American Homebrewers Association

I am very proud to announce that I have become an official member of the American Homebrewers Association!

This excites me for a lot of reasons; I'm now open to many more opportunities to learn about my brewing, I can connect with thousands of brewers from around the country to talk about what's going on in the brewing world, I can learn how to build better brewing equipment, and now I have a cool AHA hat to wear.

Now all I have to do is quit my job and brew full-time. That would be a dream come true.

Pumpkin Chlorophenol Spice Ale

The Pumpkin Spice Ale seemed to be doomed from the very beginning. You can read all about it in an earlier post.

I'm pretty sure that this recipe may be thrown out, but it depends on who you ask. Sonya, Ryan, and I decided to give it a taste test last Friday to see if, by some miracle, the beer turned out. After the first taste, Ryan and I just looked disappointingly into our mason jars of "Pumpkin Ale" and decided, nearly simultaneously, that it had the odd taste of Band-Aids. For anyone who has ever brewed, you'll understand exactly what I mean by that.

It's not like we had an unfortunate "lunch lady band-aid in the goulash" kind of problem. It's just something known as off-flavoring. Surprisingly, I blame it on what seems like the smallest mistake that we made.

The tap water.
Although we only used a little bit, Pittsburgh's water sucks. You get Chlorophenols in unfiltered tap water if your city adds any chlorine to the water. Chlorophenols smell and taste like vinyl.

In case you were wondering.

Sonya, however, said that she didn't mind the slight medicinal taste and thought it wasn't too bad. I'm glad to hear that because we have two cases of it that I would hate to see go to waste. Anyone interested in helping us drink these two cases of beer is more than welcome. Or if you happen to have a cut on your tongue or in your throat and can't figure out how to put a band-aid on it, come on over.

It's honestly not that bad.

Darn tap water.

Another Excellant Hobby

Recently, I decided that I don't have nearly enough hobbies. Although Sonya would probably disagree.

I've always wanted to own a wood lathe, but never got around to actually getting one. Now that Sonya and I have a house with a basement, I decided it was time to clean it out and build a workshop.

What house is complete without one?

My new lathe came in last week and I am very excited to get started on my newest craft. Sonya is happy that I finally cleaned out the basement.

I got the lathe from Grizzly Industrial, Inc., which is now my favorite place to shop. While I was checking out, I noticed a link called Gift Cabana. It peaked my interest for some reason, so I decided to see what it was.

The Gift Cabana made me very, very happy.

It turns out, it is a gift registry and it just so happens that I'm getting married this summer. I'm not sure if Sonya is quite as excited by this find as I am, but I am beyond thrilled to say the least.

I'll post some updates on my lathe adventures in the near future.

Man Hairy January

It's been a while since I've been involved in a pointless and rewardless competition, so a few of my friends and I decided to compete in a beard growing challenge. It's going to be a short and sweet event. It's only taking place during the month of January this year. We considered having it during February so that we could lead into Mustachio March, but we decided against it for two reasons. Man Hairy January seems to sound better and mustaches are really creepy.

Unless you're this guy. Then it's just awesome.

To tell the truth, I'm not sure I have it in me to allow my face to grow such a thing, but I guess I'll take it one day at a time.

Sonya told me that she'll allow the beard as long as she can take a lot of pictures throughout the month. I'm not sure if this is purely for blackmail or if that's just part of it. I'm sure blackmail has something to do with it though. Understandably so.

I'm sure I'll keep this post updated due to it's ridiculousness.