So today we decided to take our Milk Stout that measured out at a MASSIVE 2% alcohol and bottle it. More than likely it’s going to be a super sweet very very very non-alcoholic beer, but whatever. We had the bottles and if we end up pouring them out or seaoning beef with them so be it.
So at the end of the bottling process I decided that I would take the specific gravity of the English Ale that we brewed on Friday… Yeah, I was worried that the Yeast Smack Pack that we used wasn’t that great and that we would have another beer that was hovering around 3%…
so to check the gravity we use this little hydrometer thing that sinks to a certain level…a high gravity means that there’s still a bunch of sugar in the beer, well this time it came up as 1.02… using our calculations that means the beer is currently at 11.3% alcohol. I was amazed… Damn .. looks like that’s going to be an Old Ale or Barleywine style beer. Think we’ll end up drinking that around Christmas time to allow it to mature. Either way it was a nice little upper considering the failure of our Milk Stout.
The other interesting thing was the today when I got home, I walked outside to look at the Jungle and I was shocked… There, slightly off to the left is a crop circle… “A crop circle?” you say…yes.
There’s a 3′ in diameter circle pressed down in my lawn. I don’t know why. I don’t know where it came from, but I really woudld like to find out. Hopefully it’ll bounce back up so I can mow it before it rots there, but I doubt it. I think that tomorrow after work I’ll go and get a pair of sheers or something from the hardware store so that I can cut down the jungle before I mow it.
I personally think that it was Princess Jill and her kittens that went and made a nice little area to lay in the sun, but I’ll never know. Anyway, I got my lawn mower in the mail today, so that’s sitting here on the floor of my living room in pieces.
It’s resterant week in the city, so Wed. Laura and I are going to Blue Smoke to get some ribs and some beer (Surprisingly they have quite the good beer selection) so I’ll explain that further once I head over there.
Anyway, it’s time to relax.

So I was pretty busy last night. I was finally able to get the brewing process (full-mash of course) down to about 4.5 hours, not counting the time it took to get the water up to temp. So that’s pretty damn good. Erik and I brewed up a 5 Gallon batch. It’s going to be pretty kick ass. We designed it after an English Ale called Young’s SLA which is a tasty brew. We added in a different strain of hops and upped the grain content…Jeez.. it came out to a specific gravity of 1.105 which is pretty high. Hopefully we’ll be able to get the alcohol content up to around 10%, but we’ll see.
On a less excited note, we took the specific gravity of our Milk Stout and did the calculations to find out that it only has a whopping 2% alcohol… So we pitched some more yeast in there in hopes that it’ll restart the fermentation process, but I have my doubts. It may be a lost cause.
Laura and I are heading out to the Six Point Brewery in Red Hook today, so that should be exciting. I’m looking forward to it. The two guys that run it are pretty cool, so we’ll see.

http://www.sixpointscraftales.com

Of their beers that I have had the chance to try, they were all quite hoppy, which, awhile ago I wouldn’t have liked but things are changing a little bit. We’re hoping that we can get a bunch of home brewing supplies from them (they said we could) so we’ll see.
Anyway, we’re off right now.

