Leonard doesn't have much to say

The Tongue Splitter has been bottled for ~3 weeks today, but the b-trip to Bangalore got in the way of me labelling it previously, but less than 2 days after my return (see "The f... you at the drive thru..."), the labels are done, and passed the creative review of Nava. Of course, it helps that:
(a) I'm using one of her paintings as the main component
(b) I mention her on the label
(c) I got Avery Labels, so it's a heck of a lot easier to put on, so it's funner to do, so I spend a bunch more time on this one than I had previously.
(d) I think it's pretty good

Having the first two is a good idea, like throwing a bone to CherkyB, whose been in blog-purgatory for a while, and was Banned from Blogging.

So - one a good note, the Tongue Splitter is ready to drink, and I've had 2 already, and am working on the 3rd now. Slow down, big fella, you might say. But hey, I'm at home, I got jet lag, and the bedroom is only 25-30' away.

On a bad note I just found out that I'm not a true Hophead (scroll down ~1 page). I really enjoy hops and bitterness, but there's got to be enough malt flavor to balance it out.

Which reminds me of some of the food at Samarkand, in Bangalore. We had about 20 people there, and ate for about 2 hours, leaving food on the table when we crept away. Overall, very tasty food - kebabs were very good (but I've had better here), and the tandoori style chicken was amazing - succulent, and loaded with more flavor than I've had anywhere, even in the now closed Empress of India, in Sunnyvale.

But back to the point - one of the kebabs was "spicy", and the guys I was visiting were a little curious to know if I could handle it. It was spicy - not "grab a glass of anything to wash it down hot", but it had kick. But it had 5x more kick than anything else, so all you got was spicy w/ the texture of kebab, and a slightly oily feel. Aka spicy delivery device.

TexieD's "Dry Sauted Jalapeno's on Papadi" are hotter, more flavorfull, and caused much more painful memories the next day. But when it comes to spicy and tasty, TexieD beat Samarkand hands down.

What is dust made of?

Haven't blogged in a couple of weeks, mostly because I've had nothing interesting to write about. But, if I use that as an excuse, then maybe I should have never started the blog....

Nava and I are grand-aunt and uncles yet again - her nephew Shai, and his wife Tamar, had a daughter (first grand niece), Yalli. And, her niece Liron, and her husband Yossi, had a second son.

Finally got around to bottling the Tongue Splitter a couple of nights ago - about 2 weeks after I meant to, but it's done. Have the labels mostly designed - just need to tweak it a bit. Here's the working draft of the label - not quite happy with the text positioning / curve, but it'll end up with these basic components. Big changes are moving the HallerBrau name / logo to the left, and adding some art work of Nava's as the main image. I don't know this guy, but he looks like a hop-head to me!

There's other bloggers who've made Northern Brewer's Tongue Splittler, and blogged about it. Thanks to Nava for sending me the URLs:

• Joel Johnson's Tongue Splitter (who happens to have a link to one of the strangest beers ever made - stranger than the beer made with chicken, aka Cock Ale, this one is Beer as Art, Queef as Beer - you may guess where this one's going...)
• Jason @ MySpace Tongue Splitter
• KnuckleHeadBrewClub's Tongue Splitter
• St. Crispins' Tongue Splitter
• FDMTS' Nader

Flying off to Bangalore, India next Friday (Nov 3rd), for a 1 week b-trip. Had to get my passport renewed, get a business Visa for India, get a few shots, etc. Should be a fun trip, but don't really have anytime for sight seeing.

And we finally got around to getting a new printer. The old HP Office-Jet all-in-1 was finally unable to ever print good looking results (clogged print heads, I think). After a bit of research, we settled on the Canon Pixma MP600 - it's also an all-in-1, but only print / copy / scan, no fax. It's based on the same 'Fine Print' print head (~3.8k inkjet nozzles) and 'ChromaLife' inks (100yr fade resistant) that Consumer Reports rated top notch, but in between (feature and price wise) the two CR highest ratings (the Canon Pixma MP450 and Pixma MP800).

So - what is dust made of? Mostly the detritus of people, kind of like this blog. Bits of this, bits of that.

Look at that rack...

Why is siphoning beer (or wine) off of the junk in the bottom of the fermenter called "racking"?

