The Return of Brewblog (and more!)

This slapped together blog post includes more homebrew discussion, which I quite enjoying writing about actually, so expect to see a lot more of these type of posts, followed by a couple of my standard monthly "Blogging about..." topics. And I finish with a hopefully entertaining story of a rock concert and a girl.

Brewblog, Entry Two

Since the last Brewblog entry, we have created two Blonde Ales on two Saturday brew days.

The first, an American-style Blonde Ale, which I have dubbed Simon's Blonde, was made with a medium-sized grain bill of Pale and Wheat malts, and only Amarillo hops. It should be a malty, light beer with moderate hop bitterness and low hop aroma. We attempted the 30-minute mash again on this brew day, with the far less encouraging result of 72% efficiency. It does appear that the size of the grain bill greatly affects our efficiency, but I haven't been able to figure out the exact equation yet.

The second, a Belgian-style Blonde Ale, which I have dubbed Trevor's Blonde, was made with a larger grain bill of Pilsener and Biscuit malt, plus a sugar addition, and only Saaz hops. It should be slightly sweet with a dry finish, well balanced by the hops, and because of the Belgian yeast used, have some pleasant fruity esters in the aroma. Our efficiency was just under 72% on this day, but that was with a 60-minute mash. Of the two Blonde Ales, I am most looking forward to Trevor's Blonde, as we have had interesting and promising results with Belgian beers in the past.

During the Trevor's Blonde mash, we bottled our month and a half old Imperial Stout, which I dubbed Blackout Stout when it was supposed to be 9% abv--but it's only 7% in actuality, because our efficiency was below 70% on that day (HUGE grain bill), and its gravity finished higher than expected. (I have seen the same result of gravity finishing higher than expected with Scott's Stout 2 and 3, as well, so it may simply be an issue with Brewsmith's predictive abilities with dark roasted grains.) Blackout Stout is a strongly bitter, roasty stout, but it would not do well in competition as a Russian Imperial Stout. If any bottles last the year (extremely unlikely), I may try entering it into competition as an American Stout.

For the coming Saturday brew day, I have proposed doing a simple mostly (or possibly only) Pale malt recipe with a single variety of hops used for bittering, flavour, and aroma. We have done interesting experiments of this nature in the past with Cascade hops, but I'm curious about what results you'd get with Goldings, Fuggles, Hallertau, Chinook, or Northern Brewer, to name a few of our lesser used hops.

In terms of beer ingredients, up until a month ago our biggest expense was hops. Purchased locally, a one ounce bag of hops costs $5. Knowing we were getting hosed, we found a supplier online that sells hops for an average of $10 per pound. With shipping and taxes, we are now getting hops for just over $1 per ounce, which is a huge cost savings. I now have nearly ten pounds of hops (AWESOME!) in my refrigerator freezer (uh oh) in ten different varieties (AWESOME!), specially selected to cover pretty much any beer style I could think of, allowing for reasonable substitutions.

The next biggest expense is probably specialty grains, or maybe liquid yeasts, but it's not easy to maintain a large stock of either of those ingredients. As much as I'd love to have a giant bag of roasted barley on hand for easy stout creation, that is completely impractical for the size of our operation and the size of my house. There has been some discussion of trying to reuse liquid yeasts, since they cost $10 a shot, but if we were going to start doing that on any kind of large scale, I'd need a second refrigerator for sure.

And that's about all I have to say on the subject of homebrewing today.

Shaping Up?

Yes!

Finally.

I noticed a couple weeks ago that my face was getting fat. That was the turning point. I had been ignoring the ever expanding gut for a couple months, but once my weight gain spread to my face in such an obvious way, I could no longer pretend that my lazy ass lifestyle was not harming me. A quick Wii Fit weigh-in confirmed that I had gained 20 pounds in the last few months. Holy fuck.

Not only have I restarted both the 100 Pushups and 200 Situps challenges (because a structured program will always work best for me), but I've been regularly running on my elliptical machine and doing a little bit of strength training (or best approximation thereof possible with the Total Gym that my ex-wife bought a few years ago). I was also walking Daisy on a daily basis, until the weather went to shit.