Interesting article there about a BIG ASS camera. 4000 Megapixles or something outrageous like that.
Anyway…
That’s almost as interesting as MIT students figuring out that there’s really a 5th state of matter…(Solid, Liquid, Gas, Plasma, and now Superheated Fluid Gas) or something like that. Check out http://www.slashdot.com…It’s on there.
I have been very bad. Very delinquent. I haven’t written in here in quite a few days, so I have much to catch up on.
So the other day (Tuesday) Laura and I went to the homebrewers meeting. It was interesting, a little weird, but interesting. People there were hitting on Laura, but at least we were able to get some good brewing information out if it. Figured out what was wrong with our first brew (we needed more flavored malt) and got some dirrection for our next batch. We also learned how to make malted lemonade and Spiced Cider which will be excellent for a winter time beverage. I’m excited…
Tonight we’re going to brew our third batch of beer. It’s going to be a London Ale with a kick. We’ve purchased 14 lbs of grain, and a nice ammount of Hops, so we’ll see. Should be something similar to a London SLA but a little darker. This time we’re just flying by the seat of our pants, so we have NO IDEA how this will come out.
Our Milk Stout is currently sitting in the kitchen… We’re kind of scared about it. The fermentation was REALLY quick. We’re talking like 36 hours quick. So we hope that our yeast was happy and eating heartily at that time, but I have my doubts. We’ll rack it to the secondary fermenter tonight.
In other news, at the homebrewers meeting the guys from 6 Points Brewery were there. We were speaking with them for a bit, and they told us to stop in this weekend to tour the facility. Hopefully eventually we’ll be able to help out. They are a brand new brewery (4-5 months old) so it’s just the two guys that are working there.
They were telling us how they are going to attempt to brew the strongest beer in the world. It’ll be around 28% or so… They offered yeast strains to any home brewer that was bold enough to give it a shot. So I think that we’re going to have to make a Double Black Chocolate Imperial Stout with it, and have it ready for Christmas time as a nice winter warmer. That or a Barleywine would be nice. We’ll see.
With our current setup we can brew around 3 times a week, so hopefully we’ll keep up that pace and have more beer than we can handle. Also, we found out that we can get bottles for cheap at American Beer Distributors. So we won’t have to scrounge to fine enough bottles anymore.
On a more personal note, I can no longer call the Lawn a “Lawn” or hell.. even a lawn…yes, it’s true, it’s more like a jungle right now. Freaking Home Depot and UPS couldn’t get the delivery directions right (Or maybe I entered it wrong…whhooops) and the lawnmower I ordered didn’t come in yet. I doubt that the little manual lawn mower is even going to work on those huge tall weeds. We’ll see. Maybe we’ll have to go and get a little weed whacker to kind of tame down the lawn. I just hope that the weeds haven’t choked out the nice little grass that we planted. I’ll have to go and get some weed killer in a few weeks
to really put a stop to this lawn madness.
So the whole ranch thing is coming along. Laura and I have been looking into the various things about it. Doing data entry and just trying to make sense of it all. We looked into Cattle software called CattleLog… I thought that was such a fun name.. Anyway, yeah good stuff. Much too boring to put up anymore than that, but anyway.
So I put up a few things on Ebay. I finally did it. So that’s cool. They are actually ending in like 2 hours or so.
I should make a good bit of money from them, but that’ll go right towards expenses.
Speaking of expenses, I think that I may have found a way to really take off some of the cost of school. Friend of a friend owns the company that does the staffing at the US Open, much to Laura’s chagrin, I will hopefully be working there as either a Staff Manager or bar tender. Bar staff last year walked away with something like $12,000 for two weeks work. If I could do that, that would REALLY bite into this year’s money issue with college. At least I know that when I get my tax returns back I’ll get much more money that I should So there is a silver lining. We’ll see, that’s still hypothetical.
Work has been about on par. Nothing too special to report. Just wishing that I could go outside more often, and walk around more. I just hate sitting behind this desk for so damn long every day. Oh well. I’ve been really active recently in getting control of everything that I do here. So like a month ago I sent a letter to a local paralegal asking for a list of cases that were settled but money hadn’t been sent yet. So what happens? Nothing. They never send it. Then I get a Nasty-Gram yesterday saying that money is 120 days overdue and that there are motions pending on the money. I was pissed. Oh well, whatcha gonna do?
Anyway, speaking of which, I gotta get back to work and write up those requests for money.

