Fat Boy Deluxe

This past week went pretty quick, only to continue that trend on through the weekend. I missed out on the usual TNS ride, but Stoner pulled it off at Wakefield (not sure if he actually included the Swill though). Big Gary turned another year old on Tuesday, so we headed to the Korean BBQ joint, WooLaeOak. The place has great food, but damnit if I can only eat there once every couple of months as it really does a number on your digestive system…

I ended up doing a mini TNS on Thursday night. Sent the word out and was looking to do something other than Wakefield, because I wasn’t exactly feeling up to be social with all the group riders there would be at the park. A lot of them are my friends, so I didn’t want to be rude. Plus it’s really easy to get burnt out on Wakefield. You can ride all the trails there and put together some nice loops, hitting everything a few times, but you still don’t end up with a whole lot of mileage. Your also almost never out of the lights of another group of riders as the trails are really twisty ( a good thing), but we’ve managed to cram about as much trail in as small a space as we can, so there’s a lot of close proximity trails. Anyway, I sent out a note saying I was hitting Colt’s Neck and probably just going solo, but Spearmint and Brauny decided to meet me out there. Stoner went with the Thursday night Wakefield ride, a good one if your looking for some fast riders. We did our regular loop in Reston at a fairly fast pace. We stopped a few times to talk smack to each other, but other than that it was just some good pedal time. Back at the parking lot we broke into our beverages, trying a new to me tripple Belgian. Nothing blow your mind spectacular, but good all the same. I’m still learning a lot and I’m pretty weak on my Belgians…well I’m pretty weak on anything not Imperial, ha. So with the quick wit of Brauny, I give you the “true beerfan” gallery…

Next thing I knew, the weekend was upon us. Friday afternoon, Steve and I made our way over to the homebrew store, myLHBS. Steve needed to pick up some ingredients for what would be his first ever batch brewed in his own homebrew system. He went the hoppy IPA route. I on the otherhand picked up two recipes worth of ingredients, an Imperial Stout and a Double Nut Brown Ale. The Imperial Stout is my own recipe and sort of modeled after Old Rasputin. With a little tweaking from Derek at the shop and it was ready to go. We actually decided to tone it down a little, the thought being I can always work up the beer ladder, but if I go too big the first time around I might end up with 5 gallons of harshness. The second recipe is one Derek put together and I had a taste of from the fridge. It’s a nice brown ale, but with a good kick of hops. I’ll be sure to put the recipes up in a seperate post for anyone interested. Again, I gotta say Derek really has been taking care of us in the customer service area. I didn’t look at his time schedule and he closes a little early on Fridays. We got there 30 minutes after he closed (on St. Patricks Day!) and he still stayed late and humored us as we worked our recipes. Good stuff.

The father-in-law also made it into town for the weekend, which is great. A ship captain always and I mean always has interesting stories to tell. Pirates, check. Submarines, check. Unwieldy natives, check. Plenty of international travel, check. The stories just get better and better. So we spent most of the weekend just catching up and relaxing. Saturday afternoon, while Kristin and pops took in the “V for Vendetta” flick, I grabbed the Fuji scorcher and hit the nearby Pimmit Run trail for some offroad action that would lead me to the den of homebrew…a BURP meeting. These guys and gal have it down! They meet once a month somewhere in the DC/VA/MD area (usually someone’s backyard) and swap homebrews and knowledge, and even have contests and raffles. A fun group of people, who turns out are really into bicycling. Turns out I was o1 of 3 people who biked to the meeting and they regularly do bike rides involving good beer, always a plus! I had to bust out a little early to get home for dinner as we headed out to Lost Dog cafe in Arlington for some super duper pizza. The fun continued on Sunday when Kristin cooked up a fantastic pork tenderloin, it seriously doesn’t get much better than this.

Sunday afternoon proved to be a good brewing day. The wind made it a little on the chilly side, but a clear and sunny day, much too nice to be inside all day watching the basketball games. So after lunch and after the father-in-law left, I started up the system and brewed my Imperial Stout. About the time I was starting my boil, Steve showed up with his gear and ingredients. So after I was done, we set him up and brewed his IPA recipe. While he was steeping the grains, a couple of slipped out to get some stuff to BBQ out on the grill. We had some issues with Steve’s wort, but I think it’s gonna be fine. It was a good cap on a fast weekend. Back to work today, ug, and I already can’t wait until next week…bottling my IPA thats dry hopping in the secondary as I type, then moving the Imperial Stout into the secondary, and hopefully brewing up the Double Nut Brown Ale to put in the primary.

For all those TNS riders, looks like there is a good chance of percipiation through the night, possibly snow, which might make it a good time to check out the newest beer bar/restaurant Rustico. If it’s not open for biz yet, maybe a long round about to Paradiso again…

DT