This Book Is For Knitters…

I’ve been stuck for several months on a specific section of my Book Proposal. I was humming along quite nicely until I got to the section where I needed to define my market.

My book combines two topics that have never been combined before. I still get an entertaining response from people when I tell them the name of my book. “Knitting and beer?” they’ll say, repeating the words carefully to confirm that they understood me correctly. “I don’t get it.”

In order to complete the About The Market section of my proposal I had to answer several questions. Who am I writing this book for? Who will want to buy this book? Is it for knitters who want to know more about beer, beer lovers who want to know more about knitting, couples who enjoy both crafts, the general public who has a casual interest in knitting and/or beer? I also needed to determine where my book would be sold. Would my potential customer be interested in my book at a knitting shop, a homebrew shop, a brewpub, a bookstore? Who should publish my book? A beer publisher, a knitting publisher, a general interest publisher? I was baffled and didn’t know where to turn for an answer.

And so I’ve been allowing myself to get distracted from working on my book proposal. Kind of like a sweater project where you run into a glitch in the pattern and need a couple of hours and solid brain function in order to figure out how to resolve the problem. The project gets put on a shelf and you tell yourself you’ll get to it when you have a couple of free hours of peace and quiet. Years later, it still sits there waiting for some love and attention from you. Some day, you keep saying, some day.

Fortunately my shelving of this project only lasted a few months. With our local Writer’s Conference approaching, I’ve been feeling more motivated to get serious about my writing… again. I got up early this morning, got my various distractions out of the way and opened up the About The Market section of my proposal. With a bit more research, I finally found the answers to all of my market questions. A big thank you to knitting humorist Stephanie Pearl-McPhee for helping me to see the light.

My book is for knitters. For knitters who like beer and want a greater understanding of the craft of brewing, for knitting homebrewers, for knitters who think they don’t like beer, for knitters who still don’t understand what knitting has to do with beer, for knitters who appreciate all crafts, for knitters who want to understand the process of brewing, for knitters who don’t really want to know more about beer but think the book would be a great conversation starter if they put it on their coffee table, for knitters who want to help dispel the “sweet little old lady drinking tea” stereotype, for knitters who need reassurance that it’s okay to have a knitting group meet at a bar and drink beer while they knit. If non-knitters want to buy and read my book, they will be warmly welcomed, but this book about beer and homebrewing will be written by a knitter for knitters.

My book will inspire knitters to look at the craft of brewing in a new light. Knitters will be able to go to the liquor store (the one with a good beer selection, of course) and know the difference between a black lager and a porter. They will know which beers are more hop oriented and which ones have a stronger malt presence. They will understand the importance of drinking a beer out of a glass and the benefits of using the appropriate glass for each beer. They will learn what’s involved in homebrewing and possibly be inspired make their own beer or mead, as had been a female tradition for thousands of years.

This book will be for knitters. Thanks, Stephanie, for helping me overcome my glitch and get my project going again!

-Jenne Hiigel

Beer, Surfboards, Knitting, Writing…

My time and energy of late has been taken up by the move of the store where I work, Central Coast Surfboards. We only moved three blocks, but a move is still a move… and not something I care to do very often. Our new shop is awesome and things are settling down a bit now that the move is behind us.

I’m looking forward to having more energy outside of work, so I can get back on track with my knitting, brewing, and writing. I have a smoked porter in the secondary fermentor and will be bottling that batch in a week. Next up on my brewing schedule is a repeat of batch #2, which is a clone recipe for Fuller’s London Porter. After that, I’m considering branching off to another beer style.

Beer & Knitting research is continuing. We had a good turnout for Beer & Knitting night at Yarns… at the Adobe on July 12th. My husband, Chuck, brought a wonderful selection of beers, along with his extensive knowledge of beer and industry history. I brought my homebrewed porter and Carrie brought her homebrewed meads. We even managed to fit in a little knitting!

Preparations have begun for the Cuesta College Writer’s Conference, which is always a wonderful motivator for me to get serious about writing. I’m the lead volunteer for the conference, so I always start focusing on the event a couple of months in advance.