It’s 9:50pm on Sunday night. I’ve had a nice weekend. I can’t say that I did a whole lot, but that’s okay. I had a good time. Brewed up a batch of Sweet Stout. Hopefully the other brew materials will come pretty soon so that either Tuesday or Thursday night we’ll be able to brew again.
I posted a bunch (3) things on E-Bay today, so that’s good. Finally getting on the ball with clearing out the junk in this house, so that’s good. I am sure that I could go around the place and find like 10 more things that I should shed, but that’s okay.
I’m actually looking forward to each week that passes, it’s kind of strange. I’ve finally gotten to a point where I am looking forward to the futre, and not looking back on the things that have passed. Yes, I may be counting the days, but in a good way. Before I was like “Damn it… 15 more months till things turn around” now it’s like “Wow.. just a few more days and my life is back on track…” very exciting times.
A few days ago I posted something about not wanting to head back to school, and really dreading it, but then I got to thinking. You know, not matter what other things there are, an education and being able to challenge yourself by learning is always a good thing. Laura and I have been working on this Cow stuff for our eventual trek across the country in July, and it’s actually starting to look pretty good. It’s hard for me to get excited, especially when all we’re really doing is data entry, but it’s becoming more and more of a real scenario, so that’s pretty cool. We spent a good part of this afternoon working on the main spreadsheet. There’s still a bit to do, but it’s coming along.
Oh, and can I just say that I love living in Brooklyn? I mean damn, it’s a good time. So many good places to go out to drink at and to see. The fact that we have a back yard with a lawn… yes, it’s true.. it’s a lawn now, not just a weed filled patch…is just so nice. I actually ended up ordering a lawn mower today from Home Depot. Yes… it’s going to be a good time cutting the grass. Right now we have such a buildup of weeds I think it may actually be hindering the grass growth. I figure that once we mow the thing 3-4 times we’ll be able to put down some weed killer. I’m hoping that the weeds will need all their leaves to grow, unlike the grass, and that the lawnmower will take a good chunk of them away, but I have my doubts. Anyway, I’ll let you know how that works out.
I still haven’t made it out to B&H to use my gift card, so that kind of sucks. Looking foward to doing that, but I still don’t know what I’ll be getting. I was thinking… I know, it’s terrible, that I may just get an Ipod. I think that I would enjoy it for running. I’ve been running everyday now.. cept today.. and I think that it woul dbe nice, but who knows. I am going to try to borrow Laura’s tomorrow morning when I go running and see how I like it. It may be more of a pain than it’s worth.
Today, as a break from the cow data stuff, Laura and I went out and got a few hair brushes for the cats. I swear I pulled a small kitten off of Seven, but wouldn’t you know.. you pet the bastard and the hair still comes out. They are shedding like mad. It’s rather irritating when you can’t even hold them without them just covering you with hair.
Anyway, it’s time that I go and do something productive.

Laura and I brewed our first sweet stout today. It’s in the fermenter hopefully starting to ferment. I’m quite excited. I’ve not had much experience with sweet stouts as it stands, but what I have had has been pretty good. Mackson’s XXX Sweet Stout is available most places for those that haven’t sampled the style.
So I figure that in about a week it should be all done fermenting and we’ll be able to transfer to the secondary fermenter. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to brew again on Monday so that we can transfer the Stout to the secondary at pretty much the same time as the Scottish 80 Pence that we’ll be brewing. I don’t think it’ll happen. Or another good scenario would be to transfer to the secondary (the Sweet Stout) while brewing to take up some time. We’ll see how that all works out.
Tried a Dopplebock today. I wasn’t impressed. The bottle that I had was called Celebrator Dopplebock. So many people really love it, but I just don’t. I dunno, I think that I’ll stick to my perenial favorites of Imperial Stouts and IPAs… can’t beat your strong beers.
I told Laura that I would bring her to dinner tonight, so I figure that we’ll head out to a Mexican joint that’s pretty close to our house (not Crazy Nacho…well…Loco Burrito for the uninformed).
Anyway, it’s off to get some Mexican food then possibly head out to a bar or something.

