Critter Cutter Bottle Openers - Update

Last month I received my kickstarter bottle openers - the Critter Cutters.  In my prior posting I generally had good things to say about them.  I feel like I should retract some of the goodwill and give a heads up to those people considering buying them.

First off, they are still pretty cool bottle openers.  However, if you are buying one don't get the QPQ coated one (it's the black one).  It was my favorite and first choice when ordering them but the black one seeps out some kind of nasty brown oil.  Supposedly giving it a baking soda bath will stop that from happening but I can't get mine to stop.  I've given it two 12+ hour baking soda and water baths and then a 48 hour rest just in baking soda and it continues to seep.  It's pretty disgusting and will definitely stain anything you leave it resting on.  The small magnet I was using to adhere it to my fridge with is even discolored now.

The folks at Critter Cutter were pretty responsive once I contacted them directly (as opposed to a comment on the kickstarter project) and they sent me a replacement stainless steel one.  They could have sent me either the stainless steel or "rainbow" option - I didn't really care.  I just wanted one that wouldn't stain and seep.  The bad part about the stainless steel option is that it isn't magnetic so I have nowhere to store the new one around my beer fridge.  I might tie a nut or something to a bit of twine and thread it through the Critter Cutter eye so I can hang it on the fridge magnet.

Anyway, just avoid the QPQ coated Critter Cutter (the black one) and if you need a magnetic bottle opener get The Gropener instead which comes with a built in magnet.

Critter Cutter Bottle Openers

I've now participated in two separate kick starter campaigns to back bottle openers.  The first was the Gropener which is a bottle open I really dig.

The second was the Critter Cutter.  At my backing level I received three of the opener.  The first is the standard one, the second is a rainbow nitride coating, and the final was a black out nito-carbonizing coating.  All three look really nice in person.

The nice thing about the three piece package is there are three of us in the Hops Alchemy group; myself, Mike, and Jason.  Thus I gave Mike the rainbow coated one, Jason the standard one, and I kept the black one.

If you like the Critter Cutter you can buy them online - they are very sturdy so I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Spent Grain Bread

Here is a photo of some spent grain bread we made from the grains of our Brown and Red ale double brew day.  I don't have the recipe handy but when I find it I'll post it as well.

Blue Moon Clone Brew Day

So far in our brewing we haven't been very experimental.  We put some chocolate in a bock last year and that was about it.  The rest of the time we've stuck to the kit recipe and hoped for the best.  However, our last brew day was a new day for minor experimentation - we decided to make a blue moon clone using a Belgian wheat ale extract kit as a base.

Basically all we added into the kit was some crushed coriander and some orange zest.  Coriander is pretty cool.  Neither Mike nor I had ever crushed coriander before so we were unaware of the transformation of the scent of the spice.  In the intact state the pellets smelled very similar to cumin.  However, after crushing it the fragrance shifted from savory to a floral bouquet.  It was awesome and the new scent seemed perfect for the beer.

We love smelling the different ingredients so this shift was really cool.  One of our favorite parts of brewing is breaking out the hops and smelling it.  This batch hardly had any hops but the small packet of Willamette still smelled great.

Of course all brew days require that we drink some home brew so we busted out a few different bottles.  I'm not even sure what this one was but it has a nice color and head to it.

Bottling the red raccoon

We finally bottled the red ale we brewed the first weekend of March.

The Gropener

Honestly, the name of this bottle opener, the gropener,  isn't good - many of my friends feel the "Grope" part is a little lewd and get a good chuckle every time I mention it.  However, it's a kick ass bottle opener.

The little hook on the left will pry off pretty much any bottle cap whether it is a pry off or twist off and, best of all, it doesn't crimp the cap at all.   It's pretty slick.  The little shiny circle is a nice and fairly strong magnet that catches the cap so you don't have to worry about catching the cap yourself.  Here is a video of me using it.

As you can see it is a one handed operation.  That is kind of nice too because I can quickly open the bottle and then start drinking all in one fluid motion if I want.

