Catch up!

It seems like Christmas is far enough away that I'll get everything done that I want to, but then when I realize it's less than 2 weeks and I still have a full week of work, plus my anniversary, my daughter's birthday, and of course my exercising (I have to at least keep up the minimum or I'll be really cranky). So I'm not sure how much time I really will have and I hate trying to finish things at the last minute. That said, I did manage to run over 7 miles this morning and make a nice breakfast before sitting here at my computer, catching up on emails and post, and trying hard to knit fast! I also have ingredients for a new Belgium ale I want to make, but I forgot to do the yeaster starter. So I guess I'll do that maybe mid-next week and brew one of days I'm off. We'll see. I also have the peach wheat ale that has been in the carboy for two weeks that I'm going to take a reading on today as well. It might be another week before bottling, but since it's for my daughter's birthday I want to bottle is as soon as possible! That's about it for now. A lot going on, not a lot of free time!

Books and Movies

I've been reading a lot of books, including the "Twilight" series. I'm about 3/4 done with the last book and then last night we all decided to go see the movie. Blah. And yes, I should have known because the books are for young adults, so the movie was going to follow that as well (he's so beautiful, why does he like me, we can't kiss), but it also had really bad special effects. Oh well. I still will finish the series. But I can't wait to read the next Cassie Palmer series book by Karen Chance - but that doesn't come out until next April. In the mean time I've organized all of my books upstairs that I want to read, and put them in piles of series, romances, and books my husband would like me to read. I say I'm going to finish a lot of those before I buy any new ones (especially series), but I've already ordered a few more!!

More beer & knitting!

It's been a bit since I posted. Still brewing beer and really enjoying it. We did our own Hefeweizen recipe and it's almost gone! We have a new hazelnut brown that we did for Jim's birthday that we should be able to bottle next week and the week after we should be able to bottle the chocolate hazelnut porter from B3 (Jamil's recipe). After that, I have all of the ingredients for Dee's birthday peach wheat beer. Then we have the yeast for another Hefeweizen and a belgium beer ( still need to figure out the receipe for that, but it's best to buy the yeast at the store instead of having it shipped). I've also been working on baby sweaters and Christmas gifts. I finished both of the sweaters, but still working on all of the Christmas gifts. I know it seems far away, but when working on knitting gifts it seems really close!

Quick Update

Things are going well. I rode my motorcycle to work four days last week. Stalled on my first u-turn in front of the office, but kept going with my feet and started it back up right away! Did another long ride (okay, just over 10 miles, but long for me!) this weekend to Glendora with Jim. That was fun as well. I'm quite glad I have a full face helmet because a rock flew up and hit the face plate. That would have been my forehead! Also, bottled the Hefeweizen ale last week and the mocktobertest the week before. I have one of each in the refrigerator to try. I know the Hefeweizen is probably not ready, but I have to give it a try! And there is a new pale ale in the carboy fermenting now for four days. Yesterday it was so active there was beer and yeast in the bubbler! I cleaned and sanitized it and put a few drops of the foam control in it. Next week we'll brew Jim's birthday ale. Another hazelnut ale with a few changes of our own :-) And now tomorrow we get to go to the Weinsfest. It's at Weins winery and includes their wine and beer from Stone Brewery - as well as German food and other stuff. We're staying down there and then driving back Monday morning for work. I'm really looking forward to it!

Beer and Motorcycles!

First, a quick update on the beer. The mocktoberfest was moved to our cooler in the closet so we could brew a hefeweisen beer the next week. That is supposed to ferment at 62 degrees, so we wanted that in the new chiller. It's been in there almost two weeks (as of Tuesday) and I think we'll do a hydrometer test at the two week point. The mocktoberfest is at 1.021 and has been there for the last week. We brought the temperature up a couple of degrees and carefully shook the yeast off the bottom. We'll take a testing tomorrow and if it's still 1.021 then we'll bottle. But if it's gone down any we'll wait and take another reading in a couple of days. When we get two in a row the same then we'll bottle. We're trying to be really careful. And I'm not sure why it doesn't want to come down just a bit (the estimated FG is 1.015), but I hope it's not because we fermented this at 64 degrees since everything I've been reading says the beer will taste better at the lower temps. And, the nut brown seems good proof. It's been bottle conditioning for three weeks now and it sure tastes good! I'll be sharing this one next week!