I was just reading this story and although it deals with the child porn stuff, that doesn’t really seem to be the central issue to me. It’s kind of disturbing. Let’s look at it like this… you, John Q. Smith, are sitting there browsing blogs very similar to this one. You get into a strange one that’s talking about sexual adventures or whatever. Nothing too scandalous, but then there is a link. Like many people, you click the link…NAKED BABIES.. or pre-teens for that matter come up in hordes. All the sudden you have this stuff in your cache. Let’s say that John Q. Smith is ignorant on how to change that. He quickly leaves the site after he realizes that that’s FUCKING DISGUSTING and goes about his blog reading. Two days later, his business is audited or some other sort of crazy shit happens and someone with authority is searching his computer. All the sudden he’s got Child Porn on his computer even though he never wanted it there. He gets arrested and his life is ruined. There are certain labels that you can throw on people that RUIN lives and friendships. One is Rapist and the other is Pedophile. You say that someone is either one of those words, and I don’t’ care if you are the pope or a father of 5, you are screwed. People assume guilt. Believe me, I’m talking from experience here.
So anyway, John Q. Smith gets arrested and sentenced to 5 years in jail, and he’s a felon.
Courts claim that because it was on his computer he had possession…how is that fair? How is that just? That you take possession of something because you look at it? You can’t tell WHAT is going to be on a web page when you click a link. You may have an idea, but you can’t KNOW. If you did the why the hell would you click it?
I’m not being an advocate for Mr.Edward Ray Barton… that bastard looked at little children for 4 hours…sick and twisted shit. But I guess you have to wonder, is four hours worth 20 years of his life? Why is he to blame? I understand that if people don’t look at it, then there is no demand and the industry will stop, but let’s be honest…it’s not going to happen.
I guess the question is this… is he a repeat offender in the sexual predatory world? Does he do this all the time or was this a one time curiosity thing. If I go to a bestiality web page and look around because it’s a curiosity and I’m disgusted, does that make me an animal fucker? No.
It just disturbs me that someone can get 20 years just like that. Maybe I don’t know the whole story, but that’s just lame.

81 Days. Just 81 Days tills school starts up again. It’s been 2 years now since I’ve set foot on campus. Two years since I’ve been in a class. I have to say.. I’m not really looking forward to it. As much as so many people enjoy their college experience, I’m not really looking forward to my senior year. I mean I get all the responsibility of being an adult, I don’t get to participate in sports, and I have to go to classes and actually put in effort to get my GPA up because I messed it up so badly my other three years. But…on the bright side, I’ll have few distractions and I’ll be able to have something to focus on again. So that’s a good thing.
Recently Laura and I have been plotting out our post-grad…well my post-grad, her post-spending a year living with her boyfriend, which has been exciting and scary at the same time. For those that don’t know (I may have written this already) we’re going to be moving to Texas to work on her grandfather’s cattle ranch. Very exciting, but we’re also planning (hold your breath) on opening up a brewery in Austin after we spend a year or so at the Ranch. Super exciting. Laura came up with one of the best ideas for a name of a brewery, and we’re looking into trademarking it right now… who the hell knew that it was $325 to trademark something? Crazy right? And if it’s not successful, then they just take you money and you get nothing but a letter saying you suck.
Needless to say we’re a little bit cautious about it. I have an attorney that I’m going to call to talk about it so we’ll see how that goes.
In other news, Princess Jill is officially gone. I haven’t seen her in about a week, so I figure that she has taken her kittens to greener pastures. I was glad that I could help for the little time that I did. Oh well.
Also, thank you all that attended my BBQ this weekend, I had a wonderful time barring my one incident near the end of the evening…I’m sure you can figure that one out. And I blame whoever was mixing the margaritas…because those were not margaritas; it was Tequila on the rocks with a splash of lime. Bastards.
Fantasy Football: Starts in 50 days. So if you want to be in the league, it’s $50. Sent me an email at mlastname@asdfasdf.com and I’ll send you the information. Should be a good time. Cash prizes obviously.
It’s Thursday. I can’t believe that I have one more day of work to do. I even took off Monday (Thanks to Laura we had a nice day off together and went shopping around town…hence my earlier B&H story) so I really have no excuse.
Oh and as for the beer brewing…well… yeah we didn’t do it. Laura and I sat around talking about stuff, so we had to put it off. It’s going to take place on Sat. or Sunday, depending on how much we procrastinate. I also ordered Scottish 80 Pence, which is amber colored ale. Should be pretty good. Figured that we couldn’t keep brewing just dark stuff.
Erik, our other brew partner, couldn’t be around on Sat. so we’re going to brew on Tuesday or Monday next week also. We’re going to have more beer than we can drink. It’s going to be great.
At least we won’t be so stingy with it. That’s the hardest part about the homebrew. I don’t want it to be gone because we made it, but I guess all good brews have to come to an end. Anyway, I’m out for the day.

