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Day: February 12, 2012

There’s a Rock in my Hops!

After some fun bike riding I got to brewing another batch of beer; a slight variant on a blonde ale referred to by Cap N Cork as Vegas Gold. This was to have 2 oz of Sterling Leaf Hops in it (these are from LD Carlson), but while measuring them out into two mugs there was a bang of something hard falling into one of the containers.

Reaching into the hops I found this rock, which per my kitchen scale has a mass of ~10g. I thought that one of this bag of hops seemed a bit small, but I figured it was just a little more compact than usual. Since it constituted a bit more than one third of a bag the finishing and aroma additions were a bit short, but I’m sure the beer will be fine. And now I have a hop-encrusted rock!

(Thankfully this was in the bag that I’d been measuring out and not the one that got dumped right into the kettle. While I don’t think the rock is particularly dirty I’m glad it didn’t get boiled in case something odd might have come off or out of it.)

UPDATE: I’d emailed this post to LD Carlson, and a very friendly person there contacted me and ended up sending me some replacement hops which I used in my next batch of beer. Interestingly, they no longer stocked Sterling Leaf Hops, so the ones that I purchased must have been pretty old. Hopefully it won’t mess with the flavor of the beer. Maybe I should stick to pelletized stuff for now on…

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Fat Bikes at River Bends

This afternoon, in lieu of a lengthy dirt road ride, a few folks and I met up at River Bends to ride some snow covered trails. This was quite a bit of fun and I managed to get in just under an hour and a half of moving time. Some of the trails were a bit iffy on the current tires on the Mukluk (particularly the Endomorph on the rear), but it was still a good time. I may want something a bit knobbier next year, but for now I’ll stick with what I have.

The photo above shows James (with the mohawk, who didn’t originally plan to meet up with us but just happened along as we were in the parking lot), Bob, and Nick as they are queued up to cross a stream in River Bends’ Seasonal Loops by walking on a very makeshift bridge. I’d already passed, as did Carlos who was standing a few feet behind me. This ended up being a pretty nice ride, and hopefully I’ll be able to get out for a few more rides this winter. Maybe tomorrow… We’ll see…

Mostly due to the 30MPH+ wind gusts and negative-digit-Fahrenheit wind chill.

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