“Cavs Win!” – ESPN Video – ESPN.
In the current issue of Sports Illustrated there is an article about the misery of Cleveland sports. The history is really pretty unbelievable. That city has been the butt of every sports joke for the last 50 or 60 years. The news anchors for the Cleveland station in the video above are referencing that article. The clip in the above link was taking place while I was writing my most previous blog entry.
I forget how I became aware of Tastybrew.com, but it’s a pretty sweet Web site for the amateur brewer. Now that I think about it, I came across it via a poll question on The Mad Fermentationist. The MF said he sometimes uses the site when he doesn’t have access to Pro Mash. I trust that guy because he’s in my homebrew club here in DC, and he makes really great stuff.
Pause. The Cavs and Magic are now tied with 33.4 seconds remaining. Will resume blogging momentarily………..oh yeah, save draft………..
Oh. My. God. I just found out where amazing happens this year. LeBron is truly an MVP.
Anyway, the calculators available on Tastybrew are really fun to play around with and I get to tinkering on them trying to come up with recipes. I did this Double IPA tonight. If any of you readers (or with my blog it’s more likely “people who stumbled across this”) out there have some suggestions that might help me with this, I’d greatly appreciate it. I’ve had the most trouble in my lengthy one an a half years or so as an extract brewer with IPAs so if you have any tips on IPAs in general that would also be helpful.
Here’s the recipe draft. I usually do a full volume boil, starting with about six gallons of water, and I set the calculator to 75 percent efficiency, which I think is how Tastybrew refers to apparent attenuation. (Not sure at which percentage I normally operate, but I figured that was pretty close.)
Double IPA
5 gallons
12 lbs. Light (or extra light) Liquid Malt Extract
1 lb. Crystal 60 L (steeped)
1.5 oz Centennial Pellets (60 min)
1 oz Simcoe Pellets (30 min)
1 oz. Simcoe Pellets (5 min)
½ oz Centennial Pellets (5 min)
1-2 oz Amarillo, Cascade, Simcoe or Centennial dry hops for secondary
Targets:
ABV: 8.1%
SRM:10
IBU: 82
OG: 1.084
FG: 1.021
Hola, it’s cinco de mayo, and I have not much to do as most of my friends have work in the morning. But I did take tonight to celebrate with a bomber of Lagunitas Gnarlywine.
First of all, it gets bonus points for possibly one of the best names ever. It’s simple, it’s funky and it makes sense. Gnarlywine. Why didn’t anyone else thing of it? That’s the question that comes to mind. It’s very fruity. Very grapefruity. It’s nice though. I drank it a bit warm as I didn’t give it enough time to get cold in the fridge. It’s different because it most definitely uses hops of a North American variety, yet there’s not the bitter aftertaste of the west coast hop bombs I’m used to, which means (gasp) it might be balanced! Very good value at five bucks for a 22 oz. bottle.
I watched about three innings of Sox/Yanks and three minutes of Cavs/Hawks and I have a few more Old Rasputins left so I think I’m going to cap off the night by finishing the Mad Max trilogy tonight. I completed it in a week. Not bad at all.
