Brewing Up a Storm

Ladies and Gents, as most of you know, Amber and I had been on a serious brewing hiatus dating all the way back to labor day of last year.  Well the hiatus has officially ended as of last Sunday when we brewed up an American pale ale to help beat the summer heat.  We've christened the brew as Pushmower Pale Ale......a light american style ale with just enough oomph to fortify the spirit of a man weary with exhaustion from having spent 1.5 hours pushing a little craftsman mower around our ~1acre front yard.  Perhaps when we get a riding mower we will brew a corn lager, but for now we will be requiring something a little more potent.

The motivation for a brew.

The brewday was super relaxed with truly minimal effort.  For anyone paying attention to our last few brews you might recall that we became a little distracted by trying to perfect our process.  Everything from water chemistry to yeast health came into question and subsequently led to a fairly rigorous brewday routine that always left us feeling exhausted.  Well for this batch we decided to strip down the all-grain brewing process to it's barest of essentials.......that's right, we did a brew in a bag (BIAB)!  Now, please don't be mistaken, we still took the brewing process very seriously and made every effort to ensure that this beer would turn out well, we just didn't get uptight about the things we used to get uptight about.

The brewday went off without a hitch, and we had a lot of fun brewing.....so much fun that I(Mark) decided we needed to brew a couple more beers.  Friday night Amber went to a concert up in Cleveland. So I stayed home, had some friends over, and brewed up another BIAB......an English ESB.  But i didn't stop there, Saturday night I decided to brew up a Belgian pale ale just to round out the collection of the three primary ale brewing regions in the world.

All three of these beers were brewed with our unfiltered, unsoftened, unfettered well water.  It's really delicious water.  We recently had a water analysis done by a local water treatment company, and the gentleman said that we have some of the best water he has seen.....so good we could get away without any treatment at all(that is what the previous owners did for the past 60years anyway).  Knowing that it would have been in his best interest to sell us a water treatment product I knew he must be telling us the truth.  The only thing that concerned me(as a brewer) was the iron content.  At 0.5ppm it's slightly above the recommended threshold for brewing.  If these beers come out tasting metallic I will know what caused it.  I digress, all three of these beers were also BIAB, all three are ales, all three will be around 5% ABV, all three will have less than 50IBU, and all three will be blonde/golden in color.  The true differentiator for these beers will be yeast and hop character, each reflective of it's brewing region.  I have great respect for the brewers of America, England, and Belgium, and I hope that these three beers stand up to the great brewing tradition of those three countries.

Pushmower Pale Ale
6.5 lbs pale 2-row
1 lb Vienna malt
0.5 lbs wheat

0.5oz Amarillo at 60minutes
0.5oz Amarillo at 20minutes
0.5oz Simcoe at 5minutes
0.5oz Simcoe at 0minutes

Wyeast 1272 American Ale II

lESBaru
8 lbs Marris Otter
1 lb Amber malt

1oz EKG at 60minutes
0.5oz Fuggles at 40minutes
0.5oz Fuggles at 20minutes
0.5oz Fuggles at 5minutes
0.5oz Fuggles at 0minutes

Wyeast 1098 British Ale

Belgo PaleBlonde Patersbier
8 lbs Dingemans 2-row
0.5lbs Dingemans Caravienne

1oz Styrian Goldings at 75minutes
1oz Styrian Goldings at 15minutes

Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey Ale

I'm looking forward to tapping into each of these beers as the weather really heats up.  Come over and share with us?

Every brewday starts with a crush.

A lazy BIABer will tie his brewbag to the cabinets above the stove.

Amber's favorite part......the hot break!

Teaching Gigi the process.....someday she might fill in for our dearly departed Brewmaster Dinx.

Hogan wants to help too!

Subie doobie doo

With Mark's persuasion, I caved in and got a new car. I have the mentality that if it's not broke, don't fix it. Well, as much as I enjoyed my Corolla, it had a lot that needed to be fixed. Plus, I was never as close to it as I was with my prior '98 Tacoma or the inherited '90 Plymoth Colt from my great grandfather (sadly, it was a short lived car).  The Corolla had hit the 10 year mark and was getting to the point where it wasn't the most reliable for long trips. Especially since Mark doesn't get the loaner perk from his old job anymore. My check engine light had been haunting me for months now and was looking like a $300-400 fix. Both bumpers needed replaced or repainted, the hood was dented from a large branch, etc... Mark loves his Civic and may have had a harder time selling it due to age, manual everything and no ac. I whined a little bit, but ultimately knew we needed a dependable car that won't keep giving us issues.

My first thought was to buy used, but Mark had some good points about the risks of used vs new. Neither of us had a car payment, so it was easier to rationalize a new car. You can't beat that scent :)

I wanted to stick with a manual transmission which is apparently a test of patience when buying a car.  Although it is the standard transmission, it is impossible to find at the dealer.  Luckily, there was one that was being shipped to another dealer in Ohio.  We were able to secure it, but had to wait 3 weeks to get it.  We posted my Corolla on Craigslist last Monday, thinking it would take awhile and few tries to sell it.  The next day, a couple looked at it and said they wanted it.  It took one day!  We officially handed it over last Friday.  They bought it for their son as a surprise birthday gift.  I settled for a little less than we were asking because they were going to get the engine light issue fixed, repaint and fix the dents.  I was so happy to know that someone was going to put the work into that it deserves.  Hopefully their son loves it!  This whole past week, Mark has been dropping me off a work.  I'm way too tired in the morning for him to put up with my backseat driving. We made it through the week though and it was nice to spend an extra 20 minutes together in the morning.

So, here it is... We are now proud owners of a Subaru Impreza! The only thing that might make next year's winter somewhat enjoyable. 

I love it!

I was a little worried about a white car, but it's a pearl white and beautiful.

