Mike and I brewed up our annual batches of Pumpkin ale on Sunday. Mike picked up some small sugar pumpkins on Saturday (about 6 pounds worth), quartered them, and roasted them in the oven at around 400°. After letting them get nice and soft and letting a bunch of the sugars begin to caramelize, he scooped out the pulp, which we blended up in the food processor just before brewing. We added the pumpkin directly to the mash and it was super tasty going in. Pulled off the mash, which gave off a beautiful deep amber color. Brought to a boil and added our single hop addition. Pretty easy going brew day, as the only thing left was to add a mixture of spices a few minutes before the end of the boil. Chilled and poured into the fermentation buckets and pitched some rehydrated Safale S-04 dry yeast. Headed down to the basement Monday, only to see this -
Pumpkin Ale fermenting
Damn! Guess I forgot the one thing I always remember to do…put the buckets on a towel. Oh well, it’s all cleaned up now and fermenting vigorously. With such an easy brewing session, we took time during the boil to refurbish a few corny kegs (new poppets and o-rings all around). After the refurbish job, we ended up racking Mike’s IPA, my Oktoberfest and my Blonde ale into the fresh kegs. Good times.
Remember, beer and candy are supposedly recession proof…at least I got the first half covered.
It’s back and it’s fabulous! This is where I’ll be tonight -
Belgian Beer Fest
Steve was going to try and make it up here, but we just couldn’t put it all together. Mike and Notte will still be joining me, but if the weather keeps up, it looks like I’ll be the only one biking in tonight. We’re currently experiencing a so called Nor’easter that is dumping continuous rain on us through the weekend. Maybe it’ll let up…yea right, ha. It will only make the funk taste even better!
The local Boston homebrew club, the Wort Processors, had their September meeting this past Sunday. I made the trek down the Minuteman Bikeway, getting off in Arlington and heading over into Medford to lend support for smoking some ribs. I’m guessing I was the only person on the path that day with a growler of IIPA and a hatchet, but hey, somebody had to provide the tools to cut up the apple wood for the smoker.
Ron adding charcoal and apple wood
So what exactly goes on at a homebrew club meeting? Well believe it or not, it’s not just a bunch of fat guys hanging out and drinking beer. We managed to cover a lot of club doings, like the 25th Anniversary brew, a big barrel brew, and Ciderfest (spontaneously fermented cider, hell yea!). Of course it’s not all business, we also manage to taste a few homebrewed beverages throughout the meeting. Schwarzbier, 4 year old Cider, Blonde, IIPA…a lot of quality brews out there. People critique the brews and offer suggestions or in some cases offer nothing but praise. If it leads to a better brew, then it was worth it. Kristin made it out for the meeting portion, as did bunch of other brewsters and significant others.
Some of the Wort members
As far as the club goes, I’m fairly new to the group, but I haven’t had any problems getting in there and mixing things up. The club will only be as good as it’s members and it’s up to the members to speak out on what they want the club to “be”. In that regard, the club is very open to differing opinions, which is great in my book. There’s also a good variety of brewers in the club, from novice to profesional, which makes it educational for everybody. Anyway, I’m looking forward to more club action and watching the club develop over it’s next 25 years.
Fat Boy Deluxe Brewing has gone organic. It was a pretty easy decision, a sack of organic grain is about $5 more than non-organic and that comes out to around 10 cents a pound more to go organic. The next question is probably is it any better? Well I can’t say just yet, I’ve only made a couple of batches using the organic grain. There’s been a IIPA and a super hoppy Red that both used organic grains, but regular old hops. Both turned out really well, but I think the Red turned out pretty exceptional. There was also an Imperial Belgian White brewed- known as Caustic Wit. It came with a nice little bill of spices and a 10% ABV to keep you in check.
Brewing IIPA in Maine
There are three all organic brews sitting in their fermentation buckets and carboys as I type. A Belgain Triple, an American Blonde, and an Oktoberfest syle ale. I’m hoping to get a chance to clear them up a little this week and rack them into kegs to be ready for the weekend. I’ll need to pick up some of the new 2008 organic hop crop before making anything too hoppy and I’ll probably need to a get a couple pounds of organic specialty malts before making anything else. But with Fall approaching, it seems to be a good time for whipping up a Brown ale and maybe a couple of stouts (both regular and imperial, because I know how much Steve likes the Old Rasputin clone).
Over the summer, we finally had a chance to show Kristin’s Mom what this whole brewing thing was about. Took the opportunity to brew up a Flanders Red sour ale that should take anywhere from 6 months to 3 years to be ready, ha. It’s sitting quitely in their basement, hopefully maturing well. For the brew session we brought out the lawn chairs in true Maine fashion.
Flanders Red in Maine
Fall is the best time for brewing. Cooler temperatures that are really great for clean ale fermentations, the harvesting of the new hop crop brings super fresh hops to market, and the changing of the leaves make it all the more enjoyable to enjoy a pint outside. Make sure you get your beers brewed for the 3rd annual Bootlegger’s Bliss, the weekend of November 1st…
Last night was another quick ride on the Minutemand Bikepath. There’s a Wort homebrew club meeting this Sunday and I wanted to make sure I knew how to get there and back using the path. Even though if you’re going to get lost, having two panniers full of beer is a heck of a time to do it, the plan was to preride the trip to know where I was going. It was another beautiful evening, warm temperatures with a nice cool breeze and no bugs. Took me a little under 40 minutes to reach my destination and felt good to stretch the legs.
