malts”, “number of hop additions”, or similar measure.

    I was really trying to keep this one simple, straightforward, and good. The kind of beer you can sit down and have a couple and they aren’t palate busting (like a super hoppy IPA) or drunk making (like my 8.5% ABV monster conditioning in the corner).

    The beer aims to hit all the high notes of the American Pale Ale style, including smooth hoppiness, nice malt notes, and a rich color. I think it will do that, but the recipe got a little out of hand. 5 kinds of malt, 2 kinds of hops, and 5 total hop additions. Oh well. I’m looking forward to cracking one of these open mid June.

    The recipe:

    This is an all-grain recipe I developed based on the style notes for an APA, notes from Gordon Strong’s books, and information from Designing Great Beers. It’s supposed to be relatively simple, with a hint of complexity in the malt. This is the first brew I am trying with all late hopping; all hops were added in the last 20 minutes of a 70 minute boil.

    I wanted a beer with more color than my last two brews, both of which are extremely pale. To help this I added some crystal malts along with Munich malt. I added wheat for the hell of it, and used rice hulls for the first time to help with mash temperature evenness and easier lautering.

    The brewing process went very well, and I actually got a higher starting gravity than planned, indicating good mash efficiency. This will be a simple one stage fermentation, 3–4 weeks and then bottled.

    Malt

    • 11.0 lbs US 2-row malt
    • 1.0 lbs US crystal 40L
    • 0.25 lbs US crystal 80L
    • 0.5 lbs Weyermann Munich II
    • 0.5 lbs Briess white wheat
    • 1.0 lbs Rice hulls

    Hops

    • 0.75 oz Cascade 9.3%, 20 minutes
    • 0.75 oz Cascade 9.3%, 15 minutes
    • 1.0 oz Cascade 9.3%, 10 minutes
    • 0.5 oz Amarillo 10.7%, 5 minutes
    • 0.5 oz Amarillo 10.7%, 0 minutes
    • 0.5 oz Cascade 9.3%, 0 minutes

    Yeast

    Mash

    • Single infusion, 151 F with mash out.
    • Infusion: 20 quarts at 167 F (1.5 qts/lb)
    • Mash out: 12 quarts at 200 F
    • Sparge: 8 quarts at 170 F

    Expected Characteristics

    Style: APAHomebrewReference
    Calories (12 oz)190N/A
    IBUs (bitterness)4030 — 45
    Color (SRM)9.7 (amber)5 — 14
    ABV6.4%4.5% — 6.2%
    OG1.0611.045 — 1.060
    FG1.0121.010 — 1.015

    — Steve

  • Still running, and meeting goals

    Part 1: getting to 5k

    Back in February I wrote a piece about running. At that point I had just transitioned from running increasingly long intervals broken up by walking recovery to running nonstop for 25 minutes. I had just completed a 2.2 mile 25 minute run][1], and I was looking forward to completing a 5k run within a few weeks.

    In reality I decided to push myself, and ran my first 5k 4 days later. I thought it would take between 35 and 40 minutes.

    But I finished my first ever 5k in just under 35 minutes, at an average pace of about 11 minutes and 15 seconds a mile. It was a huge milestone for me. I had pushed hard and almost didn’t make it, but there I was.

    My nothing to 5k program had worked, and it took less than 3 months.

    Part 2: getting sick

    After that first 5k I kept running. I started trying interval training, with a long run to get warmed up and a little tired followed by fast intervals at about 9 minutes/mile. It seemed to help, and by March I was running 2 miles at a time in under an 11 minute pace.

    But partway into March I caught my worst cold in years. I ran on March 5, and then didn’t run or do much else again until the 26th. On March 5 I was running more than 2 miles in less than 11 minutes a mile. On my first run back 3 weeks later I didn’t even make it a mile and a half before I had to stop. I had lost almost 30 seconds a mile too.

    It was hard. I felt like I had lost a lot, and running was more difficult than it had ever seemed before.

    But I kept at it.

    Part 3: a second 5k, and a breakthrough

    By mid April I was running strong again. I was homing in on a 10 minute mile, but not quite there. I got back to running faster than 11 minutes a mile and on April 20th I went for my second 5k.

    I upped my pace quite a bit. My first 5k took almost 35 minutes, but this time it took just over 33 minutes. My pace dropped from 11:15/mile to 10:40/mile. And I felt good.

    Three days later I ran 2 miles at a 10:30 pace. It hurt and I felt sick, but those were the fastest 2 miles yet. I was pretty happy.

    I didn’t realize it then, but I’m pretty sure this was the breakthrough. Two days later I ran the same 2 miles at a 9:45 pace. It was such a huge improvement that I thought the GPS in my phone must have been wandering and overestimating my distance. But I took a route I knew was about 2 miles, and it looked good on the map.

