joshbrews.com
Linux and Beer Brews

I am twiddling and fiddling with Jinzora again today. I have a new server and am moving everything over to it. During my jinzora installation and setup I noticed that the Metadata retreival was not going to well. I found the site that I has a nice addon for metadata retreival http://www.darkhart.net/projects/33-jinzora/44-jinzora-addons

I used the jz_custom_metadata-1.2.0b1 version on my previous install of Jinzora. It works well.

Note: Ensure that ./jinzora2/services/settings.php is 0777, otherwise you can not update the metadata search settings through the GUI to use the custom metadata search. This is in lieu of setting entire jinzora directory to 0777 as seen here

I also ran into the page caching problem again detailed here. I was frustrated for about an hour until I went back and read my notes.

Notes for installing eaccelerator on Debian:
Ensure that php5-dev and make packages are installed (possibly others I did not need to install anything else)

Execute the following commands
# export PHP_PREFIX=”/usr”
# $PHP_PREFIX/bin/phpize
# ./configure –enable-eaccelerator=shared –with-php-config=$PHP_PREFIX/bin/php-config
# make
# make install
——
copy eaccelerator.ini from source directory to /etc/php5/conf.d/eaccelerator.ini and modify default value if you need.

extension=”eaccelerator.so”
eaccelerator.shm_size=”16″
eaccelerator.cache_dir=”/var/cache/eaccelerator”
eaccelerator.log_file = “/var/log/apache2/eaccelerator_log”
eaccelerator.enable=”1″
eaccelerator.optimizer=”1″
eaccelerator.check_mtime=”1″
eaccelerator.debug=”0″
eaccelerator.filter=””
eaccelerator.shm_max=”0″
eaccelerator.shm_ttl=”0″
eaccelerator.shm_prune_period=”0″
eaccelerator.shm_only=”0″
eaccelerator.compress=”1″
eaccelerator.compress_level=”9″
——

# mkdir /var/cache/eaccelerator
# chmod 0777 /var/cache/eaccelerator
# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
# ls -al /var/cache/eaccelerator

You should see directories [0-9] and [a-f] in /var/cache/eaccelerator
after browsing around in jinzora execute the following to check if accelerator is creating cache files.

# find /var/cache/eaccelerator -type f -exec ls -l {} \+

additionally (or eventually) you should see information being logged to /var/log/apache2/eaccelerator.log
I have my shared memory size set to 128M so it may just be keeping everything in memory and not pulling it from cache.

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

The krausen has completely fallen. Airlock still bubbling at a rate of 1 per second.

Just a note on this one wince I have not posted about it. It has been three months since bottling, and this brew tastes really good now. I will brew this one again in the middle of September. I will probably back off on some of the spices just a touch.

This beer is definitely one of the best ones that I have brewed. The bitterness is nice and not too sharp, but seems to finish a little too strong. Once the beer warms to room temp, the bitterness does not seems to fade away. I am hoping that the bitterness characteristics will blend some with age. I like the subtle fruity flavors from the Nottingham yeast. It allows the malty profile to shine through. It could be a bit more malty though.

The Cyser is continuing to bubble along. Fermentation initially started with a 3 hours of pitching the yeast, and has steadily built up it’s pace all week. Today I noticed that it is bubbling through the airlock at a rate of one per second. Bubbles of CO2 were observed rising from the bottom of the fermenter. Yeast is starting to cling to the sides of the fermenter as well as settle to the bottom.

I found the following calculator and used it to figure out what the ABV of my FSS is(or should be) after bottling

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/blending.asp

The adjusted ABV should be 4.2 % based on the SG of the beer before I added the priming solution. The SG measurement of the primed beer seems to have been off by quite a lot.

I bottled the FSS this evening. I siphoned off 4.65 gallons @ 1.008 @ 77F (1.010 corrected) 4.6% ABV. I used 2 quarts of water (pre-boil measurement) combined with 4.3 ounces of corn sugar for my priming solution. After dilution SG was 1.009@75F. This should give 2.2 vol CO2 once conditioned. Total bottled was 53 bottles, 636 oz (4 short of 5 gallons exactly). The only thing that I have not been able to figure out is how much the .45 quarts of water diluted the beer. I have been trying to figure out the ABV after dilution, but I have not been able to work it out. Maybe Miftik with her GoogleFoo skills can dig up an answer(or formula).

On a different note this beer is darned tasty. The aroma and flavor from the EK goldings is right there. Bitterness is good as well as the nutty malt flavor. I can’t wait for it to age (but I must)

I brewed up a batch of Cyser earlier today. Recipe is as follows.

2.00 Gal Apple Juice – White House
1.00 Gal Apple Juice – Indian Summer
7.00 lb Clover Honey – Generic Walmart Brand
1.00 lb Corn Sugar
1.00 lb Turbinado Raw Sugar

1.00 tsp Irish Moss 15.0 min
3.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient 15.0 min
0.50 oz Ginger Root 10.0 min
1 Cinnamon Stick 5.0 min
0.125 tsp Allspice 5.0 min
0.125 tsp Nutmeg 5.0 min
6 whole Cloves 5.0 min
1/8 tsp Vanilla Extract 5.0 Min

0.25 tsp Pectic Enzyme – Added to Primary after must was cooled

2 Pkgs 5g each Lalvin EC-1118 Champagne Yeast

Apple juice was placed in the fridge to cool it down.

I started dissolved all the fermentables in 1.5 gallons of tap water and brought it to a boil. For the first 5 minutes of the boil I skimmed off the proteins that clump on the top.

Boiling honey like this does destroy the delicate floral aroma and flavors that are present in honey, but I did not want to have any contamination issues with this considering the length of time that it needs to ferment and age. as a compromise I boiled for 20 minutes. It is long enough to kill any wild bacteria and yeast in the honey.

I added the rest of the items and spices per the schedule above. I cooled off the must in an ice bath. I then poured the chilled apple juice into my carboy and added the warm (not hot) must to the carboy, ensuring to filter out the spices and irish moss (I use a funnel that has a fine mesh strainer built in). The temp settled at 73 F. I topped up to the 5 gallon mark with apple juice and began aerating the must with the air stone and aquarium pump. After 45 minutes I pitched the rehydrated yeast (rehydrated per packet instructions). There is already signs of fermentation and airlock activity after only 4 hours.

SG of the must was 1.098@73F (1.10 corrected). Fermentation will take a few months. Should be drinkable by Christmas.

The krausen has fallen completely. I removed the blow off tube and installed an airlock. Airlock is bubbling at a rate of one bubble every 6 seconds.