Tuesday, June 14th, 2005. Another 364 days till my birthday. It’s coming right around the corner. Anyway…moving on.
Beer tonight. Yes, beer. That’s what I said. Going to be brewing it. I’m going to make a concerted effort to document the brewing process on my blog here. I’ll give a little time chart or whatever. Who knows. Whatever I feel like actually. I’ve been quite lax in writing, so I feel that I should try to make up for it.
Tonight we’re going to be brewing a Sweet Stout from http://www.northernbrewer.com so that should be interesting. A sweet stout, also known as a milk stout is a stout that you add Lactose. Lactose is a non-fermentable sugar so the yeast that you put into the brew won’t ferment it, therefore leaving sugar in your brew and making it a little sweeter. Should be interesting. I’ve had Mackson’s XXX Milk Stout and I enjoy that, so hopefully this’ll be similar.
We had some more of the homebrew Porter that we made about a month ago, and that’s getting to be quite good. I was very happy with the progress.
Also, I just learned that Sam Caglione, my hero, just published a book about his brewery “DogFish Head” and the trials and tribulations of starting it up. That’s exciting considering how Laura and I have been tossing the idea of a brewery as a business around quite a bit. Just worry that the financial aspect of it won’t be feasible. We’ll see. We’re two intelligent…well okay, 1.5 intelligent people (ahhh but who’s missing the 1/2???) so we should be able to do whatever we put our minds to… or at least that’s what my parents always used to tell me.
In my bathroom at home, there are two hot water pipes that run recessed into the wall and are separated from the bathroom by a metal grate. You can’t take off the grate, so it’s really of no interest to me… not like I could use it as a garbage chute or anything, but for some reason the cats LOVE IT. Seven just sits there for hours sniffing at the grate peering into the darkness. I don’t know what the hell is down there, but it kind of freaks me out. I can just picture the guy from the X-Files that could stretch and would eat people’s livers sitting in there all stretched out being very pissed off that someone put a grate over the pipes. Oh well, I’m sure that Seven being who he is, will eventually sprout thumbs and figure out how to pry the grate out of the wall.
B & H Photo Video store pisses me off. Yesterday I went there to cash in on a birthday card from Allison (Thanks!) and they were closed. I had been there the previous day and had been disgusted by their limited hours of operation, so yesterday I made sure I was there in the appropriate time space… No, those bastards were closed. Why? I don’t know. Just a sign in the window saying that they will re-open. They probably swindled enough people and made enough profits for the month and figured they would just close their doors to save on payroll. I hate them. I wish there were a camera/computer store in the city that wasn’t so damn…irritating.. I mean even if you go to J&R they suck too. You walk in there and it seems like they hire the most illiterate uneducated salesmen EVER. They don’t seem to ever know anything and they LOVE to make you feel stupid for not knowing the one fact they DO know about the product. Screw them both, I’ll stick to Ebay.
Beer. Drink it. Love it. Brew it.

