Brett and Debbie

Snoeshoeing

We went snoeshoeing and sledding on Mt. Hood with Jana (and Leila)
last weekend, there was tons of fresh snow so walking was difficult
but the sledding was great! I don't think I've ever seen a view of Mt.
Hood quite like that... wow.

The sledding was great too, you should have seen the air I got going
over this one huge jump...

I've put some teaser photos below, but you can go here to see more
of them (and higher resolution too).

Today's my Birthday! Woo hoo!

Now that I'm 32 I feel like reflecting on life just a bit. Rain, rain,
and more rain. I heard today that in Seattle they've had 27 days of
rain in a row now. It feels like everything outside is just
permanently wet at this point.

To keep spirits up I've been brewing every weekend with all my new
gear, today I brewed a batch of beer with Corey who is a brewer at
McMenamins. I picked up a few good tips from him as we worked, and had
a few homebrews of course. He was brewing a french country ale, a
fairly strong beer which should be interesting. I've also made great
use of all my new equipment, the mash-paddle which my sister gave me
works great! I'm looking forward to the new mash-tun which is in the
mail now and should be here for next weekend's brewing.. I hope. I'm
planning a Belgian strong golden, but need to work out the recipe
first.

10-Gal All-grain beer!

I brewed my first 10-gallon all-grain batch last weekend. It is a
Kolsch again since that seems to go the fastest (I'm completely out
again..). The process went well but took a long time - I started at
11:00 and wasn't quite finished at 6:30! I'm hoping the new mashtun
will speed things up, although I think I've been sparging too slowly
as it seems to take almost 2hrs. I'm hoping to brew a Belgian this
weekend, although it's one of the hardest styles of beer to make. I'll
be shooting for a Golden strong ale, we'll see what happens.

Also we got a composting bin, a nice big one, so I can throw in my
spent grains for use in the garden this summer!

The shape of a drinking glass...

I just read a very interesting article about how the shape of a
drinking glass affects how we percieve the volume we've poured into
it. Specifically people (both bartenders and others) tend to pour
20-30% more into a short, wide glass than a tall, narrow glass. I'll
have to remember to use those tall glasses at parties..

Here's the article and another.

All-grain brewing

I brewed my first all-grain beer this past weekend, it's a longer
process but very interesting to do because I used just grain instead
of extract!

I setup the propane burner in the garage and did everything outside
since it wasn't too cold or rainy. I love the new keg vessel I'm using
for mashing/boiling.. I can now do 10-Gallon batches and/or heavy
beers (i.e. belgians, imperials etc). However it is somewhat more
bulky to clean (since it holds 15Gallons) so the cleaning takes
longer. I also used the new mash-paddle which Rebecca & Jeff gave me
for Christmas, it really helps to have a long-handled stirring device
for the large volume!

Things in the first batch went well and the total time was somewhere
around 6 hours, I did have a boil-over when I went inside for a few
minutes. I probably lost a gallon or so on the floor of the garage,
but at least it didn't get all over the stove this time! The resulting
beer had a somewhat lower specific gravity than I expected, but
perhaps that was the boil-over lowering it. I'll brew the same one
next time and measure the efficiency. Now I just get to wait and see
how it turns out.