Today I finally got back to brewing after a several month hiatus. I took a little break during the winter, and spring… and I guess most of the summer after the miserable failure of the Fat Tire a while back. That was very sad. The wort was perfect and I think I poured an infected yeast starter in it. Very bad.
Today I brewed up a basic pale ale. “Frog n’ Hound Pale Ale” which is just a basic british pale. A “bitter”. This is my… fourth? Fifth? Something all grain batch and it’s definitly getting easier. I got this one done in about 6 hours total including clean up. I also burned the hell out of my arms, my face, my stomach and some other parts when I dumped about a half gallon of 170 degree water all over myself. Note to the listening audience. “Don’t do that.”
Every time I do this I want a more permanent setup more and more. I spend a huge amount of time moving buckets of nearly boiling liquid back and forth from outside to the dining room. I bet I could a few hours off of the process if I had a place to put everything, a steady gas source, a water source and a pump. If I ever get around to buying a house, or even renting a different house with a basement I am not afraid to go into I am definitly going to have to build a 1 or 2 bbl semi-permanent system. With my geekery and love of gadgets I know I can almost completely automate the process and definitly remove the heavy lifting, which would make the process so much better. Ah well, maybe I’ll get around to that if I don’t do this other thing I’ve been thinking about doing.
In other news, I finally broke down and bought a new monitor. I decided to match Adam’s loot level and buy an HP 2335L 23″ LCD monitor. It’s the most expensive thing in the universe, but it was worth every penny. 1920×1200 native resolution, 16ms response rate. I’ve played some FPSes on it and they look great and of course normal desktop use is incredible. I love it. Almost more than anything I love all the extra desk space I have now after getting rid of my monster 19″ CRT.
I finally launched the project I’ve been working on at work since February, and that was awesome. The first week was a little bumpy but things are moving right along now. It’s a good feeling to see your software used by a bunch of people doing things that are neccesary to keeping the company running. Most of my work till now has been on public websites where it didn’t matter too much if something went wrong. Not that that made me slack, that was just how it was. Now, if my software breaks a whole bunch of people start yelling really fast, and I like that. Mmm… responsibility. Accountability. Fun!