Hell if I know, but Bret and I racked the TongueSplitter into the secondary fermenter tonight. Had a few problems w/ the siphoning process last time, since I didn't have a good seal between the Auto-Siphon and the racking hose, so I used some rubber bands as clamps this time, and it worked just like the good old days. Back when men were men, women were bow legged, and CherkyB lived in Silicon Valley. Speaking of proud, here's Bret, smiling away because we didn't screw up this batch!



Ordered the ingredients to brew up a Belgian Blonde as well. I'm still a happy customer of NorthernBrewer.com. I got the "Belgian Strong Golden Ale" kit - I started making up my own, but (a) could only order the specialty grains in 1lb increments, and only needed 2-4oz of 4 different ones, (b) it ended up being almost 50% more than the NB kit (probably because I was trying to clone a Belgian ale to much, and even getting European malt extract), which didn't necessarily make much sense.

Now, before CherkyB says none of it makes sense, as I'm just opening a can of condensed beer, adding water and then bottling it. What didn't make sense in this case is I don't want an exact clone of Abbey Leffe Blonde Ale, I just want something like it. I'm not going to (a) brew it exactly the same, (b) I'm don't bother with temperature control while fermenting, and (c) I can't guarantee that I'll let it age enough - if it's pretty tasty in a couple of weeks, it gets drunk.

Kind of like the Peach Ginger Mead adventure. Not my best brew, and I think I can say the oddest thing I fermented, bottled and served to friends and family. Good news is (a) I'm not springing it on as many people as I used to, (b) it may be mellowing some, and (c) if you only try it once a month or so, it's not bad!

Tongue Splitter

Brewed up another batch of beer yesterday evening. It's called TongueSplitter, from Northern Brewer Ale Kit's collection. It's called TongueSplitter because it has a lot of hops - bittering hops, flavor hops and aroma hops. And in pretty big quantities - 5 oz vs. the usual 1-2oz. Should be similar to a lot of the IPA

Bret, the neighbor who wanted to see how making homebrew was done, came over @ 6:45pm, and we started up. Despite a few glitches, like filling the brew kettle within 1" of the top, and having to watch for boil overs for the next 5-10 minutes, and not turning the burner onto "High", so it taking almost 2x to come up to boil than it should have, the whole process went well.

I had made a Yeast Starter on Sunday night, and fed it some more wort on Monday evening, so I had ~3-5x the normal amount of yeast. This morning, when I checked on it, the batch was already bubbling away, with about 1 bubble thru the airlock every 4 seconds. Now, almost a day after pitching the yeast (21 hours) it's pretty much continuous bubbles streaming thru, and a nice ~2 inch krausen.


I think it's going to be very tasty!

Another fun thing to do while drinking Beer...

Play Poker. Now, many of you might say it can be fun, but you'll loose lots of money. If that's the case, you're playing with the wrong crowd. Sunday night's came was in honor of my brother, James, being in town on a visit. Scooter and RIK came over, from the old poker days with James. Tehas was out of town, on another one of his business trips to save his career (if you don't have a real job, at least have one that keeps you busy, so it looks like you're important). Nava played the 5th seat, and James' old friend from High School, back in Ra-cha-cha, DavidA made up the 6th.

As the homebrew supply is rapidly dwindling, there was no homebrew drinking that evening. But, on the bright side, BevMo opened up less than a half mile from my house, so I picked up some CzechVar (aka BudVar, or the original Budweiser, from Budweis, Czech Republic), Leffe Blonde Ale (of "ever had a Belgian Blonde" fame), Spaten Marzen OktoberFest, and a Flying Dog Snake Dog IPA (Ralph Steadman, and man gets makes money by writing / illustrating books on traveling and drinking, etc. does their labels).

It was a better than average selection of beers to taste, and helped keep the humor flying. David, the only new member to the group, fit right in. Probably because he was a friend of James - anyone who has such low standards generally works in our group!

Why is it that so many poker games have stupid names? Mexican Sweat, Baseball in Chicago, Follow the Ladies, Texas Hold'Em? CherkyB, the master of minutiae, probably knows.

I'm not sure if it's because Scooter's smarter than I am, luckier, or wasn't drinking. But, if it hadn't have been for 1 last round of Ben Franklin, I'd have been up money, and Scooter would have been down. But, we figured $6-$8 of my money went to Scooter on that game, although he may have lost some of it to someone else. I curse you, Scooter! But, on the bright side, we didn't have any In Between games go out of control, and end up costing me $80.

The Best Thing About Fall is.... BEER

All of you who know me know that beer is pretty much my religion. I love to drink it, brew it, think about it, and sometimes blog about it.

