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: