beer

This morning I moved my latest beer, a coffee Irish stout from the primary fermenter to the secondary, in anticipation of bottling probably next weekend. It's lighter in color than I expected and I really am not detecting any coffee at all at this point. Still smells like really sweet, well, just really sweet. My last stout (an imperial stout) took forever to age into a good beer, so this one will be bottled and then left to age for a few months. My goal is six. Let's see how long I can make it for real.

One of the fun parts of brewing, other than drinking the beer, of course, is deciding what to label the beer. Some people don't label at all. I think it's cool, so I always do.

I say always like I do this all of the time. Truth be told, the coffee stout is only my fourth beer. The beer (and their labels) are:

An Imperial Stout:

A Scottish Ale:A German Alt (in the bottle now, haven't tasted it yet):


And now the coffee Irish stout (haven't finished the label for this one yet.

Brewing is interesting. Lot's of time standing around waiting for water to boil, keeping things heated to a certain temperature. Trying to keep things clean. It's time consuming while you're doing it. Of course, you can't brew without having a few beers yourself, so that makes it better.

I've got a couple of friends who brew regularly (Dave & Eric) and one who's about to brew his first batch (Bryan) so, in theory, if we trade out, we could always have some good home-brewed beer around. Not bad, especially given the very limited selection of available beers here in Utah.

Anyway, I'm rambling now and I'm sure this isn't really that interesting so I'll stop. For now.

Hi

Welcome to my blog. Both of you.

Here I plan on discussing, so to speak, things that I'm interested in, like cycling, beer, politics. Maybe my cats. We'll see what mood strikes.

A little about me: I'm 40. I'm married (hi, Robyn!). We have four cats (three of which are black, the other is tortoise-shell, I'm told) - two boys and two girls. We also have one-three cats who've adopted our porch as a place to live - probably because I've built an insulated cat house out there for them and we feed them every day, but that's a whole other story...

We moved to Salt Lake City, UT about four years ago because of my job. Before moving to Utah, I lived my entire life in Texas, most recently Austin, though I grew up in San Antonio. My wife, she's from Long Island, NY but lived in Austin the 10 years before moving here as well.

Since moving to UT, I've taken up cycling passionately. I commute to work on my bike (even when it's 6 degrees out and snowing) and don't get a chance to ride as much as I'd like to. Oh, I only road ride, not mountain bike, though I'm thinking about someday taking that plunge. I've got a few cycling related goals this year:

1. ride a Century a month (that's 100 miles) and earn a Larry Schwartz award from the Ultra Marathon Cycling Association. More on this later.
2. ride the Desperado Dual double century down in Panquitch, UT (though the event seems to be on hold right now.)

I've also taken up home brewing (in Utah, the most repressed state in the nation, of all places). We call our "brewery" Black Cats Brews. Beer is good food. Enough said.

Hmmm. I'm sure there will be more. Like me ranting incessantly about political issues, local and national. But for now that's it. Since I kind of feel like I'm writing this to myself anyway. That said, don't forget to pick up some orange juice today. And some cat food for Squeaker.

That's it.