I also bought a new bike on my birthday. It is a Trek Allant, part of Trek's "Urban" series. I have only ridden it once to work so far, but I couldn't have anticipated the awful fucking weather we are getting now when I bought it. Buying a new city bike was pretty much the only way I was going to motivate myself to bike to work this summer, because my mountain bike is hurting. A tune up would probably go a long way, but a new bike goes a lot longer.

How quickly can I shed 20 pounds? Stay tuned.

Oh, thank jebus!

My fifteen year high school reunion has been canceled due to lack of interest. Ha! Awesome.

The ALES club annual BBQ was scheduled for the same day in June, so now I can attend that instead. Awesome.

My June vacation is looking better and better. I am even now looking forward to a certain wedding. Weird. But also: awesome.

A Story About a Girl

On Monday night, I attended "An Evening With Our Lady Peace," a cool concert at the Conexus Arts Centre where OLP played their entire album Clumsy in the first set and then played the rest of their hits in the second set. No opening act necessary.

This story is not so much about the concert itself (which was very good) as it is about my harrowing experience during the concert. Harrowing? That might be a tad strong.

Side story that has nothing to do with the rest of this: when I drove up to the Conexus Arts Centre before the show, I spotted a familiar face. The one and only girl that I met online and then in person in 2009 was standing on the sidewalk waiting for a friend. I had totally forgotten that she was a huge Our Lady Peace fan. I doubt she noticed me as I drove past, but when walking up to the front door, I nearly ran right into her and did an obvious about-face dodge to start walking the other direction, pretending to take a call on my cell phone. God, I am so lame.

So, anyway, inside the theatre, my seat was second from the right in the fourth row on the floor. That's a mouthful to establish that it was quite close to the stage. Easily the best seat I've ever had for a concert of this size. The seat next to me, on the aisle, was empty. During the first set, everyone on the floor stayed in their seats, which was a nice surprise for me because I fucking hate standing. Therefore, the first set was extremely enjoyable. Sit back and listen to a great band play one of their best albums? Fuck yeah.

As the band came out for their second set, people starting standing up. Specifically, the three douchebags in the third row that were directly between me and the majority of the stage were the first people to stand up in the entire fucking theatre. After a few minutes, Raine Maida encouraged everyone to stand for this "fucking rock show" and so I reluctantly did. The couple on the left of me were the last people in the theatre to stand, and definitely the grumpiest rock concert goers I've ever encountered, but more on that in a bit.

I must note that I was wearing my ThinkGeek "geek." shirt on this night. It's a surprisingly important detail.

With an empty seat to my right, and the entire crowd now standing, I guess it was inevitable that some people would take advantage of that gap in the audience so close to the stage. It started with one girl, before I even stood up. As I was standing, taking off my jacket (which I wore all through the first set), and draping it over my seat, the first girl's fucking hammered friend (herein referred to derogatively as "drunk chick") joined her. Rather than stand to the right of her friend, where there was room in the aisle, she instead forced her way past her friend to stand right beside me (or, more accurately, right behind me, because I was standing at an angle). Where there wasn't actually any room to stand. Within seconds, she had knocked my jacket onto the floor. Grumpily, I bent over to pick it up and rehang it, and it was then that drunk chick noticed my shirt.

Apparently, she liked it. As her friend apologized for drunk chick knocking my jacket onto the floor, drunk chick cooed something about "Oh, geek..." and giggled. In response, I nodded my head, smiled politely and turned my attention back to the show. Unfortunately, it became very hard to keep my attention on the show when drunk chick decided that she did not need to respect my personal space at all. I spent the next few songs standing rigidly still while drunk chick rubbed her entire fucking body all over my back and right side. She wasn't grinding on me, or anything quite that absurdly or overtly sexual, but she was basically dancing against me. I certainly have not been touched by that much boob in a while.