My knitting projects have been leaning on the simple side… the kind where you can chat, watch a movie, or get interrupted without losing track of where you are. As soon as I can handle it again, I’ll add a project or two that require a bit of brain function.

My walking to work activity has switched from reading to spinning with a drop spindle. I love working directly with the fiber, especially the wool I got at a farmer’s market in Madison, Wisconsin. If only it were legal to drink a beer on the way home from work!

-Jenne Hiigel

Porter #2 & All-Grain Brewing…

Porter #2 has been in the bottle almost three weeks now and is tasting quite good. A significant improvement over Porter #1. I actually drank a whole bottle of the stuff and found it very tasty. The first two bottles we opened had good carbonation, but the last two overflowed upon opening. I’ll try refrigerating the beer before opening, to see if that calms down the CO2, but I guess I’ll need to pare back a bit on my priming sugar when bottling. I do plan to brew this recipe again, so I’ll have the opportunity to make improvements.

I had an all-grain brewing session with my brother-in-law that was very helpful. My two batches of Porter have been an extract/grain combo, but I’m very interested in moving into all-grain as soon as I can. We decided to brew an IPA. The recipe was based on Torrey Pines IPA.

The process was quite similar to my extract/grain brewing with a couple of additional steps. First, rather than steeping the grains we mashed the grains. This requires a container that can hold five gallons of water at a constant temperature for about 90 minutes. Many people use altered plastic coolers. John uses a plastic bucket with a false bottom (so it can double as a lauter tun to drain the liquid and filter out the spent grain), and has an insulating wrapper that keeps the temperature constant during mashing. The second additional step is sparging, which is the process of rinsing the grains with hot water to get as much of the fermentable sugars into the wort as possible.

Brewers use gravity to move the liquid from one vessel to another whenever possible. With most steps in the process being able to work with two levels is enough. I do this often by using the kitchen counter and the floor. With sparging, though, you need a third level in order for gravity to work properly and it’s the hot (171 degree) sparge water that needs to be on the top level. I might be able to use the top of the refrigerator for my third level, but I’m not thrilled about the idea of having to lift five gallons of 171 degree water above my head. My other option is to get a food grade hot water pump.

It was great to actually go through the process and see how all-grain brewing works. It was especially helpful that his equipment is quite similar to mine, with the one difference that my brew kettle is 8-gallons (rather than 5-gallons) and has a ball-valve. Definitely put a little extra money into your brew kettle! You’ll be glad you did.

As soon as I’m ready to invest in some more equipment (a mash/lauter tun, a sparge water container and spray mechanism, and possibly a hot water pump) I’ll be moving into all-grain. Guess it’s time to teach some more knitting classes to get some cash for my homebrewing! In the meantime, I visited John’s local homebrew shop and bought an extract/grain kit for a clone of Alaskan Smoked Porter. I’m looking forward to another brew day!

Our next Beer & Knitting night will be July 12th at Yarns…at the Adobe. This will be our first gathering at a yarn shop. Food will be pot luck and my hubby will be providing beer, although I’m hearing that some knitters may bring some of their favorite beers as well. Anne has a beautiful patio behind her shop, and with some cooperative summer evening weather it should be a great evening.

After a very busy June, I plan to be quite ready for a relaxing night of Beer & Knitting come July.

-Jenne Hiigel

Porter #2 is Tasting Darn Good…

Sorry about my being such a blog slacker, but I’ve been a bit busy celebrating my 50th birthday and learning about Traditional Chinese Medicine so I can start enhancing my Qi (vital energy) before menopause kicks in. In spite of all this, I have not neglected my homebrewing – I’ve just neglected writing about it.

To catch up, Porter #2 is an extract/grain clone recipe of Fuller’s London Porter. I brewed this batch on April 27th, transferred it to the secondary fermentor on Mother’s Day (not a bad Mother’s Day activity!), and bottled the beer yesterday (May 25th).

Before adding the priming sugar my hubby and I tasted the beer. Wow! It was really good. I even refilled my glass. This is a beer I will enjoy drinking! I’m already planning to brew a second batch of the same recipe, because I know that this batch won’t last very long once it’s done. The flavors were clean and the malt and hops came through very nicely. This is going to be a darn good Porter.

