So now that I've started down this road of posting regularly again, I've started to feel obligated to post something. Also, the blog has been a bit knitting heavy of late. I had planned on rectifying that by posting about my Nut Brown Ale today, but I sampled one last night and it's still not carbonated yet. Why I feel like the beer has to completely ready to go before I post about it, I have no idea, but I do. I started two new knitting projects late last week, both of which I'm so far very happy with, but real life and *gasp* school work got in the way this weekend and I didn't make very much progress on them. The one thing I did manage to do this weekend is catch up on some of the podcasts that I like to listen to, so I thought I would tell you about the two beer podcasts that I really enjoy.
When I first discovered podcasts mid-summer last year (yeah, I know I was a little behind the times on that one), I subscribed to any beer podcast I could find. I quickly found that a lot of them were not that great. Many of them were about 10 minutes of good information and about 50 - 80 minutes listening to the hosts sit around bullshitting. As a parent and a graduate student, I just don't have time for that. Two really stood out from the crowd and they are the only ones that I still listen to these days.
The first one is Basic Brewing Radio. As the tagline says this one is "all about homebrewing". Basic Brewing Radio is hosted by a guy by the name of James Spencer out of Northwest Arkansas. It's broadcast weekly and the general format followed is to read and address email he has received and then conduct an interview with an expert on some homebrewing topic. A lot of the times the topics get way more advanced than I ever plan on being with my homebrewing, but even as a simple extract brewer, I have learned tons from listenting to this podcast. If you are interested in homebrewing, I highly recommend checking out the archives of this show.
The second one is Your Next Beer. The description of this one on itunes goes something a like two college friends talk to you about beer. I braced myself for it to be two guys talking about the frat party they went to last night, how crazy it got, and all of "The Beast" that they drank while there. I was pleasantly suprised. The two guys, Jim and Jake are their names, who host this podcast, are friends from college, not friends still in college, which is an important distinction for me. This podcast runs about 10 - 15 minutes an episode. They start off with beer news, then they address the beer of the week, first giving a little history about the brewery and then talking about how the beer tastes. The beers are covered in series, so they'll spend several weeks talking about IPA's, then several weeks talking about Pale Ales, etc, etc. It's designed to be an introduction for people to new styles of beer and is pretty basic, but I still enjoy it. I wish it would have been around a couple of years earlier when I first got really interested in trying new styles of beer. As it is, it has exposed me to some breweries I probably wouldn't be aware of otherwise, and I really enjoy the background information about the different breweries. If you are interested in this one, the episodes are short, so it's easy to catch up if you don't want to jump in the middle. Even now, I generally let 3-4 of these build-up on my ipod and then listen to them all in one sitting.
Happy Listening!
Unfortunately, this is not a post about the lovely spring weather. It is instead about failed knitting projects. I started these two scarves on Sunday, worked on them all week, and then gave up on them today.
The black one was the Men's Cashmere Scarf from Last Minuted Knitted Gifts. Of course, I wasn't using cashmere for it. Instead I was using Cascade 128 Chunky Tweed. I liked this pattern and it was certainly easy to knit if a little bit boring, but it curled like mad.
I checked on Ravelry to see if other people had had the same issue with the scarf and they had. Some said they were able to block it enough to get it to stop and others weren't so lucky. I was making it for gift, so I didn't want to chance it. I frogged it earlier tonight. I'll probably make a seed stitch scarf out of this yarn instead.
The other scarf is the Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks scarf. I'm knitting it with Malabrigo Worsted in the Lime-Blue colorway. I had a horrible time getting this one started. At the wider widths the colors pooled in a way that I didn't like at all, but when I got the scarf narrow enough for the colors to vary the way I wanted them to, the scarf was way too narrow. This stitch pattern is hell on the hands. The first couple of nights I worked on it, I went to bed with a heating pad wrapped around my right hand. It's worth it though. I love the stitch pattern. I also really like the yarn. The Malibrigo is so soft and wonderful, although now that I'm kntting with it, I'm not sure I love the Lime-Blue colorway. I don't love the stitch
pattern with this yarn. And I really don't love the narrow width. I had planned on giving it to my sister-in-law, but she is very tall and fairly large framed so I figured the narrow little scarf would look wimpy on her. At the same time, I don't know who else I would give it to and I don't think I would wear it myself. I don't know. I'm not ready to frog it, but it's definitely going into hibernation for a while.
