John & Colette's Adventures

I brewed up my first batch of beer on Saturday — and promptly burnt the paint off the drip pan on the stupid electric stove. And of course this being the Land of Strange Things, buying a replacement drip pan turns out to be a Big Adventure^tm. You have to know the model number of the stove and since it’s a cooktop, it’s cleverly hidden beneath the unit. To get to the bottom we would have to pull out the oven which, naturally, is also screwed into the cabinets. It’s all an evil plot by the rental company to take more money out of our deposit.

Anyway, homebrew stores here (and there are a lot of them) seem to concentrate just on kits. Finding grains is nearly impossible. We got ‘bulk’ malt and some yeast and just brewed that up. Very basic recipe. They also use Plastic Bottles and Twist Tops! The guy at the store said the bottles hold up to 140 PSI (or something around there), so I thought I would give them a try.

It seems like if I want to do this again I’m going to need a gas burner I can use outside. The stove just isn’t up to 1 1/2 hours of boiling 3 gallons of liquid.

We broke down and bought a grill. Tonight we cooked up some Dory. No, not a little blue fish with a memory problem, but a flaky white fish. More fishy tasting than we usually get but still pretty good.

Let’s see, what else? I’ve ridden my bike, that is my bicycle, to work twice in the last week. It’s probably about 7 miles 1 way. Fortunately it’s mostly level terrain so it’s not too bad of a ride.