Tag: 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.

Wherein I attempt to brew an ale Part. 2

This is just how I did it too

Last Friday was when I was supposed to bottle my apple crisp ale. I couldn’t though because the bottle caps had not yet arrived (either had the bottle capper.) Spoiling my plan to have this post appear here yesterday morning and why you are reading a post here on Tuesday. I received the capper on Saturday and the caps showed up on Monday.  Seeing as I was already behind schedule I decided that last night had to be the night. With the help of D I sanitized all the instruments, brought the beer out from its dark hiding space and tried to move it into a pot.

This is MY beer you go make your own!

Why did it need to go into a pot? Well the pot had some honey in it which I believe is necessary to either sweeten the beer after the yeast has eaten everything or give the yeast a little more to eat, maybe both. I have no idea really this is my first time doing this and I spent more time just trying to get the procedure right without worrying too much about the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of it all. The hardest part by far was managing the suction in the hose and getting the beer to flow into the pot and afterwards into the bottles. I also had a small problem with some of my bottles, when it came time to cap them. They were screwtops. It only took me breaking one bottle and for D to point this out to me before I figured it out though! So, not a lot of beer was lost nor any additional bottles broken.

All total the one gallon kit made nine beers. One which I couldn’t drink because it had broken glass in it. Two which might become contaminated because I couldn’t cap them all the way. All in all not the most efficient use of my time or money. Beer is cheaper just about anywhere. These cost my, not including labor, more than $4 dollars a bottle. But, the experience of brewing my own beer is priceless, right? RIGHT? Right. Next time maybe I’ll share some with you.

Everything I need to get bottling...
Everything after it's been sanitized.
The mysterious art of siphoning... I'm not very good at it.
What's left after all the beer is gone, yum?
These might not make it two weeks. They're only 'half-capped.'
A bottle full of beer that I can no longer drink. *sadface is sad*

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!

 

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