I've ordered some Malabrigo Worsted in the Oro Y Vino pattern (orange and maroon, otherwise known as Hokie colors) which was backordered. If I ever get it, I might frog the Lime-Blue and restart the scarf for me in the Oro Y Vino. We'll see.
My addiction to all things fingerless continues with this pair of easy wristwarmers. These are crazy fast and easy to knit. I made one of them Friday night and the other Saturday afternoon/evening while entertaining all of Dave's family. They are knitted with one skein of Berroco Jasper in colorway 3833. The pattern calls for size 8 double points, but I used size 7 because, well, I have size 7's and didn't want to buy new needles just for this little project. I also only knitted 4.5 inches before starting the thumbhole and 1.5 after the thumbhole rather than the 5.5 and 2 inches the pattern called for. While I like the shorter wrist length, I probably should have kept the entire 2 inches after the thumbhole. The main reason that I didn't was because I was paranoid about running out of yarn. I always underestimate the amount of yarn that I have left on the ball. Regardless, this was a great pattern. I may end up knitting some of these for Christmas gifts this year.
My friend S. was making a scarf that I just fell in love with. It's a narrowed version of the Lady Eleanor Stole from the book Scarf Style. I had to make one myself. This is a really easy knit once you get started, but when you first start out, it just looks like you are just making a big mess. I probably would have ripped it out and given up if S. hadn't been there to assure me that I wasn't screwing it up.
I absolutely love the way it turned out. It's going to be hard to give it up, but my plan is to give to someone as a Christmas gift. I will have an easier time knowing that I have purchased the yarn to make myself the full-sized stole. I'm not really a stole kind of person, but S. suggested it would be a good thing to make and keep in the office for chilly days. Of course my office right now tends to run hot rather than cold, but all I needed was some sort of weak justification for knitting it.
Anyway, this scarf is knitted out of 4 skeins of Noro Silk Garden, colorway 255, on size 8 needles. I had 5 skeins of the yarn, so I decided to use the
left over skein to make a One Skein Noro Hat. I'm not quite as happy with it as I am with the scarf. It's tiny and while I love the Noro yarn for the entrelac stitch pattern (like in the scarf), I don't really like the Noro striping. This is the first time I had knit a hat from the top down and I didn't feel comfortable with how to neatly close the hole at the top of the hat once I cast-off. Plus I just screwed up at some point and lost a stitch. I picked it back up, but there is a little hole there in the stitch pattern. Anyway, the plan was for the hat to go along with the scarf in the christmas gift, but I'm thinking now that I might just keep it for myself or see if my daughter wants it. I'm a little more picky about errors in things I'm going to gift than in something I'm just going to use myself.
This past Saturday we took a family trip to Charlottesville, VA to tour Monticello. While there we made a stop by Starr Hill Brewery. They offer free tastings at the brewery between noon and 5:00 pm on Saturdays and tours at 1:00 and 3:00 pm.I wanted to make it in time to tour the brewery, but Monticello took longer than we expected. Of course Mara was with us and I felt a little awkward about taking a six year old to a brewery. This feeling was heightened by the Saturday night at the bar feel that the brewery had about it, but no one seemed to mind her presence. The have a really nice bar set-up there in the brewery and the friendly bartender would dispense generous (and multiple) samples of any of the beers they had on tap. Their beers were sort of hit and miss for me. I did really like their All Access Export Lager (pictured above). I think it has a really nice yeasty flavor. Most of their beers are available for sale in bottles at the brewery, but unfortunately this one was not, so I got a growler of it. I didn't already have a growler, so I had to buy one of those as well, but it's probably a good thing to have anyway. I have heard good things about their Hefeweizen, The Love, but they were out of it the day we were there. They had plenty of merchandise for sale as well, and we picked up a couple of pint glasses to add to our collection. I'm glad that we stopped by since we were in the area, but I'm not sure I would make the trip over there just to visit the brewery.
This yarn is supposed to be washable and dryable. I almost grabbed them out and let them airdry this morning, but then thought, "Nah, they'll be fine". They weren't. They felted and are ruined. I'm just sick about it. I sat around for a while trying to decide whether to go to the yarn store and buy more yarn to reknit them or just to throw away the pattern and never think about it again. I have decided to reknit them and I even know what yarn I'm going to use. It's just a matter of getting it done. I read tonight that some people have gotten refunds when this brand of yarn felted on them, but I doubt I'll take the time to get my $12 back.