Minuteman Bikeway
On the way back I took it easy and added in some bonus singletrack that eventually brings you back to the path. This is one of the reasons I mounted the fat tires on Aretha. On the path, it’s definitely more work pedaling a 1.85 tire instead of some tiny 23c, but it’s all worth it when you find that sweet hidden gem.
Side note - also learned that Paul Revere evidently road a bicycle and not a horse…
Been a while since I’ve been in here - you should see the level of spam! Hmm, lot’s I could write about, but not much of it really matters. There was no SSWC08 after actually getting through registration and everything. There was a lot of reasons for missing it, but I’ll lump all the reasons together under low finances. Kristin and I were really looking forward to throwing down with all our friends, but it just wasn’t meant to be this time. Thankfully our little rough patch seems to be passing and we can’t wait to start catching up on some trips we’ve been promising - DC, Ocean City, Philly - you know who you are! You all are always welcome up here, we got spare bed space, beer on tap, and miles and miles of trails outside the door…
So what’s been going on? My parents made the trip to Bedford a couple of times. The last time they brought my grandparents to see our house for the first time. They spent a full week and it was nice to have some visitors. We sat on the back porch, listening to them tell stories of growing up in a very different time. Getting your history from somebody who lived through it is an amazing experience. I only wish I was a better writer, because the book that could be written on my grandparents would not soon be forgotten.
Let’s see, spent my 31st birthday up in Maine. We stopped by Portsmouth Brewing on the way up and Kristin let me get one of their growlers of IPA as a present. Pretty good IPA, even better growler…
Growler, photo by Kristin
Work has been good. It’s slowed down quite a bit recently, which means I’m working a more normal schedule. Still locked away in a lab, away from internet, email, phone, etc., but at least when the day is done I can head out and it’s still daylight outside. I’ve been using ESRI’s ArcGIS more lately and I gotta say, it pretty much sucks ass. For those who don’t know what ArcGIS is, it’s basically a very large GIS (Geographical Information System) software set. Most of the stuff we use it for is highly CPU intensive, so we have pretty beefy computers. Here’s the rub, all the computer power we can buy and all the software does is slow down! It can’t take advantage of a 64 bit machine and it can’t can’t take advantage of multi-core technology (this is a killer, because it means a single processor machine is actually quicker)…talk about lame! Oh, but wait, ESRI is on it…should be ready sometime in 2010…nice, jerks.
Anyway, I’ve also been doing some riding, not as much as I’d like, but a lot of the rides have been excellent. A few mini-epics here and there and I’ve been riding the Minuteman path and it’s BCT dirt extension more and more lately just to put in the miles. From the house to the end of the bikepath and back is right at 20 miles.
There was an awesome ride that I kind of pushed my way into, the BADASS, only to have it all go horribly wrong. You know it’s going to be a good time when you’re the first one to drop out before you reach the PR, which is like 3 miles into the ride, ha. It was mostly because I had jammed my thumb a day earlier and it was really difficult to grip the bar (boohoo, I know). On top of that my rear wheel was tweaked before the ride, so I put on a different wheel (with different tube/tire combo). First set of rocks I got a slow flat that didn’t rear it’s head until reaching the first road climb. I dropped out right after talking to one of the guys and telling him people shouldn’t wait for me (I noticed my rear flat as he was making the turn ahead of me). Got home, pulled the wheel, trued the original rear wheel, threw on a new chain from deep in the parts box, even found a set of rotors that were in better condition than the ones I was using, so I switched those out. Now the bike is running well, but a few weeks later and I still have a bum thumb…something must be cracked/broken. At least the road/path riding is now tolerable. It just sucks though, I was really looking forward to the long ride and if I was them I probably wouldn’t be too quick to invite me back. Oh well, just gotta ride hard and get stronger, so if there is a next time, it’s not such a disgrace. The first time I rode with of them I ended up cracking my collarbone, the second time was in some crazy snow and I was just sucking wind, then this for the third time!
Finally decided to pull the OMM rack off the commuter and put it on Aretha and now it’s all ready to go for some S24O action. Plenty of loverly spots for it out here. Ride, ride, ride…pull off, camp, crack a semi-cold beverage, wake up and head back home - hopefully using a different route. Should be a good Fall activity, considering temperatures are dropping and leaves are already changing.
One fun thing Kristin and I did manage to do this summer was get down to NYC to see 2 Skinnee J’s live. We took a new Skinnees fan, Notte (Kristin’s friend from Syracuse who now lives in the Boston area) and our beautiful as ever hostess, Kim. It wasn’t the best show I’ve ever seen the Skinnees play - that honor belongs to the time they came out in spaceman outfits, lots of smoke, and playing Irresistable Force, not to mention they were touring with Fishbone! It was still a great show, especially considering they haven’t played live in something like 5 years and this was only a one week tour. Lot’s of crowd participation and one of my favorite parts of the night were when they released 500 or so bouncy balls with glow sticks in the middle. Talk about pure chaos! Check out the video taken from the other side of the room…
Oh, and the opening band was Tragedy - a metal tribute to the BeeGees…talk about some funny shit!
I guess there has been a lot going on, considering I didn’t talk about going to Maine, hanging out with Mike & Cindy, brewing up some beer, or even the 3rd anniversary of being married to my incredible wife Kristin…at least that gives me a few fun things to write up now that I’m back and trying to dig through the memory banks. More to come!
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