The Big Brew Day

So the time came to brew the next 15 gallons to replace the oatmeal stout I have aging in my recently acquired Dad's Hat whiskey barrel. My father in law, Dennis, was eager to get something else lined up so that the barrel would not run dry. He swung up to my place late on Saturday so that we could brew a Gulden Drak clone first thing Sunday morning. I also invited some of the members of NJ Hopz East, and a few of them were nice enough to swing by. We even had a guest brewer that brought his own rig and brewed a Maibock. Total of 20 gallons got brewed in my back yard.

The Gulden Drak clone recipe we used came out a bit too light in color, and getting used to the keggel setup was challenging. We missed our OG, but I think the final beer will be pretty kick ass. Keggels and outdoor brewing are new things to us, and it will take some time to dial in the whole process. Will be posting some more on this day, as I have a ton of pictures and videos, so stay tuned!

Relationship with pavement

I am writing this post to test your memory. Do you remember your past relationship with pavement? Do you remember when pavement was more than just something that your drove on? I’m talking about the days when you were young and existed in the present. Pavement had a strong relationship with you then. New pavement was an exciting find that you would seek out for a smooth ride on your skateboard. Pavement was where the cool kids would play football even though a tackle would peel the skin from their needs. Pavement would signal the start of summer when the sun’s heat would bring out that unmistakable smell of tar and naphtha.

So what happened to our relationship with pavement? We know hide in offices and only touch pavement via the tires of our commuter cars. Pavement used to be literally part of our bodies as we skinned our knees and elbows on it. I personally had several scrapes that healed with little specks of blacktop in it.  Asphalt was part of my physical being. I miss it and I think my body was better when it still was integrated with blacktop.

I can’t imagine a time I the future where my relationship with blacktop will return. I hope it does, and I can only wish that I will return to a time when I did not use Accuweather to determine the daily forecast. Instead I laid in bed watching Wimbleton on NBC, and waited for the smell of asphalt to waft in the window. If it did, I knew that it was a day that was too hot. Time to stay inside and play Megaman 2!

Amercian range

So I bought a stove. Actually the industry term is a range. Have you ever heard of a biscuit container with instuctions that state "preheat the range to 400"? Should Stove Top really be called a Range Top? At least in the UK they use the term "cooker" which actually describes what the damn thing does. I believe that the technical definition of a range is an oven combined with a cooktop. Like a transformer triple changer, your appliance now has three forms : a cooktop, an oven, and the uber conglomeration of both.

So not only did I buy a range, but I bought an Italian made stainless steel commercial stove. Looks like a monster and puts out enough BTUs to be the furnace off my fledgling brewery. And yet I am a little sick with myself with such a purchase. I believe that it is a distinctly American trait to place such importance on the appearance/price of ones appliances. Do Ukrainians care if their neighbor has a stainless steel fridge? Actually they probably would as a stainless steel fridge in the Ukraine is about as rare as a Delorian in Paterson NJ. However you get my point. As much as I bought the range for pragmatic purposes (we currently have a horrifying electric range that looks like it was used as a background prop in Sanford and Sons, and I need a commercial stove to brew 10 plus gallons of beer), I still feel a twinge of ego at how damn shiny and expensive the damn thing looks.

Can class systems be defined by appliance price/finish? Are we in a new gilded age that can be renamed the stainless steel age? Judging by the kitchens of the wealthy it would appear that this moniker would be appropriate. Why would I feel pride that my appliances where made of stainless rather than powder coated steel? Is powder coating for the commoners, the mere peasants? Adulthood is a strange place. I find myself largely uncomfortable with it. I don't think a 21 year old Paul would care about stainless steel. 21 year old Paul was stupid about many things, but wasted no time on thinking about appliances..... I think in this way that 21 year old Paul was much wiser than 35 year old Paul.

Samhain (spooky)!

I love Halloween. I love the pagan roots in the celebration of Sam Hein (a celebration of the dead). Given the recent level of fanaticism in America, I am thankful that the holiday has not yet been banned (let’s give it time though). Who does not love Halloween? Candy, autumn, pumpkins, candy corn (especially the kind with the chocolate segment, or even the intimidating candy corn material pumpkin- the Carpathian Scorge of teeth), and women dressed like harlots pretending that it is just a costume and not some form of breaking free from sexual repression.

Well I’ll tell you who does not love Halloween: adults. After a certain point, dressing up becomes beneath adults (unless they are single males, and are pursuing one of the harlots).  Don’t believe me? Try throwing a Halloween party where the invitee list is full of thirty somethings. The first and most dramatic responses you will get will sound something like this: “Party sounds great. Please don’t tell me we have to dress up”. I think this is one of the stages in a person that truly marks placing your foot closer to the grave. There is a groupthink that encapsulates adults. They lose their creative thinking, individuality, and imagination. Nothing represents this better than adults bitching about having to wear a costume (or perhaps hearing for the fifth time how a coworker spent his weekend picking up parts for a snowblower. Really? Homedepot doesn't carry 3/8s spindels? Bastards. Please go on).

