Just because . . .


"Could you feel your whole world fall apart and fall away?"
"Is there gas in the car? Yes, there's gas in the car . . ."

On about the last part of March, I noticed my much-neglected homebrew equipment, sitting in the basement. I decided to stop neglecting it.

So I whipped up three batches of beer. Two of them are the same thing:

Filbert's Light (10 gallons)
3.3 lbs Munton's American Style Lager Beer malt/hops extract
Yeast (came with the Munton's)
2 lbs sugar
2 gallons tap water, 3 gallons distilled water (in batch #1)
5 gallons distilled water (in batch #2)
Initial specific gravity: 1.032

I went a little wild with the next one:

Filbert's Cascade Amber Dark
3.3 lbs Briess CBW Traditional Dark malt extract
3.3 lbs Briess CBW Sparkling amber malt
1 lb sugar
3/4 oz. Cascade hop pellets
1 tsp. Irish Moss (clarifier)
1/2 oz. Cascade hop pellets (finishing)
Vierka Dark Munich yeast
5 gallons distilled water
Initial specific gravity: 1.020 (which I really have a hard time believing . . . the wort was sweet, much sweeter IMHO than the Filbert's Light above. It was a bit on the warm side when I took the hydrometer reading, which can cause it to be low.)

This guy, I'm just going to leave alone until June 1 or June 2--that's nine weeks--before bottling. We'll see. If I test it and it's still sweet, I'll have to figure something out.

Anyway, I bottled up batch #1 of Filbert's Light tonight.

Here's my home brewery, hard at work. The two batches of Filbert's Light in front of course, the batch of the Cascade Amber Dark behind the bottles.

Here's what a glass of fresh Filbert's Light looks like.

1: Why is every single character on this show so intensely, deeply, fundamentally stupid?

2: Why do I keep watching the show anyway?

(Answer for #2: because it's on DVR and basically the only 'space opera' show left on TV . . . at least until Dr. Who starts back up again.)

Just for fun . . .

Stargate Universe sucks. The combination of the "stupid people doing stupid things" and the "we're all gonna die oh woe is me" plot lines is NOT compelling television. If I want to see stupid people doing stupid things, I'll watch C-SPAN. Or MSNBC. If I want to see "we're all gonna die" handwringing, I'll watch any of the interminable, never-ending global warming propaganda pieces all over the dial.

Boing Boing:

Real sourdough, (retired pathologist and sourdough bread expert Ed) Wood tells me, begins with nothing but flour, water and your friendly, native microscopic flora and fauna. Set out a mixture of wet flour, and wild yeasts and bacteria will drop in to munch on it. The yeast produce fermentation and make the bread rise by consuming sugars in the flour and breaking them down into water, alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. The bacteria also eat sugars, leaving behind acids that give sourdough its tangy taste. There are starter recipes out there that call for store-bought yeast, but Wood brushes them off as flavorless junk. San Francisco's Exploratorium science museum has a more objective explanation. They say wild works best because yeast and bacteria are balanced. Purchase your yeast, and any wild bacteria will end up hopelessly outnumbered, unable to compete with yeast for sugary sustenance. No bacteria, no flavor.

Mmmmm. Sourdough.

Oh, but don't try selling your home-made sourdough to raise money in your local school (New York Times article). Geez, can't the Nanny State stay out of anything? This started out being one of those talk-about-something-but-politics posts. Really, it did. Damn, I'm tired of being whapped upside the head by government every time I turn around.

Mac owners are bigger gadget nerds than PC owners.

the average Apple household owns 48 consumer electronics devices compared to 24 in the average computer household.

How can you resist a story that starts with "A malevolent raven"?

Via Jungle Trader.

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