X

At organ country site…

At the Oregon Country Fair site today, working on setting the community village up. Its beautiful although hot and if you are going to be in the neighborhood, come and see me. listen

Powered by Jott

This is my second try,…

This is my second try, I’m trying to come up with the right word here, phoning in the blog post with the jott system. It’s an interesting system, I make a phone call and what I say into the phone presumably, becomes a post on the blog. Right now I’m walking towards the bus on a beautiful Friday afternoon in Eugene(?), 85 degrees out, the Olympic trials are just beginning around town and there are people from all over the country who are ….. just getting settled. In all, it’s a lovely day.listen

Powered by Jott

I’m now testing the…

I’m now testing the Jott system, by which I blog by voice. listen

Powered by Jott

Glen’s Best Bitter

I haven’t been as consistent as I’d like to be in keeping up with homebrew recipes, posting all the details of my brews. Life gets in the way of blogging sometimes. My dad and I are going to brew up a batch of bitter trying to reproduce ‘glen’s best bitter’ which you used to be able to get at the Wild Duck before they closed up shop. Following is a (preliminary) guess at what might be in such a brew. Who knows how close we’ll come, as it’s mostly a stab in the dark. They stopped producing this, my dad’s favorite beer, before I was of legal drinking age, much less interested in reproducing beers. I haven’t ever tasted the original and Dad knows basically nothing about the elements of beer. So, between us here’s a guess. If you have any additional information about this beer, or suggestions, I would greatly appreciate them.

2 Lbs American 6 Row Pale
1.5 Lbs English Mild malt
1 Lb American Caramel, 40 L
.5 Lbs Munich
.1 lb flaked barley for head retention

3.5 lbs dry light extract

1 oz centennial 10% boiled 60 minutes
.5 oz willamette 5% boiled 15 minutes
.5 oz willamette or sterling, 4-5%, boiled 1 minute

White Labs British Ale yeast (WLP005)

We’ll go for this one sometime in July. We were going to brew it today, but he’s not feeling well.

The Next President

Finally, a presidential candidate who knows something about effective public speaking.

“There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America – there’s the United States of America.

There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America.

The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too.

We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States.

We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

– Barack Obama in his Democratic National Convention Keynote Address.

Go Forth and Vote!

To All,
Erin Ely’s “YEAR ROUND HOME FOR THE LANE COUNTY FARMERS MARKET”
idea at IdeaBlob is behind by a hundred votes! Thanks to you who have already voted. But if you haven’t voted, we need you. The competition will go down to
the wire and you still have until Midnight Saturday to vote.

One important thing to remember. You must register at
http://www.ideablob.com first. But you can’t vote until you receive
email confirmation of your registration. And that can come in two
minutes-or sometimes in two days!!! So register now and be patient.
When you get the email, vote-but not before you receive that
confirmation. Many thanks. You will be repaid by access to great
fresh produce from local farmers.

PS. It’s fun to check the tallies every morning at http://www.ideablob.com
.
PSS. Please pass this on. We are right on the cusp

$$Funding for Farmers’ Market Envisioning and Design Process
Erin ’s idea is titled: Year Round Home for the Lane County Farmers Market.
That’s the idea to vote for. (click on the above and vote now!)

Greetings to all who are interested in seeing Lane County Farmers
have a year round indoor-outdoor market in Eugene. The year-round
farmers market has been in and out of popular discussion for several
years now, but has
lacked focus and sustained energy. The Willamette Farm and Food
Coalition has decided to host a series of facilitated discussions to
move the conversation forward with the purpose of drafting designs
and creating a business plan.
The Lane County Farmers’ Market is happy to have the Willamette Farm
and Food Coalition taking the lead and plans to participate in the discussions.

Local citizen activist Erin Ely is trying to help us with our effort
by using the Internet. Advanta Corporation sponsors an online “idea”
competition at their www.ideablob.com website. The best idea of the
month, determined by the votes of website visitors, wins $10,000.
Erin Ely entered this competition two months ago with the idea for a
permanent Farmers’ Market for Eugene. She lost the contest by a mere
20 votes! She’s entered again and is now in the finals!!!

If Erin wins, she will donate the $10,000 to Willamette Farm and Food
Coalition to facilitate public discussion of farmers’ market options,
and to draft a preliminary presentation of 2 or 3 designs as well as
a business plan. So we want you to help us help her win!

Chickens

I have nine chickens. One slightly older one lives in a coop in my back yard, and the other eight are still little and live in a watering trough in my laundry room. Raising chickens is hard work, but you get a lot out of it. So far, we’ve got about a cubic yard of awesome compost made of a combination of all our kitchen scraps with the wood chips and chicken poo we’ve cleaned out of the trough. It’s not composed yet, of course, but it’s on its way and I’m excited. I’ve been tweaking the compost pile I built, adding mesh around it so the stuff doesn’t fall out and reinforcing the structure some. It’s a beautiful compost pile. Truly.