Now I’m in a quandry. I hesitated to give out my first beer because I didn’t want to impose my weak brewing skills on others. If I was going to share my beer, I wanted it to be worth drinking. Now that I clearly have a good beer, I have this strange impulse to horde it! I’m starting to feel stingy with this beer and it’s not even finished yet. What’s going on here?

I didn’t care for my first batch of Porter. I was able to identify a few positive qualities in it, but had no desire to drink much more than a partial bottle. Fortunately I found a few people who loved my beer, so was able to be generous with it so it didn’t go to waste. There was something in the aroma that I didn’t care for and I concluded that it was from the dry yeast I used.

While looking for advice to improve my beer, my brother-in-law told me to use liquid yeast and change the recipe. What a difference those two suggestions made! The aroma and flavor have improved tremendously with the liquid yeast, and the hop and malt balances in this new recipe are much better than the previous batch.

Two weeks of bottle conditioning and “Jenne’s London Porter” should be ready for a taste test. I’m actually excited this time and will look forward to cracking open my first bottle of Porter #2.

-Jenne Hiigel

Beer & Knitting Night…

Wow! It’s looking like Beer & Knitting Night is starting to catch on. Tonight we all met at The Clubhouse at This Old House in San Luis Obispo.

I was expecting the usual 6-10 knitters to show up for some knitting, beer, snacks, and conversation. My son Lewis and his girlfriend Sara came with me and we arrived about a half hour late. We walked into a room with a very large table of knitters, as the staff was adding yet another table to the end. At final count I think we had 23 attendees. Several people looked at me and said, “Jenne, look what you’ve created!” It was pretty cool. Everyone was having a great time.

There were many familiar faces from previous Beer & Knitting nights, but a lot of new attendees – most of whom I knew from other knit groups and knitting activities, and some new faces as well. Conversation was not a problem, yarn was plentiful, projects were admired, beer was flowing and the food kept coming. We even got a bit of knitting done!

My reason for starting Beer & Knitting Night was two-fold. First was to research the qualities of a pub, bar or restaurant that complimented the knitting process and made it comfortable for knitters to go there for beer & knitting. The second reason was to see how many knitters were also interested in beer.

Tonight I clearly got the answer to my second question. Many knitters definitely like beer. Even though not everyone was drinking beer (some were drinking wine, mixed drinks, or soda), they all found the celebratory atmosphere of beer drinking appealing.

As far as my first question goes, I’m getting more and more clues about what makes a good beer joint also a good knit joint. The management’s ability to be flexible and enjoy the festive nature of the gathering makes a huge difference. Good lighting and a reasonable noise level (of music or other distractions) are critical. I’m finding that knitters can be pretty flexible with seating arrangements, although tables with chairs are still better than booths or bar stools.

It was a great night and a pleasure to behold such enthusiasm for both crafts. Our research is still not done (hopefully it won’t ever be), so there will be more Beer & Knitting nights in the future. Anne Gough, owner of the knit shop Yarns at the Adobe, suggested we have a beer potluck on her patio behind her yarn shop sometime soon. We’ll definitely have to work that into the schedule.

For anyone thinking of starting a Beer & Knitting group in their own neighborhood, I would definitely recommend it.

-Jenne Hiigel

Porter #2 is in the fermentor…

My first batch of Porter is done, but not gone. After I found a few people who actually liked the beer far more than I did, I tasted my Porter again with a different perspective. Clearly nothing has gone wrong with the beer. It was a successful homebrew with no off-flavors. The aroma, which I can only attribute to the dry yeast I used, is something I just don’t care for. So I shall continue to work to improve my beer.

My second batch of Porter has been in the fermentor for two days now and the yeast is bubbling away. It’s such a beautiful sight to see the yeast doing its job so well! This beer is an extract/grain clone recipe of Fuller’s London Porter, a very yummy English Porter. This beer used a liquid yeast and steeped more grain for a longer period at a specific temperature, with a brief sparging at the end of the steeping.

My second attempt at brewing went much smoother than my first one. The ball valve on my brew kettle still leaked slightly in the beginning, but it was slow enough to just slip a heat-proof bowl under and move on to the brewing. The wort was smelling really good as I brewed and I just love smelling and adding the hops, this time it was Kent Golding hops.