Now to the motorcycles. We took our CHP approved course last week. Five hours of classroom time on Thursday evening and then five hours each day on Saturday and Sunday. I was exhausted from the heat and layers of clothes from those two days. But it was a really good class. They showed you how to ride from the very beginning and how to do it right. I would highly recommend this class to anyone. And the really good part, all three of us passed the test (my husband, older daughter and myself!). Our passing certificates came in the mail on Thursday and we went down to the DMV yesterday and traded them in for a permanent license! Okay, we just got the temporary paper one saying we are licensed and the expiration date on our picture license punched out, but the final one is in the mail and we're legal to ride :-) As a matter of fact, I just got back from my run (it's been two weeks since I've been able to do one - Las Vegas and the motorcycle class) and I'm just waiting for my husband to get ready so we can do our first real ride down to the Village for breakfast!!

And I probably should have posted about Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. It was fun, but the funniest part is that I left my luggage at home! I had to buy all new clothes when we got there!

New Brew!

Brewed another ale today! This time we brewed a Mocktoberfest. To the regular kit we added just a little bit of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice. It sure smelled good (okay, my youngest thought it stunk up the house - but Jim and I thought it smelled good!). And we put this one in our new fermentor chiller that we just made!! Here is a picture of that:

So far (just seven hours later) the temperature on the fermometer is right between 62 and 64 degrees. I'll be checking it each morning and night for the first few days. Then we head to Vegas for a few days and my youngest will change out the bottles once a day. For her help (with this and the animals), we're going to brew a wheat beer as soon as we come back. Now that we can ferment two ales at once :-) But I'm going to need more bottles! But that might work out since I just tried the earthquake honey ale tonight and it's tasting good. So now I can start sharing those (and getting those bottles back) as well!!

Here's a picture of Jim brewing this morning:

New Batch!

We bottled the earthquake honey ale on Saturday and that seemed to go pretty good. We had an OG of 1.055 and a FG of 1.011. That makes this beer a 5.76% beer. We're going to be better this time and wait the two weeks before opening one. But that's not easy! So, to make it a little easier they say it's good to have a wide variety of homebrews on hand. To learn to do some new styles, have them in the pantry, and to taste them and see what we like and what we can change for the next time. So, we brewed the nut brown ale on Sunday. This is our third brew and a lot of it went a smoother than the other times. But not the breaking of the basket we were going to store it in (you can see the blue basket on a previous post). Jim's handle broke after he picked up his side and the basket went down. I dropped my side and grabbed the carboy! We saved the beer! But we had water all over and had to find another items to put the carboy in to keep it cool. I found an old ice chest that it almost fits it(not quite level on the bottom), but it fits and it's been keeping the water even cooler than the basket did. Plus, using the towels to clean up all the water we have a very clean kitchen floor! It seems to end up cleaner (the whole kitchen) after we brew, which is a nice thing! But, we're going to try and make a fermentor chiller this week so we can brew our Halloween spiced beer next weekend (which will be on Sunday since we are going to the Stone Brewery 12th Anniversary Fund Raiser on Saturday!!). Anyhow, here is a picture of our pale ale after three weeks bottle conditioning:




















I'm still getting the hang of putting pictures in with the posts. So please excuse this entry if the pictures do not make sense next to the text you're reading!

For the other thing we did this weekend - we practiced riding our motorcycles. I don't know if I mentioned it, but we (my husband, older daughter and myself) got our permits last month and then we bought a couple of motorcycles. I really like mine (V-Star 650) and it's the one we are learning on. I've made a lot of progress (starting with walking it while playing with the clutch, going straight and walking it to turn it around, to going around the neighborhood block). This weekend we not only went around the block, but down the street and around a culdesac. And I learned not to go around that corner in second gear! It felt like it wanted to stall so I went faster than I was comfortable and as I do when I panic, I pulled in the clutch! I made it around (with a foot down once) and went back up the street. It didn't occur to me to downshift to first since I turn other corners in second. But, since I've upshifted to second and third, I haven't downshifted. So my next learning lesson will be to go down the street and downshift until I' comfortable. Then I'll try that culdesac again! And we are taking this really slow (Jim did the same route as me, but added a bit more the second time. He's doing really well!). Dee finally rode the bike up and down the street and even did some u-turns! We're just trying to get a little familiar and comfortable with the motorcycle before we take the certified class in September! And here is a picture of me on my new bike: