singapore

well, i'm back from a week in singapore. it was an interesting place. the cleanest and most efficiently run place that i've seen in asia. i could drink the water and the food was excellent. my only complaint (aside from spending 17+ hours in a plane each way) was that i was too busy with work and when my one day of weekend arrived i was too wiped out to do any really good exploring of the city. regardless here are some photos. the giagantic overhead color changing mushrooms were pretty interesting.

valentines day gift

well, i got a really cool valentines day gift from ronda. what more could one ask for than an arrogant bastard tap handle.

not quite right

ever sit around reading the economist and drinking a glass of water and then realize that something just isn't quite right....

done with another beer book

i just finished reading Brewing (2nd Edition). it was a pretty dry book that covered both the scientific and technical aspects of brewing. it's mainly targeted at very large scale brewers. so aside from some tweaks to my minimashing process i don't think there will be much take away for my home brewing from this one. (although it was interesting to see what the big brewers are doing and they did explain how those widgets in the cans of guinness work.)

aside from that i did laundry today at the usual place (the brain wash) and while folding up my sixth helio sequence shirt i realizing that i forgot about the helio sequence show yesterday. damn it! they are probably the second greatest band on the face of the earth. ( the supersuckers still claim to be the first and i respect their opinion because they do kick a whole lot of ass.)

a morose weekend

and it's not just the weather, since it was actually nice outside today. ronda's grandfather passed away yesterday evening so the mood has been a little morose. she's been talking to family a lot and making plans to travel out for the funeral this week.

aside from death, the weekend has been pretty uneventful. yesterday i read the first issue of my new economist subscription. i also searched online for more places to take welding classes. (this past week i also signed up for spanish classes so i'm gonna be really busy for the next few months.) today i transfered my brain IPA into a secondary fermenter and it tastes pretty good so far. i'm still planning to dry hop with 2 oz of mt hood hops when i keg it so we'll see how it turns out. this evening we went to meet chuck and marco at the zeitgeist where we had a burgers, bloody marys, and beer.

brain IPA is born

i didn't do much this weekend. yesterday i watched a couple movies, Crimson Gold and The Decameron. i also came up with a new IPA recipie that i brewed today, it's been christened Brain IPA. (since my previous IPA experiment was called Pinky IPA.)

here's a couple pictures of my prepared beer brewing workspace.

beer tapping bonanza

so i finally tapped the two kegs of home brewed beer i had aging. they were the speckled speckled hen and the belgian style dubble.

unfortunatly the speckled speckled hen didn't taste as good as when i last tried it (on 12/18). i probably should have tapped it earlier. (it's drinkable, but not quite the taste that i wanted... course i should have probably expected that since it's only the second time i've made up a recipie.) so last night i tweaked with it a bit by adding some more lactose and vanillia to the keg.

i think the belgian style dubble turned out really well and at almost 9% it's going to make for some deadly drinking.

well, with almost 10 gallons on tap i think it's time to start drinking.