The only glitch came when I was trying to chill my wort from boiling temperature down to about 75 degrees. I have a wort chiller that works great, but when the outside temperature is 94 degrees and inside our house is 80 degrees, it’s hard to get anything down to 75. I got close enough though, pitched my yeast, aerated my wort (shook it up real hard with the yeast in it), and put my faith in the yeast’s ability to do it’s job. By the next morning the fermentor was bubbling beautifully.

I’ve got real good vibes about this batch of beer. It’s smelling good and feeling good. I think I’ll be a bit more anxious to try a finished bottle of this Porter.

We have another Beer & Knitting night planned for this Wednesday. This time my fellow knitting/beer drinkers were nudging me to hurry up and set another date for a gathering. It’s great to see so much enthusiasm!

-Jenne Hiigel

Getting Distracted…

I haven’t been working on my book project as much as I would like to. Life has gotten in the way of my ability to get up at 5am and get some writing done before getting ready for work. I must admit, though, that a significant part of my problem is a website I’ve discovered that is causing me to become distracted from my project at hand. The website is BookMooch.

Innocently enough, this website was designed to allow people to trade books that they no longer need or want for books that might be of more interest to them. The trading is based on a point system. You earn points by listing books that you’re willing to give away, you earn more points by shipping your books to another person, and then you use points by mooching books from other BookMoochers. Your only cost is the postage to ship the books, and since they can be sent via Media Mail the shipping is darn reasonable.

I joined BookMooch at the end of January and in shortly over two months I have given away 52 books and mooched 32 of them. It’s one thing to spend time boxing up and mailing the books that others have mooched, but then you’ve accumulated quite a few points and you start browsing for books that you didn’t know existed that you desperately need. When the books start arriving, it’s time to start reading. I’ve even switched from knitting while I walk to reading while I walk!

Then while I’m reading about the health benefits of honey, past life regression, reincarnation, gardening, herbs, salem witch trials, traditional chinese medicine and a variety of other topics, my interest in certain subjects begins to peak and I start looking on amazon.com for more books related that topic! My focus has clearly now been diverted from my original task of writing my beer & knitting book. I know. It’s an old, sad story. The evils of the internet.

So I’m trying to get back on track with my book writing. I managed to mooch a beer-related book about the history of Guiness. When that arrives I’ll at least be back to reading about the proper subject. Then if I could just stop staying up late into the wee hours reading all my mooched books, I’d be able to wake up at 5am to write and still be awake at work at 3:00 in the afternoon. A lofty goal I know, but I’m going to give it my best effort.

Back on the Porter front, I’ve determined that my beer is as good as it’s going to get. It has aged in the bottle for six weeks now and the last couple of weeks have not made a big difference in flavor. Our neighbor two doors down gave me a bottle of his Vanilla Porter, so Chuck and I did a side by side taste test with his porter and mine. Both were made from the same recipe that we got from our local hombrew shop. The only differences were that he used a liquid yeast and I used a dry yeast, and he added vanilla bean.

The flavor differences between the two yeasts was quite noticeable. There’s an aroma in my beer that I’m not fond of and I can only attribute it to the yeast. Chuck has been helping me with the beer analysis as well, and he’s not tasting anything wildly off in the beer – and he’s quite good at identifying beer-gone-bad. Our neighbor’s beer didn’t have the same aroma. His was fruitier with a slight vanilla nose and flavor. This will be my one and only batch of beer with a dry yeast. From now on I’ll be brewing with liquid yeast. I’m looking forward to feeling confident enough with my brewing to want to start experimenting. I’m sure I’ll get there someday.

As much as I want to move to all-grain brewing, I am being advised that not only is it possible to make a perfectly good beer from extract, I should stick with extract brewing until I’ve got that wired. Then I’ll be ready to take on the additional complication of all-grain brewing. I can only mess up so many things with extract, but with all-grain you have so many more opportunities to screw up your beer if you don’t know what you’re doing. Okay, okay… I’ll brew some more extract beers.

