Our little kitty passed away on Valentine's day, and we are really very sad. She was hit by a car and it looks like she went instantly, so at least she didn't suffer too much. We had to bury the poor little thing in the yard, and we only had her for one year. I wish we had had a way to keep her out of that busy street, but I don't think cats should be held hostage indoors. She was such a friendly, playful outdoor cat, hanging out in the neighbors' yards and even sneaking in their houses sometimes. She would hang out with me in the garage while I was brewing and beg to be petted or played with, which was annoying because I didn't want to get a bunch of cat hair in the sanitizer. My point is that we knew the busy road was a risk, but I believe cats should be allowed outdoors. It's just part of their nature to play outside and have adventures. So I guess we need to figure out some kind of invisible fence for the next cat if we decide to have one here, or we could just wait until we live somewhere farther off from a busy street. Damn, life sucks sometimes. I will miss her so much, she was really a great cat and she gave us a lot of joy. The house feels lonely today without her around.
Anyway, I haven't posted any brewing stuff here lately because I've been really busy, in a good way. I have brewed 2 beers: a Belgian Dubbel that I'm planning on splitting some off of and doing some experimentation with (adding quince), and I also brewed a 10 gallon batch of Flanders red that is destined for a wine barrel. I have been wanting to do a barrel-aged sour ale for a while now, and my friend Walker offered up his basement to host the project. We have 6 brewers who are in on the project, the beers are brewed, and now we need to pick up a barrel. So I'll post these recipes later when the dubbel is on tap and when the barrel is full.
Other than that, the reason I really haven't posted is I've been working 6 days a week. I'm still brewing at Alameda 4 days, and I also picked up a couple days at Cascade Brewing, which so far has been a lot of keg washing and filling, but it should be a lot of fun as we get to the more interesting things like working with barrels and all the other fun beers that they do.
So, with this much work I think I'll be slowing down on homebrewing a bit, maybe brewing once a month or something like that. I'll try to keep this blog updated, but if I really end up working my butt off, it might become fairly sporadic. Time will tell... I have decided I really want to keep this blog mainly about homebrewing and leave the pro brewing stuff at work mostly.
Anyway, happy brewing to you all. I'll try to catch up on a few tastings soon. I have the rauchbier that is tasting really nice and I need to go back and do a tasting of the gold lager, and the recently kegged IPA. Catch ya soon.
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3 comments:
So sorry to read about your kitty! I've had 4 over the years. Two were kidnapped by my parents went I moved out of state briefly, and the other 2 currently live with us. One recently started having seizures and had to be put on 2x/day epilepsy meds. (Not fun for us or the cat, but she is a sweetheart.) My point in all this is that it really gave us a scare and I've been dreading the day we lose one.
We'll try to send some good energy your way (and the cat's) for what it's worth. I hope your week gets better.
Sean sorry to hear about the loss of your cat...
Congrats on picking up time at Cascade though!
-Chad
Man... IT´s very hard to loose a beloved pet. Last year we lost our cat, named Freddy, which was a huge 8 year old himalaian. Freddy lived indoors with us, never went to the street because he did not want to (the door was always open). He even learned how to open doors (yes its true), but unfortunatelly he had a tongue cancer which destroyed him in a couple of weeks and finally we had to take the hard decision of giving him a painless death, in order to free him from all the pain.
Pepole laugh when we cry over a pet, but I have to tell you that was a terrible experience which tortures me until today... freddy is now resting in our yard, below a Pitanga (a brazilian Berrie) tree.
So... I´m really sorry for your loss.
About beers now... well, the attempt of saison i did did not worked as I originally planned... It ended too sweet, with a little ciderlike notes, with plenty of banana aroma and flavor (that is new for T-58), maybe due to high temp fermentation (24ºC). Overall, I dislike this beer (but of course I still have plans to drink it until the last drop. Next time I´ll try it with less sugarcane sugar.
Cheers!
Marco Piacentini
kesbier.blogspot.com
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