It’s upsetting. It bothers me. I’m poor. So Princess Jill hasn’t been around. I think it’s because I stopped feeding her. With all the rain the food was getting wet (not that that stopped the kittens and mother from eating it) but I figured ehhh. Not to mention that I was out last night so I didn’t have time to get food. So besides feeling bad about not feeding Princess Jill and her brood, my own cats didn’t have food. As you can probably guess (for any of you that have met Seven) he was at the foot of the bed being VERY vocal this morning. So I ended up getting up and going to the store to get some food. I guess that’s the “right” thing to do.
I was just thinking about it this morning that I need to start inserting some pictures into here so that you people can see what the hell I’m talking about. I know that I put Seven in there a little while ago, but I figure that I should get one of the lawn and maybe of our beer fridge (with our homebrew in it). Ehh. We’ll see.
So from me “Secret” sources I have found out that I will be having a birthday party this weekend (Excellent). So hopefully everyone that comes will be gentle on my newly sprouted “lawn”. I mean it’s looking damn good and it’s only going to get better as Saturday comes along. So please…for the sake of the grass and earthworms…tread lightly.
(NOTE: Editing has been done here….because people have delicate sensibilities)
So this week, Laura and I have been attempting to start getting back into shape. Since we went to Ireland last month, we haven’t really done shit to be nice to our bodies, so we’ve really scaled back the weekend drinking and pretty much decided that there won’t be any drinking on “school nights”.
For any of you science geeks out there: http://slashdot.org/articles/05/06/09/0044259.shtml?tid=99&tid=126
I thought that that was an interesting little tidbit. The idea of it just amazes me. I dunno, maybe that just makes me a weirdo. Anyway. Off to work.
(The real reason I put the link in was to see if it would automatically link to http://www.slashdot.com We’ll see.

This morning, because of the rain I was quite pleased that I didn’t have to water the “lawn” (I wonder how long it’ll be before I’m okay with calling it just a lawn without the quotes…) so I got up early and went for a run. Uneventful, so that was a good thing.
Came back, was sweating because it was getting into the sweltering temperature range. So I sit on my computer and start to check www.cnn.com. All the sudden Pud jumps into my lap. You know when you just get finished working out, your face is all red, you are just dripping sweat and then a cat rubs her shedding body against your arm. Not the most pleasant thing. So I throw her to the ground (lightly) and continue. Bastard animal did it again…and again! So I said screw it and I went outside.
And who did I find outside? Yep.. it was the Mother Cat. I think I’m going to name her. I think that from now on, she will be known as Princess Jill. Why? Why not. Anyway, so Princess Jill was out there, hanging out in the “lawn”. Just sitting there, so I brought her some food and it out. She ran away (as usual) , but I was surprised to not see her kittens around. I wonder where they went. Hmmm.. We’ll see. I’m sure they’ll be back. Especially if I keep shelling out more money for cat food. Speaking of which, I can’t forget to get some of that tonight or poor Seven will wilt away… not that it would be a bad thing for him to shed a few pounds.
So Seven is a pretty sharp cat. He knows that if he comes into the room when I’m about to fall asleep and starts to meow, I’ll pick him up. He knows that I’m lazy and won’t use two hands. He, being the corpulent blog of fat and bone that he is, assumes the “hook position” so that I can extend my arm from lying in the bed, and he puts his body, perfectly balanced in “the hook” and I tow him up into the bed. It works out well for everyone involved.
Allison is going to be here on Friday evening, so that’s exciting. Haven’t seen her in ages. I have also been given a task. On Sat. I am going to Happy Deli and getting beer for the evening. For those of you that don’t know, Happy Deli rivals Disney World as “the happiest place on earth” apart from having the stoic Russian guys behind the counter, they have perhaps one of the best beer selections (bit overpriced) in Manhattan. Either way, it’ll be a great time.
So one of my perennial favorite web pages, www.beeradvocate.com just instituted a “want” and “got” list. You put up the beers that you are looking to try and the beers that you have, and people contact you for a trade. I really like the system. I already found someone that’ll trade something with me, so we’ll see how that goes. I’m only doing a one bottle test run so as to not get too badly burned. I know how this bastard of an internet works. Anyway.
I should get back to working on this deposition.