Ninkasi brew day

The big day finally came a couple of weeks ago (yeah, I'm really slack about getting blog posts up). We headed down to Eugene to descend on the Ninkasi brewery.

They we well-prepared for us and had ordered in all the ingredients we needed to make our Hefeweizen. The first step was to load the phenomenal amount of grain into the hopper for milling, a sack at a time. After that, everything was moved about mechanically (thank goodness).

The guys at the brewery were great, extremely friendly and didn't seem to mind that we brought along about of dozen other members of the local homebrewers club.

We spent a lot of the day peering down at various stages of the process. Here, the mash is about to begin.

After mashing, sparging, boiling, whirlpooling and cooling, the beer ended up in this fermentation tank:

We made about 30 barrels that day, if things go well Ninkasi plans to make another 60 barrels. That's more than 10,000L of beer. Because "The Weasel Ate My Venison" was too long for the label, and another local brewery already has a German-style wheat beer called "The Weasel", we settled up on a made-up word for a name - "Weizelwizen". It should be released in a couple of weeks.

Yay for visitors

We had Simon & Gillian staying with us for the past week, which was awesome fun and an excuse to do a few things we don't normally do, and some things we do all the time...

We visited Samson at OMSI, and go to see some really old bone pathology. Extremely impressive, and they even have a Thagomizer on display (with correct Gary Larsen reference).

Of course, we had to make some beer - here's Mort selecting malt:

We went to Newport and bought fresh Dungeness crabs from a guy on the dock:

And Gillian taught us how to make mozzarella, followed by ricotta with the whey.

We also made it to a couple of nice pubs for lunch and beer. When going to a new brewpub here (i.e. where they brew their own beer on site, and it's pretty much the only place you can get a particular beer), it's a good idea to get a "Taster" of a variety of beers:

We had a great time and got thoroughly homesick for the rest of the Kiwis, our cat and our stuff. Luckily, Mort's parents are shouting us a trip home for Christmas!

Virginia Beach

I'm currently staying at Virginia Beach for the AFIP courses in descriptive pathology and pathology of lab animals. It's toasty warm, although I'm inside most of the time. On the trip here I had a stopover in Philadelphia, so decided to be sporting and try an iconic local dish, the "Philly cheesesteak". There are two possible interpretations for this dish: a) It's a really bad idea to try iconic dishes with a bad head-cold; or b) Philly cheesesteak tastes like and has the texture of snot.

Anyway, here's the quietly regimented beach:

All the little shelters are courtesy of the myriad hotels on the oceanfront:

And there's Neptune, Guardian of the Bicycles (well, someone has to do it).

I'm staying in a little studio/motel thing, with the most compact kitchenette in the world - cupboards, stove, sink, draining board, oven, warmer and fridge/freezer.

We win at beer!

We did far better than expected in the homebrew competition... We ended up taking best of category for a Hefeweizen in the German Wheat and Rye group, best of category for a Brown Porter in the Porter group, and best of show for the Hefeweizen. Below are the ribbons to prove it:

So what this means is that the Ninkasi Brewing Company, with our input, will be making 60 barrels (about 6600L) of The Weasel Ate My Venison!, and some will be sold commercially as a seasonal brew in Oregon and Washington. It will also be the official beer of Septembeerfest this year, and it is possible that the Weasel herself will be able make it to the festival.

Sweet.

Four-letter words

Sometimes a four-letter word is so offensive it has to be made into a five-letter word. This quality graffiti was added to my trip to work over the weekend:

More four-letter words are "knit" and "vest" - as in my new favourite item of clothing for the slightly warmer but still chilly Spring weather:

This is a pattern from the book Kate gave me for Christmas.

"Tim Tam" is not a four-letter word, but one of the local Aussies discovered them at the local supermarket. The packaging may have changed, but the bikkies are the same...

One sock pattern to rule them all

I'm finally getting around to posting my pet mega-geek sock pattern spreadsheet up on the webs - I call it "Obsession for socks", it can be downloaded here. I've been using this foundation pattern for a while now to construct toe-up socks on the fly without making a gauge swatch. I usually knit both socks at the same time so I don't have to make notes for the second sock.

Random food

We had friends (probably soon to be flatmates) around for dinner last night. Among other things, we made paneer, which turned out to be stupidly easy.

Not so long ago, Mort also played with making spring rolls, extremely delicious and vegan to that Lindsey can eat them. My favourite thing, however, is the apron.

For me, there was a box of fun that's rapidly becoming other things: