I think I blogged my pants…….

I forgot to post this when I actually kegged and tried this brew for the first time.
Anyway here we go. On the 27/07/2008 I kegged what I have dubbed my “Golden Ale Wannabe” it is basically an attempt to try and produce similar characteristics to the James Squire Golden Ale. Well anyway a few days after I kegged it and cranked the co2 I tried some. Well to my surprise it tasted great, I would go as far as bloody fantastic even! 😛

Here is a picture of a the ale (taken with my iphone) quality of the photo isn’t that great but the clarity of this beer is awesome.

Mmmm Tastey.  I use BeerAlchemy on the mac for all my brews, it was well worth the money.

Well I haven’t written in a while, and a few things have happened. I have managed to get 2 more webdt375s which are great little touchscreen web pads. The only thing I need to do now is make up some POE injectors so that I can power these things without having a GPO near them. I am also looking at the ability to make a PCMCIA to CF ribbon cable so I can conceal the ethernet card behind the pad. I would go wifi but I want this to be a full wired solution so I don’t have to worry about signal strength, AP connectivity etc. I will post some pictures of the Webpads later, as one of my friends is currently borrowing one.

I also plan to get my hands on a gc-100 (http://www.globalcache.com/products/gc-index.html) so I can IR blast anything that can not be controlled via rs232 or ethernet.

Ok,
So today I racked my stout into the secondary vessel. but before I did, I crushed up some fresh mint and brewed some “real” coffee, poured it into the vessel and then racked the beer over the top. When I brewed this style on the 13/07/2008 I added chocolate at the beginning of the Boil. Being a novice at all this I felt it was time to start experimenting. Well now it is racked with the last 2 additions so let the count down begin!!! I can’t wait to try it. 😛

I have just installed the word press app on my iPhone so I hope this works. As it is a pain in the ass to type heaps on this keyboard I am going to stop.

Ok, So i Have created the monster of all stouts… Well I seem to think it is.
Here are the ingredients that I have decided to place into this brew, prepare yourself for a shock! 😛

Grain:
Australian Traditional Ale Malt 4.500 kg
Australian Roast Barley 0.200 kg
Australian Chocolate Malt 0.150 kg
German Carafa III 0.150 kg
UK Black Malt 0.100 kg

… Yeah ok the above seems sane, but wait there is more.

Hops:
Cascade 8.0 % 34 g
Hallertauer Aroma 9.0 % 20 g

Ohh that seems fine also, but I am not finished yet,

“Others:”
Cooking Chocolate 200 g
Coffee, Ground 100 g
Mint Leaves 10 g

Well that is it! Chances are this will taste like shit, but screw it. I will never know unless I try it.
If by some chance a home brew expert is reading this then please go nuts and dig at this as much as you like, your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Phew, I just finished kegging my Amarillo APA, ABV should be around 5.3% and GEEZ does it smell tasty 😛
Before I keg my beer I run it through a filter (gravity fed), I just purchased some new bits for my filter set up and for some reason it seemed to filter a lot slower than usual but we got there in the end and that’s all that matters!
After this I cleaned and sanitised my 20L cube threw some Amarillo hops in it and racked my “Golden Ale Wannabe”. I gave it that name because I am trying to capture similar flavours to the James Squire Golden Ale *fingers crossed*. I am looking at doing a brew this weekend so if anyone out there has a good recipe they recommend let me know.

Yayayayayayay!!!

Settlement finally came through!!
My gawd that was painful. Everything was going smoothly until the bank fucked up. As they regularly do. But after countless calls by myself and the settlement agent and waiting on hold for up to 60 minutes to bankwest each time we finally had settlement go through today at 3pm.

Now for the another painful journey to come…. The building :~

Woooo I finally got a refractometer so now I can measure the Gravity of my beer yay.

This would of come in handy a long time ago and would have saved a bit of beer too!! 😛
Plus not to mention it would of helped during the brews too!

Anyways I bottled Rhett’s brew for him the other night. Lazy bastard coulda helped.
The FG was approx 1020, so based on the Starting Gravity 1060, we should have an AV of 5.18% (approx). Now to wait at least 6 weeks before we can try it *WAH*

 

Well I have just installed a gallery addon for WordPress, so lets take it for a spin..
Here are some images of my block of Land (I hope this works!)

[Show as slideshow]

Ok let me start off by giving everyone a run down on my block of land.

In June 2007 we put an offer in for a block of land out in Vale. (Near the Swan Valley). Yes I know it is in the middle of nowhere and yes they do have the internets!!! So it is all good 😛
Anyway we put an offer in on this block ($2,500 deposit) and we were advised that Titles would be through in August 2007 so we should look for a house we like and sign with a builder ASAP.

So we looked around at heaps of display homes, builders etc. We eventually found one we liked in July 2007 so we signed ($1,000 deposit). Then August comes and nothing. We ring the Land Agent and they advise that is is now delayed till September…. 1 month that’s ok what do you expect with Council etc 🙂 but it doesn’t stop there September rolls by and they tell us November, then they tell us December, then January, then March!!! WTF is going on so unfortunately there isn’t a lot we can do so we generate a little noise, whinge and cry about it but yeah surprise surprise nothing.
So then they tell us May!

By this time the Quote on the house we wanted has long expired they still have our deposit and Building has gone up. So now we have title and no house. We haul ass to the builders see what they have on offer and wow they have a promotion and the floorplan is very similar to the house we wanted to build originally it includes all the variations we made previously as standard…
We as about this house and it is about 6k more. We really liked this house so we threw in a few more variations and the total cost including site works is $20,000 more than the original house we wanted to build… When will the hurting stop!!!! *Sigh*

Any way to finish this up (as I have rambled on way too long) we now have title (just waiting on settlement) and we now have a house we want to build. YAY
Hopefully this Category will tie in with my HA one and it will just be me cataloguing the events to do with construction etc of our new home.

I have taken some photos of our block and will post them up shortly.