Random Catch Up Type Things
Blogging is a funny experience. There are a select few who can do it and generate an income from it. For me it is an outlet for the writing bug, as well as being a reward-free endeavor (financially speaking). I don't know if anyone reads this stuff or not.
The problem is that summer is nearly upon us here, leaving me with a time deficit and a work-to-be-done surplus. This surplus was exaggerated by my protracted surgery recovery. This leaves the blog at the bottom of a very large stack of stuff to be done.
As an obvious result, I'll be hanging up the blogging pen until the fall.
As a parting shot, I think I'll leave some recommendations:
- Evodia 'Old Vine' Garnacha. High altitude grenache grown in Calatayud Spain. It's delicious, rich, and inexpensive. The Wine Advocate gave it 90 pts. and you should be able to find a bottle of it for under ten bones. Through February, April, and early May I tasted around three hundred wines for the restaurant. This one really stood out as the perfect combination of quality and price. Sure there were other superb wines, such as Cakebread Chardonnay ($42), Jean Luc Thunevin's Mauvais Garcon Bordeaux ($27), or even the Chateau Beaucastel Chateauneuf du Pape ($140), but being the frugal Mainer that I am, I want value more than anything. Evodia goes into my Pantheon of wines that over deliver at the prince point alongside Perrin Cotes du Rhone Reserve, d'Arenberg Footbolt Shiraz, Acrobat Pinot Gris, Bodega Norton Reserve Malbec, and a host of others.
- Deep Water Brewing Co. Why? Because I brew the beer. We've been getting into dry hopping this summer and I feel it has taken some of our good beers to great beers. Particularly our amber ale has improved with a Willamette dry hop in the secondary. The wonderful spring flowers of that hop just explode out of the glass. The brewpub opens June 1st, and the new brewery should be open by mid summer. Look for a new website coming soon.
- Lian Hearn's Across the Nightingale Floor, Book One of the Tales of the Otori. This is superb fantasy that spans the gap between genre fiction and literature. It was, after all, a New York Time Notable Book.
- Every Day Carry. I love this website.
That's it for now.
Phew!
Three weeks later and I'm finally feeling better. Not 100% mind you, but I am well enough to work and play as I usually do. Posting should resume this week as I collect my thoughts and try to get back on track.
Blogger down
Had a minor surgery on monday and the recovery is not going as planned. Normal posting will resume when I resume being normal.
NASA!
Just when you think computers are the time wasting tool of the devil, NASA goes and does something like this. If you didn't watch, this video animates the entire world ocean and its currents. It is, of course, fascinating to watch.
You can find it in many other formats here.
Sierra Nevada Hoptimum
What can I say about this beer that hasn't already been said about a bushel of pine cones? I kid, of course.
We were lucky enough to snag a couple of these bad boys the other day and give a thorough tasting. First, the vitals: this beer is an imperial IPA with 10.4% abv and 100+ IBU. For those of you who don't get into the numbers, that's a big beer, one of the biggest out there from a major brewery. Comparable beers? Stone Ruination IPA, Bell's Hopslam, and Russian River's Pliny the Younger (or maybe the Elder).
The grain profile for this beer is pretty simple, although I suspect they get some of their gravity from honey. Most of the flavor comes from the hops, as one might expect. This beer is bittered with magnum hops, aroma'd with simcoe and some new proprietary varietal, dry hopped with the same, and finally they run it through a organoleptic hops transducer (I think this is what they call their 'Torpedo') with citra and chinook hops.
My reaction to it was surprising. Although I wouldn't call myself a hophead, I do appreciate the occasional 80+ IBU offering. For me its all in the balance. Here, Sierra Nevada has done a very nice job of mingling the malt palate with the powerful hops and what could be a disastrous amount of alcohol. The result is a very challenging but surprisingly drinkable sipper. Hoptimum is not so much bitter as it is spicy. It's almost spicy sweet, like drinking a glass of sweet riesling with some hot wings.
Would I drink it again? Not likely. Drinking this beer was like climbing a mountain. There was a great deal of challenge and sweat, but it felt great to get to the top of the hill. And while I might not want to do it again, I was happy to have made the climb.
Fire!
What do you do with two hundred year old rotted barn parts? Well, first you reflect for a bit on how amazing the craftsmanship was back then, and then you reflect a bit more on what kind of history you're holding in your hands. Then? Then you make a huge fire and burn it all. It took a grand total of twenty hours to reduce all the wood that was stripped out of the old barn to a pile of ashes that would fit in the back of a pickup truck.
Naturally, a bonfire on a warm day drew attention from all over town. All day we had people stopping by to check us out and take a peek inside of the barn. Maybe its a Maine thing, but when there's an open flame the size of a campfire or larger around here, people just seem to show up. More often than not they bring beer too. That suits us just fine.
Regarding the barn, we saved what we could. Some of it is pretty great actually. Lots of rough cut floor planks and some old doors sent via steamship from Chesapeake Bay. We also managed to preserve about a billion antique nails and other fasteners. There is even a hand painted sign used for identifying one of the original loads of lumber that built the barn. All of it we intend to use for rebuilding whatever we can. At least one of us is also building a desk from a few of the two hundred year old planks.
In the meantime, we just purchased our first ton of grain. Yes, a literal ton of barley will be arriving via truck soon. While its nothing compared to the container loads that other locals purchase, it is a big step for us to go from buying by the bag to buying by the pallet. Having a healthy grain supply is nice. No more emergency runs to the homebrew store for us. The bad part? The bill, of course.
In other news, the computer detox is still on, though it has abated somewhat. All told, I think I managed to salvage another three hours in my day to get real work done. It is amazing what you can waste on what I now call the new 'Idiot Box.' No amount of cat pictures will ever be worth that.
Computer Detox
So what's been going on? A computer and technology detox, that's what. Is that a thing? I don't know. Among the things I am concerned about, I hold the deleterious effect of the internet on the human mind fairly close to the fore. In my experience, the ubiquitous smart phone and google search has made people stupid. And beyond that, the web is a time sink of ephemera.
My response is a computer detox. I don't know how long it will last, but in course of said detox I have scrupulously avoided using the computer for anything but work. Read: no web browsing at all. I'm one week in and already I have discovered several lost chunks of spare time that I didn't know I was wasting on pictures of cats and such. In any case, I like it. If only I could detach myself from email as well.
Amongst the things that have been taking up that free time: Robin Hobb. No, not the woman herself, but her books. I, like many others before me, have finally been pulled into the depths of the Farseer Trilogy: Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 1)
Deep Water Brewing Co.
In the wake of a mammoth cab tasting, we've had quite a week here. What with the barn renovations in preparation for the new brewery, a significant snow storm, and then a educational trip to hang out with the guys at Atlantic Brewing Company, there's been little time to get any writing done. Sometimes life gets in the way.
We've purchased ourselves a new three barrel brewing system (93 gallons) and now all we have to do is build a building to go around it. The good part is that we already have the building; the bad part is that the building is well over a hundred years old and needs significant renovation. Yep, it was a horse barn from the 1820's, located on the rear of the Arborvine property. While the space has several demerits, the good points significantly outweigh them. Namely, we won't have to brew in Brooklin anymore and neither will we have to purchase a new parcel of land to build on.
First things first, we need a concrete floor. Brewing on wood simply won't do. That was the work of the week.
The floor is getting poured next week and in the meantime we will set up the floor drains and other plumbing needs. More fun was our trip to Atlantic. One of the brewers, John, along with office guy, Tyson, walked us through the place and answered our questions. They were very generous with their time and their knowledge. While brewing beer is a fundamentally simple process, the bigger the scale, the more complicated the industrial demands. I won't bore you with the details, but I will show you some pictures.
A row of glycol jacketed and temperature controlled 60 barrel fermentation tanks. They are huge. One of those would provide an entire season of beer for our brewpub.
At left, their 30 bbl mash tun. At right, their boil kettle and the Deep Water brain trust.
Left left, Atlantic brewer John. Left, bulldog keg cleaner and filler. Right, manual feed bottler. I will admit that seeing these things made me feel better. Even a large and successful brewery like Atlantic has to do some things by hand.
Palates of bottles ready to be filled.
Brewery cat "Hops" sits atop a palate of grain ready to be used. Despite appearances, Hops is a very nice cat who kept us company on the tour.
There's nothing Tim loves more than a good fermenter. This one happens to be a miniscule 15 barrels. Hint: Tim is 6'2"
For comparison, here I am with a 60 barrel. Yes, in case you were wondering, I was ensorcelled by my own reflection in the stainless steel.
New Short Story
Today I sent a new short story off into the hands of some dastardly editor. Good luck will have them enjoy it, at the least. Realistically, I expect some good feedback, or at least some nasty feedback that is productive. The story is my first foray into sci-fi and I enjoyed it very much. I don't want to give away too much, but the story gave me an opportunity to explore some interesting philosophical questions. More importantly though, I hope I told a good story along the way.
Tonight we sample: 2010 The Fume from Murphy Goode. I don't usually drink sauvignon blanc in my free time -- fingers crossed. Robert Parker gave the 2009 90 points, so I'm hoping the quality will carry over. We will be pairing it with a parmesan and spinach risotto and some scallops that we have in the freezer. Last week we made shrimp fra diavolo from scratch and it was delicious. This week we try to top that. It should be a good night.
Worth a Read
Read this email from Teller (as in Penn and Teller) to Brian Brushwood. Go ahead, I'll wait...
Done? Good. In case you didn't know, Brian Brushwood is a magician, and an interesting one. So is Teller, but I imagine you've heard of one of the most famous magicians in the world. Brushwood is famous for doing bizarre magic that veers toward the general collection of things that I would call punk/metal/goth. There's mutilations and smashing things with his head, all of it outrageous and unique. He's also part of a new generation of personalities who make themselves accessible to fans. Forums, twitter, podcasting, email, the guy does it all, and I love that.
The email itself, I found to be an inspiration and a revelation. Who knew Teller was so philosophic? What else could someone expect from a man who keeps Sophocles amongst his heroes. Particular among the things I enjoyed was the statement concerning not the creation of their act but its discovery. It smacks of Plato's Meno and the long discussion about knowledge being discovered and remembered, rather than learned.
More than that, I am always particularly inspired, and continually reminded myself, that to succeed one cannot compromise. Writers write, they don't get, in the words of Teller, "a prudent, contented life doing something else." If you love what you do, do it, and if there's something of substance locked up inside of you, it will get out.
So many of us have dreams about becoming something other than what we are. To take Teller seriously, we already are what we want to be. The difference is in the doing. You may want to be, in Brian's case, a magician, but if you spend all your time trying to be someone else, or not doing what you want to do, whatever is in there will never get out.
Yes, I probably took the email too seriously. Reminders are important, though.