So I asked my brother-in-law how I can make a better beer. He said to change the recipe. If I were cooking something and wasn’t happy with how it turned out, I would look for a different recipe. Brewing is no different he told me. A good recipe is the key to a good beer. Find a beer you like, look up the clone recipe for that beer, and start there. You can change it down the road or move on to an all-grain version of that recipe, but you have to start with a good foundation. And he told me to switch to liquid yeast. He said his beers improved immediately when he started using liquid yeast.

He gave me good advice about my brew kettle (told me to buy an 8-gallon kettle, and not a puny 5-gallon one), so I’m ready to take his advice about the recipe and yeast. My next beer will be a clone brew of Fuller’s London Porter. My May/June 2006 issue of Brew Your Own magazine is on its way with both an extract and all-grain clone recipe for this awesome porter. With any luck this batch of beer will be good enough to want to drink more than half a bottle!

-Jenne Hiigel

Porter at One Month…

My porter has been bottle conditioning for four weeks now and I just completed my second taste test. The first one was done at two weeks and I’ve concluded that the additional two weeks of aging have been beneficial. I’ve heard that, in general, homebrew is ready to drink at two months of bottle conditioning, so I’ll continue to check it every two weeks until I feel it’s worth sharing with others.

I’m finding the need to question my preconceptions of how “good beer” should taste. I have tasted a wide variety beer styles over the past 25 years and have become quite opinionated about the flavors I prefer in a beer. Yet I’m realizing that there are skills and equipment that a professional brewer utilizes that most homebrewers do not. Also, there are things that commercial breweries must do to their beer, such as filtering and pasteurization to help the beer survive the distribution process, that a homebrewer doesn’t need to be concerned with. Does that mean that the professionally brewed beer will always be better… or is it just different? Hmmm…

That got me to thinking about a story told to me years ago about a local crafter. She was wearing a garment and someone complimented her on it. When the person found out that it was handmade, the crafter was told, “That’s amazing. It looks like it was made by a machine!” This comment was meant as a compliment because the stitching was so perfect and regular, something that can be hard to do with handcrafts, but the crafter was irritated by the comment. When did a machine-made product become the standard by which quality is judged? Why isn’t the irregularity that reflects our humanness valued higher than the repetitive consistency of machines?

After discussing this issue with my husband Chuck, he pointed out that in the business world consistency equals quality. If a business can have their product meet the customer’s expectations each and every time, then quality has been achieved. Many business have been extremely successful with this business plan – McDonald’s, Denny’s, Budweiser, Coors, and pretty much any national chain store in existence. Quality is achieved through consistency. But is this really how we should be judging quality? If a Big Mac is considered the epitome of quality because we can count on it to taste the same each and every time, maybe it’s time for us to adjust our standard by which we determine quality. Perhaps it’s time for us to learn to be more open to new experiences, to be a bit more flexible, to allow for the variances in seasons and conditions, and to be happy with experiences that are often good, but have the potential to be amazing – even if you can’t count on that each and every time.

Chuck also pointed out the advantages homebrewers have in terms of freshness of flavor. Homebrewers don’t have to filter or pasteurize their beer, they have complete control over how well it’s stored and cared for, and they can control the manner in which it’s served. Homebrewers can also learn the basics of chemistry and how the various ingredients will affect the flavor of their beer, thus being able to impart a certain level of control over the end product. Basic skills are essential to keep the beer from tasting bad, but do homebrewers really need to strive to be able to produce the same beer over and over again? Does consistency equal quality or is variety the spice of life?

As much as I enjoy being able to purchase an item knowing that I will get exactly the quality and flavor I have come to expect, I think we need to also allow for the irregularities of our humanness to show through and to realize that sometimes when the item is different it doesn’t mean it’s bad. Perhaps it just means it’s time to learn something new and expand our horizons.

Now back to my beer. So far my porter is good, but not great. There is an aroma that could either be the yeast or the malt/malt extract coming through. It’s not necessarily a bad aroma, but it’s different than what I’m used to. The flavor is good, but not where I want to settle. I need to find out how to get more mouth-feel in my beer. It currently has a “thin” flavor and feel that is fairly common with homebrew. Perhaps it’s time to move to all-grain brewing for my next batch, rather than doing another extract batch. I definitely have more to learn about this process and am enjoying doing so.

