DANG

 I am very excited to provide a garden update.  At least someone is enjoying the recent daily downpours...

We are going to harvest some lettuce heads for a salad the next day or two.  Everything is huge and thriving.  peppers and tomatoes and cucumber all have lots of blossoms.

Apparently we have pumpkins growing too.

The grape vines require constant trimming.  They are halfway to the garage on the telephone line and our house is pretty much surrounded.

Wolfman says its tooo hot.

Brew Day

Delicious hoppy goodness full to the brim.  Yesterday I brewed the 'sort of sumpin sumpin' which I managed to squeeze 1/4lb of hops into the boil with another 1/4lb for dry-hopping that is going to go into the secondary fermenter.  A lot of hops doesn't mean a bitter beer.  This one is all about hop flavor, which hopefully comes out as some citrusy candy-like goodness.  I added a few ounces of crushed coriander seed to this one as well as a little personal touch.  We will have to wait and see how well the coriander seed blends with the hop flavors.  I am pretty excited about this beer as I have been on a quest to achieve the wonderful hop flavor that so many commercial beers exhibit these days. 

I feel like the beer making deadline is approaching fast, so I hope to be a diligent brewer in the next few weeks.  I am really limited by the fact that I can only temperature control one 5 gallon batch at a time, and since the basement is 75-80 degrees, temperature control is pretty much a must to make good beer.   I will update soon with beer progress..

Day 2 off work

I managed to get out of work today and got my brother to go instead...awesome.  I hurt my knee the other day at work and although it is feeling a lot better, I just am not feeling like working just yet.  It is a really easy evening which is mostly babysitting.

We just experienced THE craziest thunder/hail/crazy downpours of my recent memory.  Poor Jammie and Lexi are working day 2 of Kenny Chesney up at Red Rocks, hopefully the weather is better up there.

Where is he supposed to pee if the whole yard is flooded?

Garden update pre-hail storm so hopefully it looks similar now.

A pic of our sweet back yard setup.  Less than $50 invested in it! 

 

Did a little bit of beer stuff today too.  Put the base wheat beer onto blackberries today.  Rande helped.  We managed to keg at least a few beers worth of the base beer so we will see how that tastes carbonated. 

Hoping to make a beer tomorrow if the weather is nicer.  A semi-clone of a Lagunitas Brewing Co. Little Sumpin' Sumpin'.  It is one of my favorite beers, so we will see how it comes out.  The champer has an oil change scheduled at Blazer Automotive on Monday, I hope to have them check it over and make sure everything is good.  I fear I have a small coolant leak somewhere up front, so I might have them pressure test the coolant system to see if I'm crazy or not.

Workin Hard

My last post coincides with the last day I had off of work, combined with the 90 - 100 F heat we have had over the past weekend I am just about shot.  Today has been a pretty good day of relaxation, would be better if our room wasn't still 85 - 90 degrees. 

Aside from work the only thing I have to show for myself for the past week is an ever growing to do list combined with increasing anxiety about the upcoming month without a house and the subsequent move.  I always have to keep in mind that we are all in complete control of what happens in our lives, and Jammie and I can do whatever we want regardless of work or living situation.  I will say that I can't wait for some change of scenery and hopefully things fall in place for us this fall. 

One good thing is the van engine made it to the 1000 mile marker.  I intended to schedule the 1000 mile warranty oil change today, but apparently I was meant to do to it tomorrow, so hopefully i do it then.  It is almost to 1K and I am paranoid about the warranty stuff, so I really don't want to go over 1000 before getting an oil change. Either way the van seems to be running good so that is great.

The only picture I have to post since I've been so busy and forgot to take any pictures at Cherry Creek Arts Festival.  "Symphony above the Clouds" in Woodland Park Colorado.  Which is up in the mountains just west of CO Springs.  This was my 4th or 5th year doing this symphony gig and it was good this year as Chris opted to bring along a bunch of tired employees to help out.  60 or so microphones and all the necessary stands and cables to go with it, time consuming to say the least...