    Since that run I’ve only had one slower than 10 minutes a mile, and several around 9:45 a mile.

    Part 4: my third 5k, and a major goal met

    This morning I left on another 5k. This one with a very important goal in mind. In my February post I said that my goal was to do a 5k at a 10 minute pace. Based on the last week of runs I knew I was ready to take a shot at it.

    This morning I set iSmoothRun‘s coach to a 5k distance at a 10 minute/mile pace and tried to hit that goal. I started out well, gaining nearly 30 seconds on the goal time within the first mile. But my route is mostly uphill on the way out, and at the midway point I was closer to 15 seconds ahead.

    I turned around and headed back towards home, trying to keep my pace up. The coach kept giving me valuable feedback (“Faster!” she would call out) and I made it to 2.5 miles with about 20 seconds on the overall goal.

    I was feeling pretty beat though, and I was slowing down. But I kept going.

    And a block from my apartment the coach said I was done. Just over 5k in 31 minutes. 9 minutes and 57 seconds per mile.

    I know my phone’s built in GPS is not an official meter, but it’s good enough for me. I said I wanted to be able to run a 5k at a 10 minute pace, and I did. And I bet I can improve on that even more.

    I don’t know what new goals I will set now, but I think it’s time to enter some official events and get some official times.

    — Steve

    1. All of these links include a 5 minute warm-up walk and additional cool down time at the end. I use iSmoothRun during these runs, and it reports the statistics of the running interval separately from the overall track log. All run and pace times are based on this.↩︎

  • Museum Light Study

    I’ve posted a small new gallery. A short study of light playing on the white walls of the unusual geometry of the Denver Art Museum.

    — Steve

  • Trying out a new lens

    Ever since I bought the Fujifilm X-E1 I have been holding out for the promised 23mm f/1.4 and 56mm f/1.2 prime lenses. I already have the 35mm f/1.4 lens, and it is fantastic. These three lenses together would cover almost every situation I normally want to photograph[1]. And if the 35mm lens and the ultra-wide 14mm f/2.8 are any indication they would be optically excellent.

    Unfortunately, it appears that designing lenses isn’t easy, and the fast primes have been pushed back from their earlier schedule. According to an updated roadmap published by Fujifilm the 23mm, which was planned for the first half of this year, is now supposed to be available near the end of the year instead, and the 56mm is supposed to be available early in 2014.

    A big part of the reason I chose the X-E1 over the Sony NEX-7, which I almost bought, was the lenses (the other major part was a set of traditional controls). Fuji’s initial lens releases were very good, and their roadmap was very exciting to someone who prefers fast primes[2]. Sony didn’t, and still doesn’t, appear to understand that high quality lenses are very important.

    But now I’m feeling stuck. If I were to only have one lens, ever, it probably would be the 35mm f/1.4 I have now. It’s an excellent lens, better than the old 50mm f/1.8 Canon lenses I had on my FD system, and much better than the 25mm f/2.8 pancake lens I had on my Olympus. It is an outstanding “normal field of view” lens.

    But I really love having a wider angle lens available for general photography, and a short telephoto is almost a necessity sometimes.

    I expect that I’ll end up buying the planned prime lenses eventually, but I hope to do a little travel between now and the expected release dates. And I want more flexibility than I have with just one focal length. I took a risk buying a system on planned lens releases and now I have to live with that.

    So instead of sticking to my guns and being a prime lens purist, I ordered the 18–55mm f/2.8–4 zoom. I used this lens as a rental once, and it is a definite step up from the equivalent lens on my Olympus. It still has a variable maximum aperture, sadly, but is very well built and a full stop faster than the equivalent lenses on other cameras.

    I was still a little worried about distortion and optical quality. Zooms, even high end ones, tend to have barrel distortion at one end and pincushion distortion at the other. They also tend to be less sharp than primes. Meanwhile, Fuji’s primes so far appear to be fully optically corrected for distortion and are very sharp. But even though this lens is not completely distortion free it is very good.

    I took the lens out yesterday and took a few shots to try it out. Nothing special, but so far I’m quite happy with the feel and operation and with the sharpness of the lens. Focus is quick and much quieter than the 35mm. I look forward to getting a lot of use out of this lens, and will just have to deal with the shame of buying a zoom somehow. Maybe by taking pictures that I’m proud of.

    — Steve

    1. The X-E1 has an APS-C sized sensor with a crop factor of about 1.5x. These lenses have roughly the equivalent field of view of 35mm, 53mm, and 84mm lenses on a 35mm camera.↩︎
    2. And is willing to pay for them.↩︎