Every day, someone has to make sure the chickens have enough food, grit, water. The big chicken outside has to be let out of her coop in the morning, and shooed back into it before dark. raccoons eat chickens, and hunt at dusk, so we have to have her protected by that time of day.

It’s been a while

Once again I’ve fallen down on posting. I’ve been working extra hard as a new Board year for the Growers’ Market kicks into gear, working on my garden (see my wife’s site, with whom I share space on the internet, for a garden journal), and watching my son grow up. He’s 20 months old, and is extremely pretentious. He’s learning his letters, wants to read poetry with me (Robert Frost, T.S. Elliot, Pablo Neruda, and Saul Williams are his favorites), and generally understands the world better than his mother and I do. I’m not sure what to do with him, and I worry that if he doesn’t slow down he’s going to miss some of the important details that toddlers at this stage learn. On the other hand, I’m trying my hardest to remember that he knows what’s best for himself, and that he’ll be just fine. Taylor was a very early reader, and I was a very early talker. He seems to have picked up both from us, and that’s the way it goes for him.

We’re deep in the swing of getting the garden ready, planting and tilling and pushing earth. I built Arthur a sandbox in the back yard (it needs sand, but otherwise it’s ready to go). We have nine chickens, one a full on pullet and the rest emerging from chickhood into a sort of creepy dinosaur looking transitional phase. We inherited a very nice coop from some friends who were no longer using it, and have fenced in a nice big corner of our yard to be a chicken run. Big Chicken is already living outdoors, and the littles are living in a big watering trough in our laundry room. I’m ready for them to grow up and head outside, but it’ll be a while yet.

My father in law and his wife will be in town for the whole summer, out from the East coast, and we’re getting ready for a great summer of Grandparent time, festivals (Country Fair is less than two months away!), and harvesting. I’m hoping to have a pig roast, something we did last summer, and to brew up a batch of Lambic (which won’t be ready to drink for two years. Awesome).

I did some (not much) volunteering for Oregon’s primary, which took place last week. Our commitments to the food co-op continue to keep us busy, and our country fair meeting and planning is kicking into gear.

In terms of brewing, I’ve done two batches since I last posted and I may at some point share the recipes/techniques used here. For now, I’m going to let it be and go back to work.

Yell Obama

Hello everyone. It’s been a while, but you should all run out and buy my wicked cool tee shirt from Cafe Press. Wearing this shirt will tell all your friends and total strangers that you are in favor of both the U of O, and Barack Obama. It will also show off your wicked fashion sense, and it will make your mother proud. Go buy one today.

Chamomile

Today, I tried my hand at all grain brewing for the first time. I screwed up good and proper, which is exactly what I was supposed to do. Here’s what happened.

I set out to make a chamomile honey wheat beer. In the end, the recipe I went with is not entirely unlike the one I posted a month ago, but it isn’t entirely like it either. Into my mashing/lautering tun I put;

4.75# Pale Wheat Malt
5# Two Row Pale Malt

Cracked and ready to go. To this, I added around 3 gallons of hot water. The temp of the water I added was around 160 degrees F. The mash ended up being 140 degrees F. This seemed too cool, so I shut it up for about half an hour while I researched how much more hot water to add to make the final temp closer to 160. Ooh. Here’s the problem; I misremembered the appropriate temp for mashing grains. It’s 145 - 155, not 165 - 175. Here’s a helpful chart that I will use next time.

So, what happened when I mashed at 160 degrees for an hour is; mostly nothing. I ended up with a much lower gravity wort than I had anticipated, because the enzyme that does the most, best work (beta amylase) I killed after half an hour of mashing. Instead of my target 1.050 Original Gravity I hit 1.029. Blech. But, not to worry. I was going to add 1.5# of honey at the end of the boil, which would bump the gravity up by about a point overall (to 1.04, give or take). I had some extra honey around, so I doubled it and added three pounds.

The place where I hope this beer really stands out is the chamomile included in place of hops. I used about two ounces of chamomile and a half ounce of saaz hops boiled for 60 minutes, and another two ounces of chamomile and half ounce of saaz boiled for ten minutes give or take. When I transfer to the secondary, I’m going to do a little taste test and maybe add some more chamomile for aroma at that time depending on how much the flavor comes through.

Rather than a weitzen yeast, which has a lot of character of its own that I didn’t want, I’m using the Wyeast American Ale, which is pretty good and neutral especially if I keep the fermentation temp cool, which I’m doing.

As always, updates to follow.

Lately I’m drinking the India Amber Ale. I’m very pleased with how it turned out, despite some small mishaps. It’s got a unique flavor for sure, but not a bad one. I’m not much of one for flavor reviews like they do on the beer sites; it seems haughty. I like drinking my beer. It tastes good. Come over and I’ll offer you one, and you can see for your own self.