NightWoundsTime

Bottled the new batch of Mostly and Seriously yesterday, and I'm cold shocking the new Younger for bottling next week. Tasted the base recipe we brewed Wednesday. Finished out at 1.001. Very weizen like, but I think my choice of malts will work out with the tuffles well, 8% wheat, 8% acid, 5% biscuit, 2.5% aromatic. The rest was belgian pilsner malt. I attempted to cook the palm sugar for the spice batch but threw on 1.5 lbs of palm sugar cakes with too much water and after an hour of holding what may or may not be the correct temperature for caramelizing palm sugar (since I was following directions for table sugar), I got nowhere. I'll try again with a smaller amount and much more experimentation. Anyway the spice beer is not dark, but does have a nice dose of toasted coriander and just a little peppercorn.

It was a body shop/towing company. She must have made the "I have no money but I'm an honest good person and can you please bring you some gas and I'll totally pay you sometime." She borrowed my phone on pretense of no signal on hers.

Yep. One local number. And one local number received. So there are trails. Just looked up where she called, local business. All is well I think. Umm, except that no contact by now probably means bad for granny, which why I'm all no worries about it, and will continue to be for a while. Sounded like the girl lived with her grandmother.

Had a charitable moment last night involving a cute blonde thing. I'd like to think I'd help anyone in her situation though. I was on a Walmart run, long story. Walked out a weird side door and this girl was coming looking all panicked. She asked me if I had a cell phone she could use. I let her make a call in privacy but I could tell whoever she called was useless. Then she starts trying to ask for money but she was so cute about it, and her story was solid enough, that I emptied out $16 bucks from my wallet supposedly for gas. Convoluted as it was, story involved her grandmother going to the hospital with a high heart rate, doctors slowing it down too much and telling her to hurry up and get there. She'd somehow gotten locked out of the house without her purse , and granny had the house keys. She also said she'd asked two of Tallahassee's Finest for help, and that they were total fuckheads about it. Not her words. The story stands up though. In the end she took my phone number and gave me a call from the disposable phone in her hand, told me where she supposedly works, and promised to pay it back. We shall see.

The base recipe for both was brewed on Wednesday. Fermentation took off like a rocket and produced liberal amounts of foam. When the airlock was still on my brewing partner said it sounded like someone was in the house. I used a tiny bit of german wheat malt and the Achouffe yeast again. I'm waiting for the tasting to decide whether this is the right beer for truffles. It should be interesting either way.

The Doctor needs to get paid. Like any other sellout I'll look the other way and respect the opinions he gives for free.

I worked, and then I brewed. Good day except for the excessive heat throughout. Can't sleep but I'm certainly dehyrdrated. Fixing that now.

Y'all be crazy.

I'm up and running and the name's the same on Steam. Send some friend requests.

I'm still waiting on a Microsoft wireless gaming receiver I ordered cheap on ebay and then realized it was going to be delivered on whaleback, from Japan. I have the old clip-on wireless mic for the xbox that should work with Vent once I have the receiver.

I did a totally painless new drive Windows 7 install, took only a couple hours to install everything I used before. I love a nice clean freshly fucked system. My PC's been solely set up on the TV for a long time, but now I'm finally working out a room where the computer desk and TV rig will be jammed close enough to share the source. Xboxes's as well, will be easily swappable between 40" Toshiba and Samsung 24". Anyway the point is I might as well use this opportunity since I'm once again set up for keyboard and mouse play, to play wit you guys. Y'know in a hetero zombie killing way.

Cool, dl'ing now. Too bad the goal isn't to shoot your mexican face off. Is there FF?

Are you guys still playing this enough for me to bother buying the game?

Sorry I missed this for a week, but yes, that. I tried to get at the starter but I've got the V6 rodeo and it was pretty crampy in there. Part of the exhaust needed to come out for me to have a shot at messing with it. I got pretty decent at big truck maintenance for a while. That's a job made for a big lunk like me, usually there is lots of room to get at what you need. Worst possible job for me? Boat engine maintenance .

Five Guys cheeseburger, all the way plus raw onions. Cajun fries, diet barqs. Perfect meal.

Elder Spice and Elder Fungus are more appropriate, I'm supposing. Sorry I obsess. Almost literally dreaming up a recipe overnight is fun.

I looked into doing a berliner with acid malt but it's a risky move apparently, and the real lacto deal of course takes months. So, final answer. Brew the base beer with belgian 2-row, only a small amount of acid malt, a conservative 7%. No spices or palm sugar in the base batch, very lightly hopped to 10 IBU with Sorachi Ace. Either on brewday or about 4 days out I'll cook half of the sugar to a nice dark brown and add the crushed spices at the end of that process, then filter out and add to one 3 gallon batch. The other half gets straight boiled palm sugar and 2 whole black truffles shaved and soaked in vodka for a few days before being added with the final secondary transfer, hold about a week and bottle. Will update with final brew cost, if I dare to add it up . Oh and the names, Younger Spice and Younger Fungus.

Well I still haven't gotten around to the big bock. I'm Brewing on Monday but... no way that would be ready by the Chicago thing, so I want to do something with a shorter conditioning period for now. Bock will be delayed till next brewdate and lagered for some moons. I already have another batch of much more different rye stout in secondary ready to be bottled. Matt the Younger Part 2 will spend a week on dry hops starting Monday and then get bottled as well. What I'm considering for Monday is another belgian palm sugar thing similar to The Younger but less alcohol and spiced. I have whole cardamom, coriander, and indian black pepper that I would roast and mash in. Possible split for secondary, but I can't nail down a treatment if I add the spices to the whole batch. Best idea so far is to toss the palm sugar in two batches at the end of fermentation. One batch straight and one cooked for a darker color. Other ideas included mushrooms (per Radical Brewing's inspiration but + spices I'm not sure this is the one), or some kind of citrus fruit, perhaps paired with sour cherry. Anyone else got some inspiration on a non-stout, non-IPA, non-lager, short aging brew that's worthy of bottling? EDIT: Or I dump the spices, dump the palm sugar, and pick up some acid malt and make an over the top berliner weiss. Fuck it, spicing the whole thing and adding truffles. Yep. This is why we small batch homebrew, people.

How many here had their chocolate bacon epiphany at Ella's? I had a chocolate ginger epiphany there as well. They're good like that. Sadly no bacon at this place I just discovered on the internets. but It's planted between my homebrew shop and my whisk(e)y store, all very close together. Toy store, candy shop, Ice cream and homemade sodas plus dublin dr pepper. Crazy menu here: http://www.loftypursuits.com/sites/default/files/menu.pdf

Heh, that's a fairly random connection. Did you figure this out during the meeting? I tried to get my car into the shop today with its packed up starter, but they are booked solid through tuesday. No car till then, I'm not going to any other shop this time.

Already destroyed it, but a bowl of beef panang w/ red cabbage. Made the paste fresh, with dry roasted spices in the coffee grinder and all the fresh stuff in the food processor. I am thoroughly satisfied, right now. Real galangal, kaffir lime, shrimp paste, all worth the trip all the away across my 10 mile town.

Never met a scotch that wasn't my favorite. Shout out to Bunnahabhain since you love Islays. 12 is good, 18 is great, only had a taste of the 25 but it was insane, maybe not in a good way. Oban 14 is always good on the low price side.

I've driven over for a launch 5 times and they all got canceled. Never did see one from Cape Canaveral.

And, how long's the ride back?