Slow going
August 9, 2008
Brewing day! I decided to brew a batch of Irish red ale for Dan’s visit next month, as that’s his preferred beer style, and I think it’s going to come out fairly well. I’m experimenting with some different hops and different grains, too, and hopefully it’ll end up being reddish. I doubt I can get it red on my first try, though. I even came up with a name for it: Red Hat Red, in reference to his employer.
All grain brewing, while giving me much more control over ingredients and thus color, flavor, etc. also takes much longer to do. My original plan for today was to get up early, get some breakfast, go for a run, start brewing, go to the store during the 90 minutes the grain mashes (steeps) in hot water, continue brewing, then make granola and bread with Hanne. Well, I got up late and so my whole schedule got thrown off, and now it’s almost 3 PM and I have maybe another 90 minutes of brewing left to do. As my post title indicates, slow going. I may not even get to the baking today, and instead save it for tomorrow afternoon following the bridge pedal.
That should be a fun bike ride, though probably fairly difficult for me. I have no doubt that I’ll be able to complete it, but it’ll certainly be the longest bike ride I’ve taken in many years. I plan on taking some pictures at the top of the bridges you can’t normally ride across (Fremont and Marquam), so expect to see those at some point.
My plan of going without alcohol during the week is going nicely, but it’s odd not cracking open a beer while I’m cooking or settling down on the couch to watch a movie without a glass of wine. I didn’t realize how ingrained the consumption of alcohol was in my life (of course, I say this as I’m brewing five gallons of beer as we speak) until I cut it out, but at least I’ve allowed myself some slack on the weekends. Last night Hanne and I had a beer at the Green Dragon, and then we wandered up the street for waffles and wine for dinner. It was a nice evening.
As I’m still “allowed” to drink tonight, I have two bottles of beer to drink while cooking dinner and then during/after, but of course, I can’t have too much given our ride tomorrow morning. We’re going to have a fairly interesting dinner tonight, courtesy of some of the veggies we got in our box this week, plus some research and imaginative recipes. First up is a bell pepper pasta salad to use up the rest of the kale, then to use our cabbage we’re going to make some cabbage rolls, stuffed with hamburger, ricotta, cauliflower, celery, spices, spinach, and whatever else sounds good from our fridge. Then we’ll bake them and see how they come out. It should be…interesting, at the very least. Cabbage rolls and pasta salad. And granola and bread before that. It’ll be quite the afternoon of cooking.
That is, assuming I can ever finish brewing.
Posted in 
content rss
