Brett and Debbie

Assorted updates..

We've been starting to look at buying a house around here, what an
intimidating process! I kept hearing that prices in Portland were
high, and they apparently weren't kidding..

In other news my Pale Ale came out very well and is quite drinkable
after only 2 wks, I think it's my favorite beer I've made so far! I
bottled the Kolsch (it's gonna be yummy) and the Altbier is now in
secondary fermentation at 60degrees for awhile - although it is pretty
quiet now.

We've been continuing to fly planes at lunch and having a blast at it,
there's always something new to talk about changing on our planes to
make them fly better... We are getting to be pretty good pilots, the
next challenge is a limbo-line I hope to put up today for competition!

And one item I wanted to link to, there is a graphical concept called
sparklines which is quite neat especially for technical documents although I don't know of a good way to generate these yet.

Altbier!

Just checked the Altbier, it's fermenting happily away in my spare
fridge. That blue thing is a heater strap that can keep it warm when
the house is cold..

busy weekends.. and new beers

It was a busy weekend with a nice social dinner gathering with a few
friends Saturday night. We ended up singing Karaoke with Lindsey till
1am from our laptop in the living room while drinking homebrew! ("Come
on Eileen....") It has turned somewhat cold and rainy in Portland,
which is quite a shock from the 65 degree and sunny days we were starting to get used to. The weather is sort of dreary except that most Portlanders are
glad to have the rain.. I've read that we will have a pretty dry summer with
water shortages if we don't get significant rain now.

I bottled a pale ale Saturday, which should be interesting to taste in
a couple weeks - it fermented almost completely in about a day!
I just brewed a German Altbier which is happily burbling away and
spilling foam out of the airlock. Supposedly if you ferment in a
bucket you have enough headspace to handle the foam but lately the
beers seem to be foaming over pretty heavily. Perhaps I should start
making slightly smaller batches, but then again it's always nice to
have more beer rather than less for the same amount of work. The
kolsch sitting in the carboy in the basement is getting relatively
quiet and staying right at 60, supposedly this sort-of "lagering"
phase improves the taste. I'll probably bottle it soon, I'm getting
anxious.

Soaring sites close to NE Portland

I've investigated a number of soaring sites that are a couple hours away from home, but these just aren't practical for normal use. I just found an interesting site that talks about some "inner city" soaring sites just a few minutes from home in Portland. Even if the site isn't optimum being close would facilitate much more flying. Dog-bite park sounds pretty interesting, although I think I read something about a spot near the Portland airport which I'm trying to find again.

Here's a site which has some Oregon flying sites but again none are close enough. The Portland Area Sailplane Society - PASS has some sites listed that are far away.

New Beer on the way

I finally got a couple hours to brew another beer, I got a Kolsch in
the fermenter yesterday. Ammi named it a "Half-a-weizen" immediately
after I described it to her, since it's half wheat malt and half
barley malt. I also got to use Jeff's counterflow chiller for the
first time, it worked so well that the beer came out well below the
target temperature. I had to warm it up before pitching the yeast!

I've been so busy lately that I haven't had much chance to post
entries on my blog, too much work, fun, and beer I guess.