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…
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!
Wow, almost 2 months have gone by since the last post, insane. Time to add some air in the tires of this dusty thing. As I’ve said before, most of the time I post is due to getting a moment at work where I can jump online. That becomes much harder to do when you’re stuck in a windowless secure lab for 8 hours a day. Once I’m out of work I end up doing other things than looking at a computer, so I’m behind on posting, behind on reading my newsreader, but not behind on mountain biking through sunsets, brewing kick ass beer, and most certainly not behind in snowboarding into the wee hours of the morning. We’re still living life up here in beautiful New England and while it’s still cold, you can smell Spring all around.
Did my first group mountain bike ride, um, probably more than a month ago now. 5 of us took to the PR to do our part in breaking in the trail after a fresh snow. Good group of guys and girls and I had a lot of fun. Hope to do some more rides with them, especially as we warm up here. I also got in a TNS, while it was on a Monday and it was a solo effort, I’ll still call it a TNS for now. Basically rode out to the bike path and over to the dirt BCT extension and out to Concord. Made it out to Main Streets Cafe, where I had a Smuttynose Old Brown Dog Ale before hopping back on the bike and riding home. The ride was good and the classic American Brown ale was the topping on the cake.
One of my recent night rides with Hog turned out to be an eye opening experience. My lights for biking are old. How old? Old enough that the batteries no longer hold a charge longer than an hour and if the moon is bright I wonder if my lights are actually on or not. So on this night, I just didn’t bring my lights figuring we would ride until dark and then I would get myself out to the road and slum it home. Hog had other ideas and whipped out a NiteRider Minewt X2. This thing is small and bright! An LED light that also comes in around $160 street price and lasts for up to 7 hours…yea, thats a long time, ha. So when it comes time to replace my aging (dying) lights, the Minewt is definitely on the short list.
As most of you know, it’s been a pretty cold and snowy winter. One night Mike and I were taking advantage of a current snowstorm and using our season passes at the mountain and go figure, the mountain has one night a year where they are open for a full 24 hours and that was the night. We stayed out on the snow until about 2:30 AM, riding some uber soft smooth closed trails. Best snowboarding night…ever.
Oh and the beer! I’ve been having some issues with my mash tun lately, so Mike and built a new one out of a 52qt cooler. Figured if we were going to go all out, we should go big time. Just for anyone wondering, a 52qt cooler can hold 33 pounds of grain and around 12 gallons of water…and it’s f’n heavy! We brewed up two IPAs from the one giant mash and seperate smaller mash was used to do up a Belgian Dubbel. 3 batches in a day, not too shabby.
But the biggest announcement on the blog, has to be this:
The Boston Globe just ran a really good article on Sheldon Brown, including a really nice photo of his family. Check it out here. More importantly though, they gave this bit of information:
A memorial service will be held at 1:30 p.m. March 2, at the First Unitarian Society in Newton, in West Newton.
Might be an excellent time for a memorial ride to show support for Harriet, George, and Tova…
Looks like the news is starting to circulate, Sheldon Brown has passed away from a massive heart attack. Whether you prefer dirt to road or Sunday strolls to races, you’ve probably at one time or will in the future use information provided Sheldon. He was a champion of all that was cycling. Our thoughts go out to his family, may he rest in peace.
So we’ve had a couple of big storms here in the last month or two. After today though, I can certainly say I’ve been through a Nor’Easter and survived. The weather forecast for today said 10-15″ of the white stuff. Out to shovel this morning and we had about 7 inches or so already and it’s supposed to keep on snowing clear through the next rush hour. A nice powdery 4 inches on top of a wet and heavy bottom layer. Sure makes shoveling a good workout.
Last Friday I ended up getting a bum foot somehow. The muscle on top of the foot just below the ankle area is really swollen and red and the tendons or ligaments or whatever the cables are that run down through the middle of your ankle and into your foot are tender to the touch. Tender meaning it hurts like F when you simply touch it. So I got a bit of a limp and I look a little gimpy, but other than that I’m hoping it will fade away fast. Hoping it was just from doing a lot of walking in my trainers (British enough for you Fletcher!) that are pretty old and used up.
Mounted up Aretha this morning and made a beeline for work. Only a few cars out there, which was nice. With some heavy snow still coming down I got to work with that nice covered in white look, but luckily I remembered the sun glasses to keep it out of my eyes and the scarf was a nice touch. Too bad that after I got to work I found out that both of the labs I needed to do some work in were off-line and closed until further notice. Right….nobody could send an email about that before this morning?
Hm, if I can figure out how to duct tape the camera to my head, maybe I’ll get some commuting video, ha.
Kristin’s parents made it into town this weekend. We had planned on heading over to Walden Pond and checking it out, since neither of us has been there yet. Instead we ended up playing Wii most of the day. It would have been nice to get outside, but it’s really hard to pull people away from the Wii the first time they end up playing. Bet they were sore yesterday!
I did manage to get two starters going. A smackpack of Wyeast 3787 Trappist ale yeast I had smacked a few days ago was now nice and swollen, figured I should step it up a little more, so it’s in the flask and showing signs of fermentation this morning. Hopefully I can quadruple the yeast by the end of the week. Also made a starter of Brettanomyces Bruxellensis. This is supposed to be a more mellow strain of Brett and it’s supposedly what is used in Orval. Hoping to do some experimenting as I also have a tube of Brettanomyces Lambicus, which is supposed to be much more funky. As the name says, this is the strain most often found in Lambic beers and is much more intense. I think it will be interesting to try and make two of the same beers and only change up the Brett strain that I use. Guess I’ll see if Brett can be stepped up in a starter like a regular packet of yeast…hope so!
First weekend of 2008 and it ended up being really nice out. Not nearly as cold as it’s been lately, got all the way up into the low 40’s. We took the warm weather opportunity to do some snow hiking out in the PR. Looks like a few other hikers have been out there and packed down the snow previously, but not a whole lot of fresh tracks. Saw some cross country ski rails, but again, nothing fresh. We managed a few miles of rolling hills, saw some of the old cars buried under the snow, left over from when the area used to be car junkyard. Showed Kristin the over under, a rickety old tree branch bridge that has seen better days with a nice trail that dips under the bridge. Good stuff.
Also managed to get in two nights of snowboarding at Wachusett Mountain. Saturday night was a little packed, since it was in the 40’s and it wasn’t a school night. The lifts always clear out with about 30 minutes to go in the night and you can pack in a few clear slope runs. Sunday night was a lot less packed, so we managed to get in a bunch of runs in the 2 hours or so of riding. It’s funny, no matter how much I board, my first run of the night is always a relearning session, slow and steady carving. By the end off the night I’m back up to speed and really enjoying myself. Hopefully the skills will get better as I get more riding in. At some point I’ll also be selling off my board to get one more suitable for my size, since JB tells me I’m running a little big. All in due time!
Hope everyone is enjoying their weather, it’s just loverly up here today. Might get as high as 60 up in this place. At 40 something for this morning’s commute, it was like a Spring day!
Yo fool, good to see you posting again. Nice crib, I’m gonna have to bring the wife up there in the fall so she can see how nice the NE is in the fall, we should hook up for a ride.
Anytime Bob! I’ll treat you to the grand tour of trails and homebrew on tap, ha. Only thing is you gotta share the guest bedroom with Buster…
CL
DT, what do you think of the Weyerbacher Double Simcoe IPA? I really dig the Simcoe hops.
Dogfish just opened a brewpub in Falls Church. JK and I tried it. Nothing special really, i think it will just be convenient for growler fills.
The Double Simcoe IPA is a great one, super hop aroma. Simcoe tends to be really floral and citrusy, a lot like Amarillo. Add in Centennial and you’ve got my three favorite hops. The Dogfish brewpub - I’ve heard mixed reviews. I bet it was nice when they opened it and had a ton of their vintage beers for sale. Like you said though, nothing super special about the place except you can get really good beer now in a location that was pretty lacking before. Not to mention it’s pretty much across the street from Derek’s homebrew shop (next to the Sears), makes for a good way to kill a couple of hours.
Yo! DT good to see you back and posting. Your new place looks pretty sweet but you forgot the most important foto’s, that of your bike area and beer brewing area in your basement. Hhahahaha!
Damn, I need to get out and try snowboarding again. I had a semi-bad fall last year out in South tahoe and I was sore for a couple of weeks. Ugh. Gotta find somewhere nice and easy. Any suggestions for down here??
Cheers on the brewing notes, I think my wife is finally getting me a kit for the holiday of commercialism.
Cheers and have a good one!
rob
Don’t let us fool you Rob, brewing is disgusting…disgustingly awesome! It’s a dangerous path, much like mountain biking, that once you start going down, there’s no coming back. Hope that kit treats you well.
Snowboarding isn’t that hard, it’s just kind of freaky to not be able to move your feet like you can on a skateboard or skis. My first season of boarding I had a few rough runs. Once I knocked myself out so hard that my head bounced off the snow/ice and bent all the way forward hard enough to severely bruise shoulder/chest. The kind of bruise that starts off black and ends up green/yellow. That was a hard one to come back from. Then there was my first time trying a table top ramp. Up the one side, got way more air than I thought I would, rotate backwards and fall 8 feet out of the air onto my back…breathing was a little hard that day. All that said, I’m still boarding, still pretty rubbish at it, and it’s still fun. Down in your area you’re probably looking at either Massanutten (down near Harrisonburg, VA) or Seven Springs in PA. Both are probably within 2 hours from you.
I’ll see if I can get some photos up of the basement area, particularly the brewing and bike area. I need to get some updated photos of the whole house anyway. Might take a few days to get the basement back to a state where photos are possible, ha.
Holidays are almost over. We had a nice whirlwind trip, Boston to Killadelphia, where my brother and his wife took us to Monk’s Cafe. Our first time there and it was definitely impressive. The moules and frites were just as they should be and the Belgian beer selection was spectacular. It was a good night for sour beers! Next day we stopped off to visit with Kristin’s family, since they were all holed up in Philly this year. Then it was off to Ocean City, MD for the next few days. We got back late Wednesday night and took the next couple of days to get the house in order. We needed to caulk the bathroom and fix the fan so it actually pulled air, not to mention we needed to get out on the roof and break up the ice dams that had formed on the edges. All in vain though, as it’s snowing again right now and we’ve got another storm on the horizon.
Anyway, we took a break on Saturday from all the house stuff and set in for a full day of brewing action. Friday night I finished up making a second mash tun out of an old rectangular Igloo cooler, a ball valve kit, and an 18″ stainless steel washer hose with the vinyl tubing removed. A little caulk on the outside and it was water tight. So Mike came over on Saturday and we did two different batches. He wanted to do another Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter and I was feeling the Belgian Dark Strong. We made a couple of changes to his recipe since the shop was out of certain grains and hops. I also dropped the amount of base malt in mine to make a beer at the lower end of the Belgian Dark Strong category, instead of the very top of the category like I did last year. Last year’s recipe went on to the second round of the National Homebrew Competition and received a few comments of having a lot of alcohol, um yea, it’s supposed to! Brewing session went well, no major hitches. We ended up with some extra wort from both batches, so we put about 3 gallons of blended imperial porter and Belgian dark strong into a bucket and dropped a packet of T-58 yeast in it. Started bubbling about 2 minutes later and hasn’t stopped yet. Mike filled his carboy up to the tip top and as expected got enough blow off to put the air lock on the floor, check it:
At least everything stayed on the towels. Next we put our two batches of single hopped IPAs down in the basement to hopefully cool down and drop some crap out of suspension. We’ll probably keg/bottle them tomorrow. Finally, we took a sour starter I had been working on, a mixture of Roeselare and the dregs from a bottle of Orval, decanted and pitched into a carboy of double IPA.
Funny story about the double IPA. It’s a recipe I came up with more than a year ago for Mike. He brewed it, but ended up having too much unfermentable sugars (I think it finished at over 1030) and the bottled beers just never carbonated. So flash to a year later (he bottled this on 10/1/2006) and he still has an entire case of Hop Dog that is cloyingly sweet and fairly undrinkable. So we proceed to open all the bottles and pour them into a carboy. Out of the entire case, one bottle had carbonated and was at the perfect level. We split that one with dinner and damn was it a fine IPA! Glad at least one bottle turned out great, but it’s sad to know what the entire case could have tasted like. Instead we poured the sour starter into the carboy and we wait to see if the brettanomyces will take hold and chomp through the remaining sugars, yielding us a sour IPA…fingers crossed. Now we also wait to see if everything I brew from this point on ends up infected, ha.
Time to clear out the cobwebs and brush the dust off this old thing. It may have been 5 months since I last posted, but it doesn’t mean there hasn’t been anything going on, quite the opposite. Most notably, Kristin and I bought our first house. The amount of crap one accumulates year in and year out really adds up, it’s just amazing. We’ve got the process down…pick a box, unpack box, decide what gets tossed and then find a spot for what remains, breakdown box for recycling…then repeat over and over again. We moved in and started unpacking in September, yea, and now it’s December. Theres only five boxes left, one box of Simpsons Christmas Village and four boxes of crap to be sorted. The house actually looks like a house now. We can actually find things again, not to mention I’ve got my first basement since I lived in Arlington about 6 years ago. Plenty of space to hang the bikes AND hold all the brewing equipment. Kristin even has her own glass fusing area. So we moved into a new house, I’ve been learning the local bike trails, and I’ve finally started brewing again. Life is good.
Then came Winter, that’s right, with the W in caps baby. We have had a couple of flurries, nothing more than a few inches, that was until this past Thursday. The storm came on fast just after lunch and started dumping 2-3 inches an hour. When it was all said and done, we had around 10 inches of fresh powder. No worries, just gotta shovel a few times during the storm. Streets and sidewalks were plowed and clear before Friday morning rush hour. Then comes Sunday. Sunday blew through and dumped another 8-10 inches, only this time it wasn’t all powder. There was a lot of wintery mix, also known as ice, which makes the snow you gotta shovel much heavier. By the end of the weekend, there was a total of something like 18 inches of snow outside. I’m digging it, but you know it’s rough when even your dog has a tough time getting around. Check out the wall of snow, click on the pic to see Kristin’s gallery oh photos she took:
That’s not our house in the background, but theres a couple of shots of our new house in the gallery or you can check out the house gallery here with photos that were taken before we moved into it.
Saturday before the storm, M&M came over for a big brew session. No big beers were brewed, but we filled my 10 gallon mash tun with 25 pounds of grain and pulled off enough wort for two 6 gallon batches of IPA. More info on those brews in another post, but like I said, I’m brewing again and loving it.
I’m back to commuting again too. Put back together the Bianchi Pista a few days ago and rode that into work this morning. I would have ridden the Tricross fixie, but I need to press in some new bearings I just got with a new updated axle for my LeVeL hub. The Pista did it’s job, although I obviously didn’t tighten the track nuts down enough as my wheel slipped forward in the drops. Not a huge deal, just a little rubbing. Hopefully I can find a wrench around work to tighten it up before I leave. The best part was some ass in his SUV. Hate to stereotype, but damnit, there are generalizations for a reason. This overweight guy was driving his Jeep Cherokee, he was in the left lane of a two lane road and I was riding in the right most left hand turn lane. So looking down the street he came up on my right. He leaned out his window and gave the obligatory tough guy threat “Get off the road!” to which I responded with a cheerful wave “Hope that made you feel better!”. I’m in the left turn lane, so the stoplight is obviously close. About 20 feet further down the road, he no doubt was paying more attention to my cheerful waving and smiling as he blew through the red light only to come to a skidding stop in the middle of the intersection, literally 2 inches away from the crossing cars…yea he almost hit two cars. I gave him a “Nice!” and a round of applause, which he responded by cutting off the rest of traffic to peel out and continue on his fat pathetic way. Damn if that didn’t make my morning! I mean if he had hit those cars, it would have been the cherry on top. The funny part is this was actually my first real road rage encounter in New England. For the most part, people are extra careful to give you room when they pass, it’s actually quite pleasant.
Anyway, living up north is going well. Looking forward to posting some more recent updates on a couple of bike rides and the recent brewing experiments. Steve…you happy now…you lucky cab dodging bastard…
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