More beer brewing

I brewed another batch of beer on Sunday - West Coast Pale Ale with light dry malt extract. It is bubbling away right now and I feel compelled to visit it each evening before I go to bed. The batch I bottled a few weeks ago has improved from the first bottle I opened. It is still pretty carbonated for beer so I'll have to experiment with the amount of priming sugar that I use. The new batch will be ready in time for The Wife's birthday party so if you are coming you are welcome to try it. But don't worry, there will be commercial beer (and wine) too.

Super Bowl

The Wife and I have a spread that has probably never been consumed while watching the Super Bowl. We are eating cucumbers, carrots, and pita dipped in hummus and shrimp with cocktail sauce. The Wife also has some ranch dip for the veggies. We are both drinking soda although The Wife brought in a bottle of home brew and a bottle of Yuengling in case I wanted them. So far the commercials have been just eh. Let me revise that...The Budweiser Clydesdales commercial absolutely rocked! Ok WTF was with the badgers and the Toyota Corolla?

Abby Normal? Super Duper!

Yesterday, The Wife and I drove into Manhattan to see "Young Frankenstein: The Musical." We've had these tickets since September when The Wife presented them to me as an anniversary gift. I absolutely LOVE the movie "Young Frankenstein" which The Wife tolerates because she loves me. The musical has received so-so reviews and The Wife was very worried that I wouldn't like it. On the contrary, I laughed the whole way through. In my opinion, it was very Mel Brooks - lots of double entendre and physical humor. There was also a song about tits. What can be bad about a musical with a song about tits?

We then met a friend (whom we haven't seen since our wedding...in 2001) for drinks and dinner at Becco. The food at Becco was just great. I had "polentina con speck", followed by a ceasar salad (The Wife did say mine was better), and their "sinfonia di pasta." The sinfonia di pasta is a trio of chef-selected pastas that are served table-side and for which refills are available. Last night's selections were mezze rigatoni with pesto and green beans, spicy tomato with fried shrimp over spaghetti (one made without shrimp was available which was good as our dining companion is allergic to shellfish), and mushroom ravioli in a light cream sauce. It was amazing. For NYC the price was surprisingly affordable especially given that we each had a 3-course meal and 2 of 3 had drinks. With tax and tip it was about $45 a person.

It's a beer!

I checked the carbonation on the beer on Wednesday (the best part of using plastic bottles is that when they get rock hard you know have adequate carbonation) and it seemed like all the bottles were ready. In to the fridge it went. The absolute minimum for cooling is 2 days so last night I cracked open my first bottle of home brewed beer. First impressions - beer, I made beer! It had a nice but light color, lots of little bubbles (kind of like champagne), and a nice flavor. Rather like an American light beer. That said, American light beers are not my favorite. My next batch - planning to brew today - will be the same extract (California Pale Ale) but instead of using the "booster" (about 75% fermentable, meant to boost the alcohol and body of the beer) I'm going to use dry malt extract. I'll have a report on that in about 4 weeks.

Snow, please

So far this winter we haven't had any significant snow. All of our winter storms have been sleet/freezing rain. Tonight we are supposed to get 3 to 5 inches of snow. The Wife is quite annoyed to be in the hospital (where they won't get much snow) for this event. I have to fire up the snow blower this afternoon as it hasn't been started in months. I'm looking forward to some snow. Of course, if it sticks around and is a sloppy mess for a week I'll change my tune but right now I'm looking forward to it. I was supposed to be travelling to Boston tomorrow for a client meeting on Tuesday but I cancelled the trip because of The Wife's hospitalization (mostly because they are planning to place a Hickman catheter in her chest tomorrow). This storm is going to affect New England more than PA so my colleague who is still planning to go to Boston may have a rough trip (she has a business travel curse I think.)

Bottling the beer

I bottled the first batch (Pale Ale) from the Mr Beer kit this morning. It smelled like a frat house on Sunday morning in my kitchen. MMMMMMMM, beer. I tasted it before I bottled it (they recommend a taste test to be sure that it doesn't taste sweet - if so it isn't finished fermenting) and it tasted like flat beer. SUCCESS! It has to carbonate in the bottles for 1-2 weeks (I'm going with 2) and then be "conditioned" for 1-2 weeks in the fridge. It is ready to drink after being carbonated so I'll probably chill it for the minimum 2 days and crack the first bottle. Last night I bought a second kit at CVS (holiday left overs at $20 off) so I have more bottles for the next batch, which will hopefully go in the fermenting keg tonight. I also have a second fermenting keg and the ingredients for another batch of Pale Ale. From what I've read on the Mr Beer Yahoo Group the Pale Ale is pretty much a MGD clone. Not my favorite beer or beer style so once I use these up I'll try something with a little more body and flavor. A lot of the recipe kits on mrbeer.com are sold out right now (either the holidays or the hops shortage) so I'll use what I have already. I can't drink 12.5 gallons of beer that fast anyway. Once this batch is carbonated, come on over for a cold one.

Happy New Year

Happy 2008 to everyone. I can't believe that another year has passed. This New Year's Eve/New Year's Day was far better than last year when The Wife and I spent the 2 days basically too sick to get out of bed (the dreaded "stomach flu.") We had a fine evening last night with Morag and Gobo and the wee ones. They had a family obligation this afternoon so we came home and have been enjoying a quiet afternoon. I do have a few things to do this afternoon in order to get ready for work tomorrow. It is always so hard for me to go back to work after a vacation, especially a vacation that was fairly busy and had us going from one family obligation to another.

I don't think 2008 will be any less busy than 2007 but I hope to have some more time for my hobbies of cheese making, bread baking, and beer brewing (we'll see how this one works out) and more time to work in the garden. Maybe this will be the year we get edible figs. Hopefully the conditions will be good for the apple trees too.