Starting the day by taking Bela for her walkies we spotted this….

It was only maybe an inch long, but still. I had no idea that there were lizards in Ohio. Let alone this late in the year. It is a nice day. About 67 out right now. Jacki got her giant quilt basted on the deck today. It looked like a major pain in the ass.

Here is the other reptile….

It’s a foam snake! Ok so it’s starsan (a sanitizer) foam coming out of the keg as the beer goes in. It just amused me that it followed the tubing up to the top of the carboy. Oh and that is a Rye Pale Ale going into keg there :)

I actually did some brewing for the first time about a week ago. It’s been a really long time. Went pretty well considering how long it’s been. I ran two batches. A Rye Pale Ale and a Chocolate Cherry Stout. I’m going to oak the RPA and I still have to rack the stout onto cherrys, but so far so good. They are both hanging out in the fermenting freezer right now. It was really nice to do some brewing. I’ve also got to chase down a leak in my CO2 system for the keggerator. Oh ya and I bottled up 5 gallons of mead yesterday. That wasn’t much fun, but needed done. Mead seems ok. I’ll crack a bottle open in a couple years and see how it is then.

Brewday in progress…

We are also going to see They Might Be Giants tonight in Cleavland. That will hopefully be fun.

I saw this basic idea a while ago on a homebrew site or forum or something. I can’t remember where. Anyway we have had this stuck up in the attic for a while. I think we used to grow plants in it. It’s not the prettiest job of cutting the holes, but it works great. Check it out….

I cut three holes in the side and that seems to be enough airflow.

Jacki and I were outside playing with some cameras and I was all like OMG my hops are coming up. Ok so maybe it wasn’t quite that valley girl, but it was close. Anyway here they are….

That is the big Fuggles plant that I have.

Jacki has been doing a ton of film developing in the last couple days so keep on eye on her blog and flickr for lots of fun pictures.
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Well we are back home and getting the house put back together. Check out Jacki’s post here for more on that. I still have some vacation blogging to do and I’m going to try to knock out another couple posts about it today. First up is the vacation beer.

I’m going to start by saying that I had a lot of good beer. Everything I had was good. The bad part was that I only had one beer that I thought was awesome. That would be New Glarus’s Wisconsin Belgian Red. This stuff was phenomenal! We actually bought a case of it to bring home. The Raspberry Tart in this picture as good also, just not on the level with the Cherry.

Here is a shot of my beer haul for this day…

All the stuff I’ve had from Lakefront Brewery has been good. I still have some left to drink, but nothing great so far. I still haven’t gotten into the Big Sky beer. I can only drink so much. I’ll let you know when I do. I’ve wanted to try some for a while so I’m glad I found this.
More under the fold…

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Jacki and I went down to Columbus today to do some shopping. Mainly to go to an antique mall that always has a bunch of Jacki’s old camera stuff. As always tho I found some stuff I couldn’t live without. Mainly it was a nice CO2 regulator and tank. Just what I needed. :) It was only $24. Check it out…

We also made a stop at Andersons. I ended up buying one of those silly little kegs of beer. Not really because I wanted the beer, but because the keg had a cute fucking cozy. Damn am I a sucker. So I got this for $14.

So it was a fun day of running around and spending money on shit I really didn’t need. WOOT!

I picked the first of my hops for the year today. This was enough to fill up about half of a gallon bag with. They are looking pretty good despite the Japanese beetle invasion. I am expecting to harvest a lot more still this year.

I’ve got stuff to make 10 gallon of Rye Pale Ale. I’m thinking I’ll make that with at least some of the homegrown hops. I also need to get ingredients for my yearly Blackberry wheat. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I’m going to have a busy day tomorrow. I’m going to brew, Jacki’s dad is coming in town and we have to take all the animals to the new vet. The plan is to take the animals to the vet while my mash is going. That should be an interesting way to do things.

I went ahead and go my starter going and crushed my grains tonight. I’m going to do a Saison. It’s been a while since I made one and I really like them. I’m going to drop some oak in the keg with this one when I keg it. So here are the starter and the grain getting milled…

My hops are starting to come up! I love my hops plants. Hopefully I’ll have 4 plants, 2 Fuggles and 2 Centennials, this year. I plotted out my little hop garden for 4 plants, but only 3 grew. So this year I dug up and split the Fuggles. I’m hoping to have 2 Fuggles plants this year. This thing was unbelievably hard to dig up and split. You would have thought you were digging up a giant oak tree or something. I couldn’t believe it. Anyway check out the pictures……

This is my big game hunter pose with my hop rhizome transplant.

Under the fold for more pictures…….or not……..
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Jacki and I went down to the Antique Mall today just looking for some old camera stuff (Jacki) and a hand coffee grinder (me). I’m going to let Jacki tell you about everything else, but I got a really cool mug. It’s from Kronen Brewery.

This is an exert of a article about Dortmunder Exports from Realbeer.com….

In the old days, perhaps the best Dortmund Export was made by the Kronen Brauerei. The original Kronen lager beer dates from 1843, a year after the first batch of Pilsner had been brewed by the Bohemian Burgher Brewery of Pilsen, when Kronen brewery owner Heinrich Wenker introduced a strong Munich-style lager to his home city. By 1871, Wenker made his lager a bit stronger so that it would not spoil when shipped for “export” outside the city limits. This was the period, when Dortmund was rapidly industrializing, and soon the citizens of the Ruhr District, especially the miners and steelworkers, clamored for the Kronen Dortmund Export … and the name stuck.

Here is some more info on Dortmunder beer. And a wiki entry for Privatbrauerei Dortmunder Kronen in German here and English here.
I’m sure there is more info out there, but thats where I stopped reading.

Anyway here are some pictures of the glass….