Next taste test will be in two weeks. I’m guessing that by May 1st it’ll be time to consider this batch done and ready to drink. In the meantime, I’ll continue to plan my second homebrew… which will definitely be another porter.

Jenne Hiigel

Beer & Yarn Weekend…

This was mostly a brewery tour weekend, but we did pick off a few yarn stores in the process. The inspiration for the tour was our daughter’s 21st birthday. She lives in San Francisco and has been wanting to visit some breweries in Northern California as soon as she turned 21. We decided to make it a family trip. Our oldest daughter flew out from Wisconsin and my son, husband and I drove up from San Luis Obispo. After a slumber party in San Francisco we began our adventure.

First stop was Anderson Valley Brewing Company in Booneville for a tour of the brewery, some beer tasting and a picnic. Next stop was North Coast Brewing Company in Fort Bragg. The visit with North Coast and our stay at the Beachcomber Motel were both awesome. We arrived in Fort Bragg early enough to visit the local yarn shop Navarro River Knits and, of course, walked away with a few skeins of yarn.

The next day was a trip to Lost Coast Brewing Company in Eureka. A long drive over very winding roads, but a great visit at Lost Coast that included a tour of their brewery. While in Eureka we stopped in at Boll Weaver Yarn Shop. Walking in the front door we were greeted with some beautiful spinning fiber and then worked our way around the shop to see all their yarns. Much fun and, of course, we had to take a few items home with us.

On the last day of our trip we stopped in Hopland to visit the Medocino Brewing Company’s historic brewpub. Our final stop was in Santa Rosa for a visit to Russian River Brewing Company. The drive into San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge on a gorgeously clear and sunny day was the perfect way to wrap up our trip.

North Coast Brewing Company was our favorite brewery by unanimous vote of our family. Their Old Stock Ale is incredibly yummy. We also got to taste the same beer that had been barrel aged for almost two years in bourbon barrels and then one that had been aged in brandy barrels. Opinions were split on which barrel-aged beer was best, so I can’t give you a winner there.

After visiting yarn shops and then brewpubs it became clear that it’s time for someone to open a knit-pub, where both good beer and yarn are sold. That would make yarn shops more fun and hopefully more profitable (so more of them could stay in business).

We also visited several awesome bookstores, but that’s another story to be told at another time.

-Jenne Hiigel

Bottled Up…

My porter had been in the secondary fermentor for two weeks and was ready for bottling yesterday.

Chuck had been helping me prep for this moment since December. For Christmas he got me several dish-machine racks that hold 18 bottles each and built me a shelving system to hold them in our storage room. He coordinated with our local pub to have them save their German beer bottles so I could use them for my homebrew. Then he washed all the bottles, peeled off the labels, and scraped off the foil. When it came time to bottle my beer yesterday, the bottles were all ready to go and conveniently in racks. What a sweet guy!

After laying out all my bottling gear and reviewing the bottling section of the Basic Brewing DVD, I was ready to get started. The bottles Chuck saved for me were larger than the typical 12 oz bottles, which meant I didn’t need as many of them. They hold almost 17 oz, so he brought up two racks – which is 36 bottles. With 12 oz bottles I would have needed 48 of them. I definitely recommend the larger bottles.

After racking the beer from the secondary fermentor to the bottling bucket and boiling the corn sugar in a small amount of beer for 10 minutes, I was ready to start filling bottles. The bottles filled up nicely and I had an appropriate amount of air space in each one. The process was a bit messy, but not overly. I didn’t have any major mishaps to increase the amount of clean up that I had to do.

After filling the bottles, it was time to cap them. That was my favorite part of the process. It took a few bottles to get used to the hand-held bottle cap crimper, but I soon got on a roll and was converting my filled bottles to finished bottles of beer. They look so cool all capped up!

I’ll wait two weeks before taste-testing my first bottle, but am expecting it to be one to two months before my porter is really ready to drink. I’ve decided on a name for my first batch of beer. It’s “Jenne’s I-hope-it’s-not-crap Porter.” We’ve been tasting the beer each step along the way and have found no off-flavors so far; so we’re optimistic that it might actually be drinkable!

Now I have to figure out what to brew next!

-Jenne Hiigel