Football Epilogue

Ugh. It's been way too long since I've done some writing. Ultimately, it would be great to put in a couple thousand words a week. It's the same as exercising/playing an instrument/etc.; the more I do it the better I get and the better I feel. For me, writing has the effect of serializing my thoughts. It gives some manner of order, and priority to all the things buzzing around my metaphorical beehive. This is similar to making a list, but I find putting some prose to the thoughts adds some perspective and even some gratitude. So what's been going on lately? In a word: life. I'm finally starting to settle into the new job. I'm even starting to enjoy it. There's an entirely different set of challenges, however these challenges still rhyme with a lot of what I did at the previous gig. Now that I'm settling in, I'm able to start looking at side projects to augment my experience and pursue some of the academic interests I have. I'm happy that it's ...

The new one gallon keg. Okay, more like 4 bottles and a one gallon keg. Alas, it was time to bottle my latest brew. I again went to Mr. Beer for a two gallon extract kit. I was able to get a lager and an Oktoberfest refill for rather cheap. This was my first time doing a lager. I stuck almost strictly to the kit except I added a little extra corn syrup for what is hopefully some extra fermentation/alcohol content. Bottling was a little more exciting this time as I picked up a one gallon keg with a small regulator and some food grade CO 2 charges . This means I'm able to enjoy some suds with some suds right away. Typical bottling requires a secondary fermentation with "priming" sugar to produce the CO 2 . This takes three-ish weeks after bottling to achieve decent tongue tinglyness. Cleaning and prepping the keg took a little extra research as I wanted to get any leftover oils, etc. from the manufacturing process off the keg; not to mention I'm intere...