VWs Beer and Mopeds

Blacks Beach from above.  Apparently its a nude beach...

 Jammie, Beth and I went for a trip to La Jolla to go for a walk/hike along the beach.  I didn't know until after the walk but I guess Blacks is a nude beach.  Jammie and Beth said they saw a nude person hanging out, luckily I missed them.  Either way it is a really nice beach and a pretty cool hike down there.  We parked at the gliderport, which was also pretty cool to check out.  We origionally planned to walk up to the base of Torrey Pines and hike up the cliffs there, but it was quite a bit further than we had pictured.  We made it most of the way there and stopped and looked around a little tidepool area on the way.  

After the hike I went and watched a guy take off and loop around a little bit.  The marine layer was in full effect, so I imagine it is scary to venture far from the edge of the cliff as the visibility was very poor.  It was cool to see though.  Takes some balls to just run off the edge of a cliff.

Cali brew day #2 - German Roggenbier.

A week ago Thursday I brewed another batch of beer, a German rye beer.  I've never had one, but it sounds good and the recipe was in my Brewing Classic Styles book, which hasn't steered me wrong.  With my second brew day under my belt, it seemed a bit easier.  I have gotten better at using my limited cleaning resources here.  This brew went into the evening which isn't the best as there aren't any outside lights in the back where I've been cleaning everything.  Both beers are done with the primary fermentation, and I started cold crashing them today.  I plan on letting the rye beer age cold for another week or so and just leave it in the primary, while the Alt beer I will siphon into a secondary carboy and actually lager it for a few weeks.  In order to do that I had to get some CO2.  Luckily the hydrobrew shop does tank exchanges on 20lb tanks.  It isn't as cheap as going to Airgas, cost me $30, while Airgas would have been 20-25, but the closest Airgas is a half an hour drive each way, so I figured it was worth it. 

Bottled a week before I drank it, oozing hop flavor and aroma.

A very nice perk of being on the west coast is the availability of some really good west coast beers.  Pliny the Elder from Russian River is a double IPA that aside from being one of my favorites, has a delicious 'balanced' hop usage.  The hop aroma is matched with good hop flavors and the bitterness is subtle and balanced with the rest of the beer.  It is my goal to find all the well made IPAs out here, and I have found quite a few while still getting tripped up by the occasional extremely bitter hop bomb.   The availability of beers is made possible by some amazing beer stores.  This one is from the Pizza Port Bottle Shop, which is known for its amazing bottle selection of something like 600+ different beers from around the world.

Jammie on the Pinto on the Strand in Oceanside.  Decent waves behind her.

We went 'pedin the day after the van broke down to make sure they were both running well, so that Jammie could ride one to work.  The mopeds are the most temperamental sons o guns I've ever had to deal with.  Just because it ran well yesterday doesn't mean that its going to run well today.  They sure are fun when working though. 

Sticking with the temperamental piece o crap theme.  The camper decided to start spewing coolant the other night when we got home from the store.  Turns out every VW I own doesn't like to keep its coolant inside.  AND just like my other VW this was related to a plastic hose barb breaking off, really strange right?.  Well I diagnosed it and ordered the cheapest of the replacement parts available, which happens to be a custom machined chunk of aluminum.

Ordered all this from van-cafe.com, whom I will certainly be doing business with again.  Spend $350 and they were kind enough to throw in a small bag of cookies.  That is what I call service :)  That shiny piece in the bottom right corner is reason the van is out of commission and subsequently the reason for the order.  The rest of the parts are to redo the fuel system up front.  When I put the "new" engine in I replaced all of the fuel hose at the back of the car, and the front has been something that needed to be addressed.  Kinda embarrassing leaking gas at the gas station and when people point it out to you all you can say is "oh yea...it does that."  The package arrived around 3:30.  I had the part in place and managed to replace a good portion of the vacuum hose in the engine bay all by 4:00.  Rode the moped to the store to get a bottle of coolant and had the van up and going by 5:00.  I used Jammie's mom's car to give Jammie a ride to work and then came home and tried to bleed the cooling system one more time.

I really need to work on writing less, more often.  I started writing this post a couple days ago...  I'm thinking multiply the number of posts by two and cut the length in half.