Beach Brew

I have all these new malts from a recent bulk buy and couldn’t decide what I wanted to make along side my stout. So I decided to do something a little experimental. It almost fits the style guide for a blond ale. I just put something together then went though the style guide to try and work out what it was. Anyway here is the recipe. The reason I have used the two base malts as they are stocks I want to get rid of. Otherwise I would have used just the ale malt. I have also gone with a 90 minute boil so I can add my bittering hops at 90 minutes and should be able to avoid getting any flavour from them through.

42.9% BB Ale
42.9% Powell’s Pils
4.8% Caramunich
4.8% Cararoma
4.8% Carapils

Simcoe 12.5% 15gm 90m 29.5IBU
Czech Saaz 2.0% 10gm 10m 0.6IBU
Czech Saaz 2.0% 10gm 5m 0.5IBU
Czech Saaz 2.0% 10gm 1m 0.5IBU

Mash at 2.5l/KG at 66C for 60 minutes

Yeast WLP001 or Wyeast 1318

Any thoughts appreciated.

wankr beta – collaborative masturbation network

This is great. It is funny how people are getting carried away with all this web 2.0 stuff. A bit like they got carried away with blogging and now podcasts. Whoops did I say that out loud? Oh well, it’s a funny site anyway.

The internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.

This amazes me. You expect to see voting anomolies like this in countries we consider to be run by shady dictators. I guess I am not surprised by it but I am certainly appalled. Why don’t these people stick to a piece of paper and a pencil like we do? That seems to work pretty well.

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I met a couple of friends that I used to work with at a local pub yesterday for lunch. I got there a little early and headed straight to the bar to get a beer. They have a few beers on tap but not normally anything good. I noticed they had Asahi on tap at the moment. I had not had this on tap previously, only from a bottle. So I thought why not. It’s far from being a great beer but there wasn’t anything else on tap that took my fancy. I ordered a schooner which was soon delivered. This is when the trouble started. They charged my $6.80 for a schooner(285ml) of this stuff. I have to say I was shocked. I was glad I didn’t order a pint. I wasn’t too annoyed about this as I could have asked how much it was. They didn’t rip me off but it was a pretty expensive very ordinary beer.
My friends arrived we looked at the menu. I went for the good old burger and beer deal. A Heineken according to the menu. Once again not a great beer but perfectly acceptable. I always go for the simple meals when I am at a pub. They can quite of get the simple things right. If you go to a pub and order a something elaborate or “exotic” there is a fair chance you will be disappointed with your meal. Order a schnitzel parmigiana and it will probably be ok.

So eventually the meal comes out. Then out comes a beer. The waiter puts a beer in a Toohey’s Extra Dry glass down in front of me. I ask is that Heineken in that glass, they don’t always use the correct glasses. I informed her that I had the burger and Heineken deal. I then politely asked if I could have my Heineken and told her she could take the Toohey’s with her. She informed me the deal had changed and it was now for Toohey’s. I then politely informed here that I had not ordered that and could I please have what I ordered and what was advertised. She took offence to this. I was considering going into the fact that at the time I ordered and passed over the money that we had entered into a contract and that they were required to supply me with what I had ordered or return my money. However I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. So I left it there.

Needless to say I won’t be visiting again.

Slashdot | PBS To Air Six New Monty Python Specials

Better check the schedules then start searching the usual bit torrent sources. From what I read this is an exclusive to PBS. I’m sure it will make it here one day but I’m not holding my breath for it. I only hope it’s good. I don’t mind if they rehash old content, they have plenty of it, I just hope they don’t do anything lame and ruin it.

It appears that the Porter may not be infected. This can only be a good thing. The beer still isn’t good but it is drinkable. I think I was just overly paranoid and looking for the off flavours in it. I will have a few more samples to make sure of it but it certainly looks good after last nights tasting. I will also do another tasting of the two American ales it fermenters today too. See how they have pulled up.