No smoking

Well, I finally decided to quit smoking, again... I was only smoking at work and on travel, but here of late that is all I have been doing so the smoking followed me home. Time to stop this crap. Why is it I enjoy smoking when I am not doing it and hate when I am? Oh wait must be the addiction. Any way I haven't had a cigarette since Friday afternoon. I have had a couple of bad cravings, especially this morning. I took a walk with a friend from work to calm down, it worked. I can kick this thing.

Busy Busy Busy

Wow it has been a long time, what have I done in the past couple of weeks. Well first I traveled to Bremerton, WA for work. While I was there I took the ferry over to Seattle and met up with an old friend of mine. Had some great salmon the first night and some awesome sushi the second night. Including geoduck, I was pretty excited to try this ever since I saw the episode of Dirty Jobs where Mike Rowe harvested them. It was ok, not real strong fish flavor but a really strange texture. It was kind of like cooked octopus in texture, but I dont know, crunchier if that is even possible.

I think this is Mt. Rainer but not 100% sure.
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge from the road.
Part of the Seattle skyline.
Space needle at night

After I got back I made another batch of beer, still need to bottle it but so far it looks really good. I made a German Weissbier with some Hefeweizen yeast that will give the beer a banana clove flavor. Really looking forward to this beer, hopefully it should taste like Franziskaner one of my favorite beers.

This time I didnt have to steep any grains, add extract and hops boil for an hour.

Ice Ice Baby! Last time as you know I couldn't get the wort down in temperature very quickly, this time I got a lot more ice. It helped but I think I need to invest in a immersion cooler.

Yesterday Kat and I went to the Nebraska game with our friends Brett and Kristal. We had a great time and Nebraska won so that's a bonus.

Are we wearing red? We swore it would never happen, how things change.

Horrible picture of me but that's Brett and Kristal being goofy in the back ground.

Sea of red anyone?

Well it has been a busy couple of weeks, traveled to Gaithersburg, MD for work last week. On the last day we had some extra time so we went to Arlington National Cemetery and saw the eternal flame and the tomb of the unknown soldier. Both were very cool, we did catch the end of the changing of the guards, neat experience something everyone should see. After the cemetery we went to see the lincoln memorial and the Vietnam Wall, the wall is so much longer in person than it looks on TV.

Took a bike ride yesterday and today on the Wabash trail. Yesterday we got halfway to the next town Mineola. Today we ended up riding the entire way, ended up being close to 17 miles round trip. Fairly easy ride though, a little up hill halfway there, then it switches to a little downhill. So both directions the hardest part is at the beginning.

New Bike

Since the new house has access to a couple of local trails the wife and I decided to buy a couple of bikes. We picked up Trek 7100 series, she got the WSD frame and I got the regular one of course.


We rode a couple of times over the weekend, first day down the Wabash trail and the next day we rode to Lake Manawa. Was fun, look forward to more rides. You can see the wife's lovely bike here.

Hooray beer!

Well the day has come, finally opened a bottle of the beer a week after bottling.


Man was it tasty, guess the first batch worked out good. Cant wait to make more.

Bottling Time

Well that time has come, at least I think it has anyway. I have been checking the hydrometer reading for three days now and it hasn't changed. It is steady at 1.022, the directions say it should finish between 1.013 and 1.018 but it hasn't moved so I am going to go ahead and bottle it.

First step sanitize everything, bottles, bottling wand, 6 gallon carboy, everything...

Transfer the beer from the 5 gallon carboy to the 6 gallon carboy we are going to use for bottling.

Isnt that yummy, lovely waste from fermentation.



I got everything sanitized and then I just decide to drink it from the carboy, who needs to bottle it anyway.




Yeah like that would happen, here are some lovely action shots and the final bottles, the batch net 46 bottles of beer, a little less than the recipe said but I left an inch or so in each bottle so I didn't put waste into the bottles. Cant wait for a couple of weeks until I get to try it.







So the starting hydrometer reading was 1.082 and the final was 1.022 giving the beer a 6% APV, a little lower than the recipe says but hopefully it still rocks.

Secondary Fermentation

Opened the primary fermentor today and took the hydrometer reading, it was at 1030 so we moved the beer to a 5 gallon carboy to finish the fermentation. When I first opened the bucket it didn't look all that great but man did it smell good.


Isnt this what it looks like after you drink too much?






Isn't that pretty?

The fermentation started right up again, it had slowed down quite a bit in the primary fermentor but after moving it bubbles started up again every minute or so.

Homebrewing

Well finally went out and purchased a homebrewing kit, been thinking about it for months. The wife and I went to the local fermentation supply company, they walked us through the different kits, we decided to go with the deluxe model. Not sure how that will work out for us but hopefully everything goes well.

We purchased an ingredient kit for making Belgian Tripel beer. Got home and decided to get started, we read all the instructions and it says to use a stainless steal pot that is 20 quarts or larger. Great the supplier sold us 16 quart one, what do we do? Oh well, they are closed all we can do is try. We put 3 gallons of water in the pot, and it was close to the top, so we decided to remove some of the water. I would say we had 2.75 gallons of water in there.

Next step was to steep the grains for 15 minutes, that was really cool. The kitchen started to smell like grapenuts cereal. Then we brought the concoction up to a boil and added the malted barley, hops and other ingredients. Boiled it for 45 minutes then added the finishing hops and boiled for 15 more minutes. Now the important part rapidly cool the mixture, well that didnt go so well, we got it down to the 100 degree range fairly quickly but ran out of ice so it took a while to get to sub 75 degrees so we could add the yeast and start the fermentation. Hopefully everything turns out alright but if not, oh well scratch it up to a learning experience.