My old Colt.  I was so upset when it was totaled.  Hopefully this white Subaru is my second chance!

The grass is always greener....

when the weather warms up.  We have been seeing so much green this week with all of the rain and some warmer days.  Flowers are blooming and the days are getting longer.  Makes me wonder why I even think that I like all of the seasons.  As much as I love the beautiful fall leaves, the picturesque snowfalls and the scorching hot sun at the beach, the spring always seems to feel the best transition.

We've seen more activity on the wildlife front as well.  Unfortunately, not all encounters involved living creatures.  We were moving some furniture around in the den/office this weekend (we're still not done).  We remembered that Jean (the previous owner and builder of the home) had told us that mice would get trapped in the return vent.  We decided to take a look and found a poor little mouse sitting at the vent with nowhere to go.  We thought he was dead, but when we took him outside he showed signs of life.  Of course I am nuts and I couldn't just put him outside as weak as he was, so I built him a little house with water and food.  People set traps to stop the little guys from their pest-capades and here I am trying to bring one back to life.   Weird, I know.. I can't help it.  I am sad to say that he didn't make it.  We're going to have to find a solution for this.  I can't handle a bunch of dead mice.

For Mother's Day, we went up to grandma's house in Ashtabula.  She was sweet enough to give us a few pieces of furniture (pictures will come later).  An antique bedroom set, a table with a built-in sewing machine and a few miscellaneous things.  The down side was that we had to rent another Uhaul.  I am so sick of seeing those trucks!  Regardless, we were so happy to spend some time with her, mom, Jim and Jimmy.

The only thing that would have been better would have been to give Martha a big hug!  Her present from us is more pictures of flowers <3  We are also so excited that Margaret was able to spend this holiday with our beautiful niece, Mara!  I can't wait to meet her and post a picture of us with that cutie.

We should hopefully have a fun update sometime this week.  For now I will share a teaser picture.  We hope that everyone had a great weekend and a Happy Mother's Day to the moms out there!

Small Rodent Watch Team

Just chillin'

Happy Mother's Day, Martha.  Our Bleeding Heart goes to you :)

It may not be the best looking lilac, but I was beyond excited to see this beauty.  I have to smell it every time we're outside now.

Ahhh, my favorite.

There is green everywhere.  Good thing curb appeal doesn't really apply to us... we can just let everything grow!!

One of our hops are starting to grow.  We don't have high hopes since we won't get much sun in the summer.  Total bummer.

Green, green everywhere!  Can't wait to see what grows on the Deadly Rose Bush (the huge one in the left bed).

Our view of the pond from our living room windows is dwindling away.  It's going to look so different when the trees are full.

Hogan doesn't understand the concept of taking pictures.

Not cool, Hogan.  Not cool.

Can you spot mama and baby?  Perfect for Mother's Day!

The poor little mouse who didn't make it.  I have a rough time with furry friend death :( 

Now I know for sure why I have to fill the bird feeder every single day.  What an adorable jerk.

3 generations and 2 lovely mothers.

We found old home movies with an old school projector.  Older technology is so interesting.

Teaser!

Take 2

We were made aware that it was difficult to view the pictures on our last blog post, so we are going to try blogger.  Hopefully it will be a little more user friendly (uploading pictures on the other blog was a pain), but captchas are now a necessary evil to leave comments.  Sorry.  Hopefully we will actually keep up with this one instead of dropping of the face of the earth for almost a year.

We've had a pretty busy weekend, as one could expect in a new home.  We painted our entryway on Saturday.  It took a total of 4 hours.  They weren't the most pleasant 4 hours, but we got it done.  I (Amber) realized that I can be a complete pain in the rear... a bit of perfectionism and crankiness.  Mark is a champ and helped me through it.  We didn't necessarily hate the old color, but wanted something fresher and not pink/peach.  We went with "Woodlawn Green".  I would say it's a little more blueish than I had intended, but I love it.

We were under the impression that the whole weekend would be cold and rainy.  There were a handful of quick showers on Saturday, but today ended up being pretty nice.  Although a lot of the weekend was spent doing indoor things and running errands, I still snapped some pictures of the lovely flowers around the property.  There are so many interesting things to look at, I can't wait to see how the season progresses.  I have no clue what most of the plants/flowers are, so any knowledge would be appreciated!

Gigi, Hogan and Pal are loving the windows as much as we do.  They saw a squirrel this morning and were extremely curious.  It was adorable.  As for other wildlife, we have seen deer, wild turkey, blue heron, a Pileated Woodpecker (it's huge), groundhogs (Mark is currently having a battle with them), and tons of birds of course!  One of the houses on the lane has 3 horses.  Gigi gets pretty worked up when we walk by them and they come up to the fence, she actually whines when they're not out.  We got lucky the one day... the leash somehow slipped out of my hand and she jumped onto the male's leg and just fell right back down.  He could have done some damage to our sweet girl, but he was calm and collected about it.

That's the front door.  The smallest bedroom is on the left.  I am standing in the second bedroom.

Bathroom, built-ins, master bedroom (in order from right to left).  View from smallest bedroom.

Smallest bedroom (left), front door (right), Gigi (bottom).  View from bathroom.

Mark is so brave and nimble.

After - #1 

After - #2

Before and After

Before Gigi's haircut....

Gigi got a haircut last weekend.  She was enjoying her woods and the sunshine.

Some flower pictures.....

The deadly rose bush (or at least I think it's a rose bush)

A purple yard to remind of us Martha (through Mark's story about cutting the lawn but avoiding the pretty flowers!).

This view is from the side door in the kitchen, looking into the woods.

Same view, but up towards the driveway (which follows the left of the picture on top of the hill).

SQUIRREL!!

Gigi's friends (at least that's what I call them... she might be thinking something different).