Thanks to the Redmans, who hosted a birthday party for Finn’s neighbor on the bench above. There was splashing in the pool, swinging on the swing, and a reluctant pinata that took some fatherly persuasion to give up the goods before it began raining.
This morning we took in the farmer’s market for the first time this year, scoring corn, tomatoes, eggplant and peaches. After Finn’s nap, she and I ran some errands to beautiful downtown Glen Burnie, which is sort of the bizarro Columbia—the stores are all the same, but the missing-tooth/tattoo/mullet frequency in the citizenry goes off the charts. Then it was back home to make dinner, read books, and sample some guacamole before bedtime.
I uploaded the entry for March 26, 2002 this evening and when I hit Publish it became the 3,000th post on this site. Coincidentally, the content of what will become post 3001 (March 25, 2002) was the first anniversary of the weblog.
Batch number 4 is in the bag (or, I should say, in the fermenter). Everything went a lot smoother, based on the knowledge I gained in Chestertown this past weekend. Brian’s friend Kevin invited us over while he was interviewed for a newspaper article on homebrewing, and while we watched I picked up on a bunch of tips and tricks that helped me avoid a bunch of the gotchas that made my last batch a little suspicious. One of the things I picked up on was only using one bag of ice to cool the wort and then filling the rest with water. And, don’t cover the wort as it’s brewing. I also learned that it’s not really as important when the extract goes in, but all the timing should be based on the hops. I’m also going to need a new hydrometer; this is the second one I’ve broken in three batches. I’m also going to look for a long plastic stirring spoon and a large strainer to make transferring wort cleaner.
Update: I killed my yeast. Turns out the thermometer I have is bad; I checked it vs. a kitchen thermometer we’ve got in the drawer and it’s at least 30° off, so when I added the yeast the wort was still somewhere around 110° or so, which is too hot for the live yeast to live in. We took a trip to Maryland Homebrew and I got a second envelope of ale yeast to add this afternoon; hopefully I can salvage it. Rats!
Update Update: The yeast is partying like it’s Thursday evening down there. Lots of foam, the valve is dancing, and I’m happy.
So the syndication plugin I’ve been using to pull content in from the Scout weblog appears to be broken; the errors it’s throwing don’t make any sense and the error messages are little or no help. Which sucks.
I’ve been streaming The Civil War at work over the last couple of days, and finished up with the first episode yesterday. I didn’t see the series when it first aired (I was living in Baltimore with a black and white TV and couldn’t pull the PBS signal in with rabbit ears) but wow, what an impact that had on me. I’m now quite fascinated with the subject. I’ve been thinking about reading material for the beach, and was settled on the middle three of the Harry Potter books; I think I’m going to add The Killer Angels to the list. Some of the trivia from the war is fascinating: For example, consider Wilmer McLean, on whose property was fought the first battle, and in whose parlor at Appomattox, four years later, the surrender documents were signed.
I’m no closer to brewing my next batch of beer, but I may activate the yeast tomorrow morning to see if it rises by the time I get home. I’d like to get this batch fermenting as soon as possible, because the recipe says it’ll be 4-5 weeks. It also calls for double fermentation but I think I’m going to skip that part. Last weekend, Brian helped me remember that the Hefeweizen extract I’d used came from a friend of his, and must have been at least five years old by the time I cooked it. So I don’t feel so bad about that batch being so lousy. I’m just going to buy a six-pack of something good and pour out 3/4 of the hefeweizen so that I can reuse bottles for the new batch.
After a long weekend of driving and family and friends and swimming and wrenching, we’re all safely back home. Mama and Finn spent the day home from life in their PJ’s catching up on naps and rest after a total of about three centuries in the car, and I expect they’ll need at least another month of recuperation before they’ve caught up on sleep. My trip across the bridge was awesome, documented elsewhere on the web. I’d have pulled in through syndication from the other weblog, but for some reason it’s throwing errors and I’m too tired to troubleshoot it right now.