Sorry no beer or bikes updates today.  There is beer and moped work to be done.  I somehow broke the compression ring on the moped, so I have to work on that.  Luckily I have all the parts now to repair it, just need some time.  Working another symphony tomorrow, so hopefully Friday and Saturday are productive days for me. 

Clever Title Here.

Jammie and I have both been busy working recently, which is a good thing.  We are trying to pay stuff off and save some money for the fall, so we need a much work as we can get.  Sunday I worked a U2 "Tribute" band. (I thought it was cover band while they are still alive and tribute band after they're not.?)  Either way it was terrible, but another day done is how I've started to look at it. 

I bottled some beer yesterday before going to work at the shop.  I hate bottling beer because it is so time consuming and so tedious, but it is the only way I can save beer with all the hooligans around this house.  (Namely my brother who still thinks its OUR beer.)  I have more beer stuff on the to do list as well, which I hope to take care of this evening after work.  I'll let you know how it goes.

One good thing is I think we have found a couple campgrounds we can use as home for the month of August.  One is located in downtown Golden which is city run and right along the creek.  It is not very large but looks pretty nice.  The other campground is in Morrison, also city run I think, but much larger and even more affordable.   Neither one of them take reservations which is less than ideal, but both of them are first come first serve and rather affordable compared to the parking lot campgrounds closer to Denver.  The other attribute that was important was for one of us to be able to moped to work, and both of these are close to Red Rocks.

Wolfgang is prepping to be a beach dog.  He loves the small sandbox area in the yard.

The biggest concern I have with camping for the month of August is the wolfman.  We intend to get a 'drive away canopy' for the westy, so that if and when we sell the Jetta one of us can still take the van to work and Wolfgang can still have somewhere to hang out.  The tent we are looking if you want to check it out: http://busdepot.com/details/addaroom.jsp.  It isn't cheap, but looks like the perfect setup, with awnings you can put out, and a floor.  My only concern is how much camper space it will take up when we are traveling, but we will have to figure that out.  Also how is it that two years in a row I intend to camp in a little van for a month while working?

Beer Day

After a long busy weekend working Pridefest...Today is a Beer day.  Started by cleaning a few of the empty kegs that have been getting nastier day by day.  Then racked the first of my summer wheat beer series, the raspberry wheat.  Racking involves siphoning the beer out of the primary carboy into the secondary carboy which is pictured below with the fruit in the bottom.

Wolfgang scoping out the 4lbs of Raspberries.

 The base beer tasted good too, perhaps a little sweet.  Residual sweetness means its not completely done but I will raise the temperature to get the beer to finish out.  The warmer temperature will keep the yeast active and get them to finish eating those sugars.

Racking beer and cleaning kegs all while brewing the next beer to go into the primary fermenter, another wheat beer, which I think I'll make into a blackberry wheat. 

Mashing out on a nice sunny day.  

I've been pretty productive today around the house too, not just with beer.  Carson and I cleaned up the garage pretty nice, going to pull the jetta in there in the next couple days and fix: horn, hood release, coolant leak, and the solder joints in the door latches which are starting to set my alarm off when the car is unlocked.  Then going to list that stupid car for sale and eliminate a giant non stop headache.

Oh yea, Carson's parents gave us a Wii.  Wii only have wii sports for it so far, but it is quite a bit of fun.

Jammie having a virtual sword fight.  Pretty epic.

vws beer bikes and garden too.

Now that Jammie is home I can let the world know about the garden I planted for her while she was away.  I took advantage of a great sale on starters from our favorite local hydroponics and organics garden store, NoDo Hydro, and got several vegetables and herbs. 

The list includes: Spinach, Lettuce, Jalapenos, Bell Peppers, Basil, Cucumber, Tomatoes, and Yarrow.  I am personally very excited for some bell peppers and perhaps home made salsa from the jalapenos and tomato plants.  We will see how the garden produces.

One more for you.  Garden, Sunflowers and Grapes all thriving in the beautiful Colorado sun.