It's a little expensive for a bottle opener ($20) but it's a cool little device and it's a great conversation piece. Plus it's a cool gift to give any beer lover.

Double Brewday Afternoon

This past saturday the Hops Alchemy gang got together for a double brew day!  We are still learning a lot so we are still using liquid malt extract (LME) kits.  This brew event featured a Red Ale by Brewers Best and a Brown Ale by Midwset.

The day started out in a pretty haphazard way.  I couldn't find the lid to my fermentation bucket.  I searched all over the garage but couldn't find it until I went to the basement to get my kettle and I saw the last batch we bottled patiently carbonating on the shelves.  We had potentially overfilled four bottles and I had put them in a second bucket with my fermentation lid on it just in case they blew.  The bottles were fine so I took them and the lid upstairs along with the kettle.

Once upstairs Mike and his cousin Jason showed up with the Brown Ale kit, some tools, and a case of assorted beer along with a collection of bottles from the Fat Tire clone (Flat Tire) we had recently made.  They did not, however, bring a kettle or their burner.  I noticed the missing burner so sent them back around the blocks to Mikes to get it.  I searched all over for my second kettle but couldn't find it so then they had to go back again to get their kettle.  At least I had a nice new full propane tank for them to use!

The next arrival was Derrick and his family along with some really high gravity beers for us to drink while we brewed.  Derrick is a biochemist and he has offered to measure our IBUs in the future.  I'm pretty stoked to discover this capability in the group!  Our final arrivals were Jason and his girlfriend Lindsay and we were ready to get to brewing.

We setup both boiling stations in the garage close to the door.  I normally would brew in my backyard when the weather is as nice as it was on Saturday but my patio (that I installed) isn't that level and I really only have on great place to put a boiler out there so we set up in the garage and just kept the door open through the day.

We started drinking right away which, honestly, wasn't the smartest plan.  We were sharing each bottle so we can each sample all of the beers we had brought or that I already had there.  By the end of the day we had each sampled just about 19 beers.  We tracked them all on untappd so if you're curious here is my profile.  This quick dive into drinking led us to not read the instructions.  We totally missed the fact that we were supposed to let the water get to roughly 160 and then maintain that temp after adding our grain.  We brought both kettles to boil.  We tossed the brown ale grain bag in the water and then realized what we had done.  We let the red ale water cool down to about 170 before adding that grain bag in.   According to the instructions letting the grains steep at the 200+ temp means we will leach more tannins into the beer so we've jokingly decided to call the Brown an Imperial Brown.

From there on everything went really well.  We put some of the Sloppy Lion King Belgian and some of the Knotty Octopus Alt Bier in the red ale during the boil.  We do this to carry some of all of the old batches forward through every new batch.  We had forgot to put the Alt into the Belgian's boil so we had to put a bit of each into this one so that none of the ancestry is lost.  I'm not a huge fan of how the Alt came out so I put a bit more of the Belgian in than I did the Alt.

Not only were we making beer but we also were making custom pizzas.  We like to make sure everyone gets plenty of food while over for brew time so we had the bread machine working overtime all morning cranking out pizza dough.  We then took turns rotating through the kitchen crafting our own custom pizzas with the smorgasbord of toppings everyone provided.  It was a great meal and it really went well with the copious amounts of beer we were drinking.

Eventually the brewing was done so we moved into the kitchen to transfer to the fermentation buckets.  After siphoning the red ale into it's bucket I quickly sealed it up and put the air lock on the top.  As I started to carry it away I was reminded that I still need to add enough water to reach the five gallon mark.  The brown ale was topped off and they were able to read their original gravity (OG) without a problem and it seemed to be right where it was supposed to be.  I had a ton of trouble reading the gauge on the red (too many bubbles in the brew) so I'm really not sure what the OG is on it.  Hopefully it was in the right range.  If not who knows what we will end up with?

Finally I carted the buckets down to the basement where they get to sit for a bit before they will move to secondary. The red will be moving this Thursday evening right before I attend a home brewers social at a local pizza joint.  That should be a fun and educational night.