Drinking your own tasty beer is fantastic. Getting to the end of summer, when you haven't brewed in 3-4 months, and are running out of it is always a time of concern. But, the weather has been cooling off a bit, so the nesting instinct is kicking in again, and I feel like lining my nest with BEER.

Last thing I brewed was an Oatmeal Stout - it was a little weird for the first few weeks, with an almost soy aroma and initial taste, but that cleared up after a few more weeks in the bottle. The Stout and some of the fruit flavored beers (Apricot Bitter and Cherry Amber) are most of what I have left, other than the ill fated Peach Ginger Mead. Finally found some people who don't gag and run to spit it out when they taste it - Bret from across the street, who said it was better than the Apricot Bitter, and Rita and Richard, Rita is one of Nava's painting friends, who said it was like dessert beer, and went home with 3 bottles of it in appreciation!

Even I'm not that fond of drinking it. And worse, from what I know, it's the only alcohol that my brother James has ever (a) refused to drink more of, and (b) spat out the mouth-full he had. This from a guy who asked the Budwiser tour guide if they were just going to throw out the sample of skunked beer if he could finish it.

So - what's next? I've been thinking of doing a Belgian Blonde, but those are higher gravity beers, and should get 4-6 months aging before they're "at their best", so I don't want to do that first, and then have to restrain myself. Maybe I'll do just a new American Pale Ale, with lots of hops. Well, lots of hops for an extract brewer who only boils 2.5 gallons (limits how much bitterness the wort will get from the hops before it's saturated). Pretty simple recipe, not high gravity, so ferments pretty easy and is ready to drink in just 3-4 weeks.

Back to the Belgian Blonde - I tried to find a "clone" recipe for Leffe Blonde. Had some in France, it was quite tasty. Only problem is (a) no good homebrew store by me, which makes it difficult to get small quantities of specialty grains, (b) the one Leffe clone beer ingredient kit on the web says it's not so close, and (c) my normal online supplier ( Northern Brewer) only sells specialty grains by the pound, so if you need 1/8th to 1/4th of five different grains, you get left with a bunch of extra that will probably be stale before you use them.

I think I'll just order the NB's Belgian Strong Golden Ale after I do the TongueSplitter, and maybe stop by the local store (FermentationFrenzy) to see if their stock has improved while I pick up some more bottles.

PS Despite what CherkyB thinks, brewing with extract isn't "making beer tea". Of course, (a) he's got an opinion on everything, (b) he makes stuff up to irritate people, and (c) hasn't brewed in years, and probably won't, now that he has a new riding lawn mower!

Beer vs. Gravity vs. Inertia

BrankyP says I should add a comment to my blog saying "Getting readers by gravity" - a joke on both (a) not blogging often, and (b) having a large head, which causes smaller objects to be pulled towards it.

Which is stronger - gravity or inertia?

In physics, it depends on the velocity of the body in motion, the ratio of masses, etc. In business, it's deadlines (gravity) vs. things as usual (inertia). Deadlines are like gravity, and force almost everything else to bend to their great mass. BKMs, processes, reviews, are all inertia, with the believe that if we just keep doing the same thing it'll work in the end.

Jheez I need a beer - I was wondering about our project finishing, and now I just thought "Oh, maybe that's us vs. the competitor too". Now I wonder if it's why I still work at the same place.

Which brings up the bigger question - which is stronger: beer, gravity, or inertia? I think beer is. It can win over deadlines and just doing the same thing over and over.

Think I'll go get one.

Team Building vs. Beer

Had a team building event yesterday - Quarterly in our corporate misspeak. Spent tons of money so that people could go out paddling on canoes / pseudo kayaks / paddle boats and splash each other, or do tug-of-war and 3-legged races on land. Now, trying to splash or capsize your corworkers isn't normally considered team building, nor is pitting half of your employees against the other half. But, at least they're moderately fun, vs. the made up games they have (lava logs, spider web) to try to encourage everyone to work together, and you're only competing against yourself.

But, even more interesting, a few of us just sat around and had a few pitchers of beers and hung out. Best team building event we ever had. Why? CherkyB would say it's the beer, and he'd be right. Beer provides the reason to sit around the table and talk to each other (vs. trying to kill each other). Beer - helping people sit around and talk for over 6000 years. And that's one of the reasons we're not just animals in pants. Beer. It's 8:30 am on Saturday, is it to early for a beer?