Now, some of you out there might be thinking, "Holy hell, that's awesome!--lucky guy!" You obviously don't know anything about me if you think I would feel that way, but whatever. (A tongue-out emoticon would be appropriate here, if I wasn't so opposed to using emoticons on this blog.) I have not commented on her appearance at all because that is irrelevant to my reaction. (Okay, to be perfectly honest, if she had been a fat drunk chick, I might have fled.) If you have ever watched The Big Bang Theory, picture Sheldon Cooper in this situation. Yeah, that's right; that's me. Although Sheldon would have probably said something. Me, I was just frozen in a state of perpetual WTF.

I have to thank the guy beside me, whom upon seeing the predicament I was in, gave me as much space as he possibly could without pissing off his grumpy wife by standing completely sideways during the entire show. It didn't really help, because drunk chick was attached to me no matter how far to the left I moved, but "Thanks, dude" for trying.

After a few songs, drunk chick tried to tell me something. I couldn't hear, so responded, "Sorry?" and pointed to my ear. She then whispered into my ear, "Will you help me rush the stage?" Shaking my head "No" and mouthing, "Sorry, what?" prompted her clarification, "If you let me past, I can rush the stage."

With great relief, I let her walk past me and watched her force her way towards the centre of the theatre. I have no idea how she thought that would help her rush the stage, but I didn't fucking care, because I now had my personal space back. Finally able to look to my right again, I couldn't help but notice that now standing to the right of drunk chick's friend, in the aisle, were two guys, almost certainly their boyfriends. Nice.

The friend, eventually noticing that drunk chick was gone, asked me where she went. I pointed towards the middle of the the theatre and shrugged my shoulders. Her friend laughed and said something to the two guys. She then offered me gum for some reason. I wasn't interested.

My attention was now back on the show, finally able to enjoy it again. For three songs or so. And then drunk chick was back, better than ever.

She reintroduced herself by laying her hand on my chest and drawing her finger along the word "geek." She giggled and gurgled something unintelligible about geeks. I looked back at her, nodded politely (my standard reaction to crazy shit), and her friend, looking rather aghast, stepped in to pull her away, scolding her, "No, no, no." (This was easily the second funniest moment all night. The funniest is coming soon, and surprisingly has nothing to do with drunk chick. Actually, other than this one moment, there wasn't much that was funny about the drunk chick situation--at the time. Now, however, it's pretty funny...) I glanced over to their boyfriends and saw that their eyes were on the stage.

Although blatantly touching my chest was apparently a no no with drunk chick's friend, drunk chick was still allowed to dance against me for a number of songs. She also now enjoyed screaming at the stage, right into my fucking ear. My tolerance for putting up with bullshit and desire to avoid conflict are apparently extremely high.

At some point, she finally made good on her plan of rushing the stage, this time with the smarter plan of walking up the right aisle to the stage. I laughed as she was rebuffed by the bouncer two times. When she returned, her new plan to draw Raine's attention to her (which admittedly worked like a charm) was to sit on her boyfriend's shoulders. By this time, the couple in the third row directly in front of me had left or moved somewhere else, so she of course chose to sit on her boyfriend's shoulders right in front of me, but only blocking my view of bassist Duncan Coutts, which: who gives a fuck. In the last instance of a recurring theme throughout the night, her friend apologized for her. And then her friend's boyfriend also gave me an apologetic shrug as if to say, "Sorry, dude, she's fucking drunk." In my personal opinion, if you are that drunk, you shouldn't be sitting on someone's shoulders, but no major accidents followed, despite my expectation that this evening would end with drunk chick fucking falling backwards onto me. She also surprisingly kept her shirt on.

Remember those three douchebags that were first to stand up at the beginning of the second set? One of them now had the bright idea of standing on his chair, blocking my view much more than drunk chick had. Awesomely, in the funniest moment of the night, grumpy girl to my left reached out and slapped that fucker on his back, nearly knocking him to the floor.

With the concert winding down, I was able to reclaim my spot and give the couple to my left some of their personal space back. Even after getting off her boyfriend's shoulders, drunk chick decided to stay in the third row, thankfully. I stuck around until the end of the encore, now able to relax and enjoy the music, although my feet were sore from standing for so long, and then rushed out of there with no further incidents.

What a night! It's too bad that OLP, despite a great selection of songs that were all well played, was so overshadowed by a fucking crazy drunk girl. I barely even remember the second set; I just remember drunk chick.