Dress up is fun and is good for you.  Just ask Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt. Actors are really just playing advanced forms of dress up, and look at the amount of gravitas they place on their careers. Halloween is all about kids dressing up as zombies and the walking dead. However, I think what it really does is to reveal the zombies and walking dead that surround us every day at work. The fact that these people take themselves seriously is the most terrifying thing I can imagine.  They must actually think they have accomplished something by forcefully freezing and amputating their imaginations, as if an imagination was some sort of wart or skin tag. I respect the right of everyone to give up on life at some point, I just hope they do not expect me to join them. That’s why I need to get rich. Remember: old poor men are crazy, old rich men are eccentric. Becoming an eccentric is my life’s work!

Of inspiration and demotivation

So as a guitarist, practice is a necessary evil. I hate practice, and I lack talent. The result is that I am not a very good guitarist. Normally I am fine with this and just soldier on. However I was recently exposed to a truly talented guitarist playing an original song. It was fantastic. I could never play with such accuracy, regardless of my practice regimen.

This introduces me to my latest struggle: lack of talent. I currently pursue too many hobbies to focus on one correctly, but I feel that I learn much slower than others. Perhaps it is my lack of focus that has me spreading out my abilities too far, but I doubt this. I have been practicing basketball for several years now and I have to face the fact that I will never be very good. My reaction times are too slow, and practice will not really resolve this. Due to my height, the fact that I am not a natural athlete seems to infuriate many of my teammates. I assume that they spent years wishing they had height, see me, and are angered that I do not totally dedicate myself to playing basketball. I guess I can see this point of view, I just wish it did not result in people dumping so much anger and negativity at me. I enjoy basketball, love the exercise, and enjoy playing on a team. Perhaps my teammates feel that because of my casual attitude the only reason I can play at their level is because of my height?  I guess I would be angry too.

I have been trying to figure out why my basketball playing brings out so much anger in others. It is the sole reason I avoided the sport for so many years. It is also one of the reasons I have chosen to pursue the sport later in life. Kind of a face your fears sort of thing. I have learned many lessons from this, but the negativity is starting to wear me out.  As I learned from my last job, I do not respond to fear based incentives or negative reinforcements. However, in the world of jocks and sports, I understand that it would be ridiculous for me to expect any sort of positivity. Male competition is cut throat, with no quarter given to enemies. I just wish my teammates would stop viewing me as an enemy. I suppose if I was better, they might just hate me more, so I guess I can be thankful at my limited skills.

I can make some good beer though!

All Hail Piels

I would like to honor a true gentleman: Piels beer. This is a beer of true character. A repugnant and skunked character, but character none the less. This beer defines the lowest common denominator (with some notable competition by Golden Anniversary). However it is still brewed and drunk every day. Imagine the low standards of the Piels brewmaster. I predict that his wife is fat and has a low sex drive, his dog smells like fungus, and that his favorite pass time is collecting Rainbow Brite toys (and going to the associated conventions). The perfect man to brew the worst beer in the world.

Why the sudden interest in the wet fart of beers? I had a bad experiment with partigyle brewing (where you make a strong beer and a weak beer out of the same batch). The weak beer came out with some defects. I ran it though some gelatin treatments to strip the astringent flavors out, and ended up stripping all the flavors out. As such, I heard the bowel liquefying comment of "this tastes like Piels" from one of my guests this weekend. This statement was true but brutal. With my gelatin treatment, I was certainly polishing the proverbial turd. And of course it just kept stinking.

Maybe I do like Piels after all. The brewers wife might just have a glandular condition and a fantastic personality that includes a passion for Tales from the Darkside. His dog might be charming. However I doubt this. I will make this promise: Should I see Piels in any sort of bottle, I will buy it. I'm sure it's just the cans that ruin the taste of Piels. However, I think Piels just comes in 40s. Damn that brewer and his stretchmarked wife. I bet she has an oval belly button.

Tales from the Darkside

Remember this show? Tales from the Darkside? It was actually supposed to be a TV show based on the Creepshow movies but they could not get the naming rights. Its on the Chiller channel now. The chiller channel is more scary when one considers the average weight and cholesterol levels of the typical viewer. If I was Nabisco, I would make sure to get plenty of Mallomar adds on that channel right away. Middle aged stoners looking for a channel that plays bad syndicated TV shows from the 80's must love Mallomars.

Great intro on Tales from the Darkside though. I remember watching it after the Big Apple movie on Channel 5 on Sunday afternoons. At the time I preferred Fruit Rollups to Mallomars however. Maybe because my chronically cheap family would only buy the imitation ones with the foul cardboard cookie and the offputing texture marshmallow. They also used to buy the imitation fruit rollups with the bits of fruit in it. Unrolled they looked like the fake vomit you buy at dollar stores. I want my fruit rollups fully processed and with lots of chemicals. I'm American and depend on processed foods!

Here is a controversial subject. Are you one of these wackos that claims to be able to taste the difference between white and yellow American cheese? If so, F you! The only difference is yellow dye. Is your pallet so refined that you can taste yellow dye. If so, why are you not judging wine in France? At least then I would not have to be subject to your arrogant judgements of processed cheese. The nerve of some people!