Category: hobby

Wherein I Drink the Ale I Made!

Cheers to not being poisoned by my own concoction!

Sorry for not posting on Monday but it was a holiday and I was distracted by important things, mainly Mass Effect 2 (That game is soo good!)

You can see the first two parts of this series below:

Wherein I attempt to brew an Ale

Wherein I attempt to brew an Ale Pt. 2

last night marked two weeks since I bottled my ale; which meant that they were fair game for consumption. I opened the chilled bottle with some trepidation, my wife was convinced that my sanitization regimen was lacking and that the beer would be tainted. The beer passed the sniff test and so I moved on to the next step pouring the beer. With the exception of some sediment the beer appeared fine, it had good carbonation and a nice foamy head.

Well, there it was nothing left today but taste the fruits of my labor. The beer turned out pretty good! Darker than an amber ale but lighter than a stout. The beer had a subtle floral smell, much like the hint of green apples, and nice roasted malty taste to it.

I was sure when I started this process the beer was going to be terrible but I have to say, I’ve paid money for worse tasting beer. I have a few bottles and if local friends want to give it a try and let me know what they think they’re welcome to come by and give it a taste.

Things I learned from this whole experience:

  • Beer is not that difficult to make
  • Gravity and physics are crappy things to count on when bottling. Next time I use an auto-siphon.
  • Make sure your bottles are not screw-top!
  • Have a place you can go to ask questions of more experience users. I was lucky enough to have the fine folks at Talking Time to answer my questions.
  • Get something to filter out sediment. It doesn’t seem to hurt anything but is kinda gross
  • Get a second big metal pot for the sparge.

I’m happy enough with my results to try this again. I’m not ready enough to start making my own recipes yet, so I’ll still be buying mixes, maybe a nice gingerbread ale or tripel?

Yeah, I don't have a name for my beer...
Apple Crisp ale in my Odd-tober Fest 2009 pint glass
*glug* *glug*

Ultramarines: HQ Units

This was more of that “needs more metal miniatures” I was talking about last weekend… So here are some pictures of the various HQ units for my Ultramarines Army in Warhammer 40k. I think I painted these seven or eight years ago before I came up to college. I bought into 40k during third edition. Instead of saving the money I made at my job for college I spent large amounts of it on little toy soldiers and their accessories.

Since moving up to Davis I haven’t done a lot of painting or playing WH40k which is a shame because I really do enjoy the game and the hobby. (Worse I have friends up here who want to play it with me!) Maybe if you see these and tell me how great they look, how you want to see more, and wonderful things like that I might find the energy/time to finish assembling, painting, and playing with all the models I have lying around.

I don’t know how Games Workshop or Privateer Press takes pictures of their models… However they do it, I wish they’d share. I swear while these might not be professional grade models they don’t look as bad as these pictures make them appear. If the pointer hovers over the image you’ll get some inside commentary on painting these little guys!

Tiny space marines fight across enemy held desk
The Old Marneus Calgar
Captain with power sword and storm bolter
Chief Librarian Tigerius
Chaplain
Techmarine
Veteran Sargeant

There is an apothecary in that group photo but every picture I tried to take of him was a blurry, white mess. That’s it for the HQ. If I continue doing this I’ll put up pictures of my Elites next.

Things I found at my parents house: Sega Dreamcast!

 

It's still thinking?

 

 

Ninja Turtles, computer game manuals, and books aren’t the only things I found boxed up in the spare room at my parent’s house. I also found video games! My original PSX which I decided not to keep (PS2s do a fine job at that) and my trusty ol’ used Sega Dreamcast.

I only have one controller but, I have this nifty adaptor that lets me use PS2 controllers on the console!  I also have one of those generic mega saved game cards, which still has my saves on it after eight or nine odd years! Everyone knows the tragic story of the Dreamcast and how its failure ended Sega’s console making days. The system is sturdy and the games for it are a blast. This almost went up for sale a few weeks back but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I haven’t played it yet since bringing it up but I need to because I have some pretty good games for it:

 

Web browser, PSO, Powerstone, Rayman 2, Soul Caliber, Skies of Arcadia, Starlancer, and Virtua Tennis

I could have sworn I had crazy taxi or the Simpson’s variant. I can’t find it anywhere though so I guess not.  I wonder if I can get it cheap? Out of all of those games I enjoy Powerstone and Virtua Tennis the most.  Powerstone is simply mindless fun and Virtua Tennis is the best sequel to Pong I’ve ever seen!

 

Winter Gardens: It grows, I do nothing

 

It has been months since I mentioned the winter garden hasn’t it?  That probably has something to do with the fact that, at least here, a winter garden is a hands-off process.  I don’t have to water the garden as it either rains or dew it sufficient to keep the plants happy, I don’t have to tend to the plants very often seeing as their not giant bushes overwhelming nearby plants (like zucchini and tomatoes.)  We planted it and promptly forgot about it until we need something like spinach, bok choy, or celery.

Oh, there was one pest… one that has somehow managed to survive the below freezing temperatures:

Beer traps don’t seem to work as well in the winter and either did nightly pick-ups.  We finally broke down and picked up some iron pellets which make them stop eating, but that doesn’t put an end to the breeding these pests do.  Who know slugs were so big on sex?  The only real victim of the slugs has been the lettuce and cauliflower.  Their leaves have been chewed all up and slug slime covers what is left, which means what cauliflower I have is tiny and, so far, inedible.

Appealing?
too small

So far we’ve eaten spinach, bok choy, celery, arugula, and some lettuce from the garden.  The carrots are still too small as are the onions.  Despite the lack of lettuce I’m still calling this season’s garden a success

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