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: