Ending the weekend with a blast

Of football! AFC and NFC championship games, both of which went down to field goals. The Patriots squeak in on a missed field goal, after a rather lackluster performance by Brady. That was followed by a very messy game in San Francisco that went into overtime, with the Giants finally coming out on top after the second muffed punt by the 49er’s return man (Williams) gave them a short field (again). It’s going to be a great SuperBowl game. I hope.

Fifty bottles of beer on the wall

Bottling day at the ranch for the German style lager we brewed. Started on Monday, completed Saturday night. Not too bad, as far as hobbies go, and much of the week was spent waiting – as is the case for most things around here, like waiting for dough to rise, or seeds to germinate, or something to ripen, or a canvas to dry. When the bees finally arrive and are hived, we’ll start the waiting game with them, too.

Step one: siphoning.

As it turns out, this is better with two people, so one can hold the siphon while the other pours in the priming sugar (and takes photos).

It’s a dark beer.

Very dark, to the point where a flashlight comes in handy to see the bottom of the siphon to make sure it isn’t embedded in the gunk at the bottom.

The bucket fills as the carboy empties.

And eventually it’s down to the last that we’re taking out.

Time to bottle!

Capping. Take a cap, center the capping tool over it.

Lean into it and push the handles down until they crimp the cap on the bottle.

Release.

Repeat. Forty-nine times.

Before you know it, you have a couple of cases of beer, ready to go into the cold room to age.

Then comes the cleanup.

I wonder if the chickens would like to nibble on this. Would they get themselves a buzz going?

Chief bottle washer

Ever wonder about that phrase? Wonder no more.

Bottling bucket, spigot, siphons, bottles, and caps, all washed and ready to be sanitized Saturday. Also known as: bottling day.

Before bottling, though, there are a number of other things that have to be done, primarily outside. Unlike our neighbors to the north, it’s going to be rather balmy here for the next week or so, with temps in the mid to upper 70s. Winter in Florida. Have to love it.

Bier!

Almost.

As I mentioned the other day, I started a batch of beer. It took a few hours for the yeasties to get their gobble on, but when they did, the airlock was bubbling away.

All the crap around the neck is where the foam went pretty high in the carboy. It settled into percolation quite nicely, seen in the foamy activity at the top.

Yesterday, things slowed down a bit, and today, they’ve slowed down a lot – an indication that the yeast has done its business and belched out alcohol from the sugars it ate.

The foaming is almost completely stopped, and there is just the occasional bubble hitting the airlock. Sniffing the top of the airlock, you can smell the alcohol quite clearly. On Friday, I’ll wash and sanitize the bottling bucket, bottles, and caps, then transfer this into the bucket (with the priming sugar). Saturday: bottling time. Once bottled, we’ll store the beer away for a few weeks to age. I suspect there may be a tasting of fresh beer here at the ranch. In the name of research, of course.

 

Late summer harvest

It’s been a grey, dreary day here. If we lived anywhere else, it would be a wintry day, or what we used to call a snow day when we lived up north. Except here in the south, it was mostly just rainy for a good portion of the day and overcast when the rain moved along. It was just one of those days where you want to curl up under a blanket with a good book. I sorted seeds and looked at some more seed catalogs (and worked) instead. And just to remind myself of what comes from all the hard work I put in on the ranch…

This was a late summer harvest – ok, it was in the latter part of October, but around here, that counts. I’m not able to munch on jalapenos like I used to, but that’s true of almost everything I grow around here.

There’s just something reassuring about being able to put up the fruits (and veggies) of your labor.

 

Wort’s that?

First you clean.

Then you put together your ingredients, get the mix into the carboy, pitch your yeast, put the airlock on, and wait for it to ferment.

It didn’t do much, at first. I was hanging out, checking on it now and again, to see if it would start bubbling away, but finally gave up and went to bed. At about 3 AM, I woke up to the smell of malty bread, and figured the little beasties were doing their magic. After a few days, the action should calm down, and we’ll move the brew into the bottling bucket.

Why brew your own beer? Why not? I can’t drink it, of course, since the radiation treatments did the tango on my mouth, but others can (and hopefully they won’t be poisoned by some stray bacteria missed during the sanitation or that sneaks in during the process).

 

Client logic

Him: “I didn’t get the invoice for this. Look into it.”

Us, after seeing it was sent a month and a half ago: ” The mail logs have already rotated past that point, but the client system has the entries for the generation of the invoice and it being sent via email, to the same address everything else is sent to for this account.” We insert the clips from the system log.

Him: “So you say it was sent? If you have not logs to say it was sent and I don’t  have an email in my box then maybe it wasn’t sent? ”

First, no, we don’t “say” it was sent. It was sent. Second, we just provided you the logs from the client app that logged it.

Him, after we replied again, pointing out that the system logged it: “You need to look into this, or I’m moving elsewhere.”

So, we’re supposed to look into an email the system indicates was generated and that was emailed to you, after just providing you with the snips from the logs that say this? I suppose if we squint juuuussst right, we could probably look right into the abyss of your logic, sure.

Bowing out

Boo, Green Bay. That was one mighty poor performance on the field today. You didn’t look anything like the team that seemed as if  it might go undefeated. You did, however, look like the team that went to Kansas City and got themselves beaten by the Chiefs, of all teams.

Time to root for the Patriots – although it’s fun to see the 49ers back into the swing of things, and it would really interesting to see a Harbaugheddon (Harbhowl?) and watch Jim and John square off with one another.

Learning to fly

We have four monarch butterfly chrysalides hanging in the front planting area near the walkway. We had not actually seen the various caterpillars that were munching on the butterfly bush form their cozy little homes, but one day, there they were. Had four, that is: two butterflies emerged from theirs, and two remain, no doubt hibernating against the cold weather.

One of the newly emerged butterflies we found on the driveway on Thursday while Getting Things Done here at the ranch. It was still damp from its chrysalis, and I plucked it off the driveway to keep it from getting stomped by a wayward foot. It is a thing of beauty to hold such a creature, truly.