{"id":1286,"date":"2010-02-08T16:03:11","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T22:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dmentd.com\/?p=1286"},"modified":"2010-02-08T16:12:39","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T22:12:39","slug":"lets-play-catch-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/lets-play-catch-up","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Play Catch Up!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ok, ok… I’ve been lazy.\u00a0 I admit that, you expect that… so let’s not dwell on it, hmmmm?<\/p>\n

What has happened in DmentiA since last I rambled on at random?<\/p>\n

Christmas came and went, and left many wonderful things in its wake… including (but not limited to) a new art print for the wall, books, and seed money to procure the bulk of my start-up gear to begin home brewing beer.\u00a0 *squee*<\/strong> Much intense and focused research was done and equipment was bought.<\/p>\n

We made many delicious things as Christmas gifts this year, and Sweets has a great write-up about it all HERE<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Austin saw much rain, and very cold temperatures.\u00a0 Much of the garden did the usual die-off\/leaf drop gig, and the yard started looking bleak.\u00a0 A few plants were protectable, and even fewer actually prospered form the cold (our garlic, to be specific).\u00a0 Leaves dropped from trees and littered the yard.<\/p>\n

The new year came and went, and left me with a kidney stone as a parting gift.\u00a0 Thanks… it’s what I’ve always wanted.<\/p>\n

Sweets’ family came to the States, and after a week in Disneyworld, they trekked into NOLA where we met them and stayed a few days, then made our collective way to Austin.\u00a0 They stayed for a week — it was a lovely week at that — and I think I managed to keep from frightening them sufficiently with my crass American ways… I was on my best behavior, and didn’t disgrace my family.\u00a0 Suckers!\u00a0 Fooled you all.<\/p>\n

They specifically came in to attend Sweets’ graduation from Culinary School, join us in a bleated (very belated!) wedding party, and basically make sure I wasn’t keeping Sweets in squalor (I kid!\u00a0 I kid!).\u00a0 The graduation was very nice, and I can’t adequately express how fiercely proud I am of her.<\/p>\n

Sweets has written up the visit, complete with pictures, HERE<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 She’s done such an elegant job of it, that I won’t shame myself by endeavoring to do it again. (see paragraph 1, i.e. “being lazy”<\/em>).<\/p>\n

And, most recently, Sweets and I finally brewed our first batch of beer.\u00a0 It’s a lovely Belgian Golden Ale, similar to Duvel, and it was a blast to make.\u00a0 I spent the preceding ten days doing massive research into the brewing process, basically discarding the generic process that comes along with the recipe kit.\u00a0 I learned a tremendous amount about the overall process, what shortcuts can be taken, the very specific stages of mashing grains and making a wort, the hows and whys of the specific gravities of the liquid at every stage, and so much more.\u00a0 I also learned that for all the minutiae that can and should be paid attention to, that you can just chill and not worry about it.\u00a0 There is a popular phrase I’ve read a lot while doing my homework: “RDWHAHB <\/strong>– Relax, Don’t Worry, Have A Homebrew<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

The hooch is in the primary fermenter where it will live until the yeasties have done most of their work converting the sugars into alcohol (about a week), then it gets moved into a secondary fermenter where it basically clarifies for two weeks, then into bottles for conditioning and natural carbonating for 3-4 weeks.\u00a0 Yup, it’s a lot of time to wait, and that’s why most home brewers have multiple batches going at once.\u00a0 Time, equipment, and experience will eventually allow us to do that to.\u00a0 Eventually.<\/p>\n

For now, I’m enjoying the sheer adventure and creativity of the process, and I’m learning a hell of a lot of new things as well.\u00a0 When you stop learning, you may as well lie down and die.<\/p>\n

That’s it for now, kiddies.\u00a0 Expect to hear a lot more about homebrew from me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ok, ok… I’ve been lazy.\u00a0 I admit that, you expect that… so let’s not dwell on it, hmmmm? What has happened in DmentiA since last I rambled on at random? Christmas came and went, and left many wonderful things in its wake… including (but not limited to) a new art print for the wall, books, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,20,14,9,3,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cooking","category-coolness","category-domestica","category-family","category-links","category-rambling"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1286"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1290,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286\/revisions\/1290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}