I have been calling this beer Virginia beer because I marked the bottle caps with a "VA". The VA came from Vienna Ale. Vienna Ale you say? Shouldn't it be Vienna Lager? Why yes it should and that's what this beer started out as. Unfortunately I ran into a little snag along the way and it ended up an ale. In fact, I ran into many snags along the way with this one.
I waited until the weather was nice and cold to try this one so that my outside storage would be cold enough to ferment a lager. I do all of my boiling on a propane burner out on our back patio. Our propane burner has a small leak around the metal connection between the gas hose and the burner. We have to be real careful when we light the burner or adjust the gas or flames will shoot out from the area where the hose and burner connect. Unfortunately, the cold temperatures caused the metal to contract, making the leak much worse than it normally is. We had quite an ordeal getting the burner lit while at the same time not setting anything on fire. The other thing we failed to do before I started was to check the level in our propane tank. I was about half way through steeping the grains when the tank ran out. I threw the lid on the pot and let the grains continue steeping from the residual heat while Dave ran out and got a propane tank refill.
Everything went smoothly after that until of course my lager yeast refused to start fermenting. I'm not sure what
happened there. I used White Labs pitchable Southern German Lager Yeast and I usually make a yeast starter, but this time I got lazy and didn't do it. I suspect though the error I made was to put the fermenter immeadiately out in the storage closet where it was very cold instead of letting it stay in the house and at a warmer temperature until it started to ferment and then moving it to the colder area. There is not a good place within driving distance to buy brewing supplies, and the wort had been sitting in the fermenter for more than a week already so I didn't want to wait a another week to get mail order yeast, so I just pitched some Munton's dry yeast that I happened to have on hand. This is how my lager became an ale.
This is another extract recipe from The Homebrewer's Recipe Guide. This was a 6.5 gallon full boil with 5.5 gallons in the fermenter. I pitched the lager yeast at about 73F. Ended up fermenting with the ale yeast at 68F. It was in the fermenter for about 15 days total. Originial gravity was 1.041. Final gravity was 1.011. I primed with dried malt and it yeilded 55 bottles. It's pretty decent for as much difficulty as we had with it. It's a little cloudy and the head disapates very quickly. It's a nice malty beer with no real hop aroma and with just a little bitterness at the end.
When I first started knitting and was looking for legwarmer patterns for Mara, I found this fingerless glove pattern and just fell in love with them. I finally got them made. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them. I figure they will be good for when I'm reading in bed and don't want to wear a long sleeved shirt, but have my arms outside of the warm covers so that I can hold my book. I'm not sure I could pull off this look outside the privacy of my own home. Anyway, here are the details:
Yarn: Knitpicks Swish Worsted
Colorway: Merlot Heather
Skeins: 3 plus a tiny bit of a fourth (if I had to do it over again I would shorten the gloves just enough to be able to do them with 3 skeins. As they are now, they are LONG)
Needles: Knitpicks doublepoints, size 5 for the rib, size 7 for the rest of the glove
The Swish is a pretty nice yarn, especially for the price. Plus, it's a washable yarn, which I really love. I did a have a little trouble with the yarn splitting especially if I had to go back and reknit it after fixing a mistake, and I found out that the true color is often much different than what displays on your computer screen, but I like the actual color, so it's fine.
I also liked the knitpicks doublepoints, but they felt almost more like weapons than knitting needles. They are nice heavy metal needles with pretty sharp points. They would be a good duel purpose tool for a knitting super spy.
This is a horribly unflattering picture of me, but the gloves are a bit hard to photograph.
My knitting friend and I decided to use one afternoon of our spring break to visit the two yarn stores in Roanoke, which is about 40 miles from here and a much bigger city than Blacksburg. I have to say we were both disappointed. Our local yarn store, Mosaic, here in Blacksburg is much more inviting and has a much better selection than either of the yarn stores in Roanoke. I have been meaning to buy some Cascade 220 in Hokie colors to make a scarf and hat for my daughter, but whenever I go to Mosaic there is always something more interesting to spend my money on, so I kept putting off buying the Cascade. I couldn't find anything at either of the stores in Roanoke that excited me, so I bought the Hokie colored Cascade just so it wouldn't be a wasted trip.
Yesterday was sunny and relatively warm, so I finally got around to brewing the nut brown ale kit that my brother gave me at Christmas. Dave and I seem to have this process down now. Everything went smoothly and the beer is happily fermenting away now. I even got some knitting time in while I was sitting around watching the brew pot boil. I'll have all the final details on the beer later. Now I need to get started drinking the beer that I have on hand so that I'll have enough bottles to put the brown ale in once it's done fermenting.
