Oct 17 2008
The Dog
Homebrew meeting last night, hosted as it is every October at Hair of the Dog brewing. It’s maybe a mile from my house so I just hopped on the bike and coasted down the hill.
Good times all around. The OBC is a pretty large club, usually around 150+ members. It’s a decent club. Probably my only gripe is that a noticeable percentage of the members are basically there to drink beer and don’t have that much to do with actually brewing it. A more appropriate title would be ‘beer appreciation club’.
Anyway…Alan Sprints, the brewmaster, is a fantastic host and opens up his taps for us. Basically everything he currently sells is on tap is there for sampling. Although I’ve had them all before in bottle, kegged beer is usually better. So I had a little 4-6 oz taster of each. Adam, Fred, Blue Dot, Doggie Claws, and Fred from the Wood. I think that was all of them. So delicious.
I don’t go to many meetings any more. Caught up with some guys that I like talking with. Sold some very old hops to another member who needs them to brew up a lambic. There’s a limit to how much you can talk about beer though, so I took off after a couple hours.
On the way out I talked to another member, Dan, who is heading up to Hood River to pick up a bin of apples to press in to cider. Apparently the bins are $150 for 600# of apples. He said his yield is about 50 or so gallons, or roughly $3 a gallon. Some he ferments, the rest the family drinks as cider. Sounds pretty good to me. I was interested because I’ve got around 100# or so of apples to press pretty soon. I’m skipping Astoria so maybe next weekend.
Pretty quiet on the cycling front. I’ve got a call into Schwalbe on the Racing Ralph tubular that popped last weekend. The casing got separated from the base tape. I’m not sure if that cause the pop or was a result of it. With only 10 miles on it, I figured I’ve give them a shout.
Been gluing up a Grifo on the Ultegra/Reflex rear wheel for this weekend until I hear back from Schwalbe. Apparently the team also has Fangos coming in. If I read the e-mails correctly, our original order of Grifos is backordered so they offered Fangos as a replacement. Hmm, let me think that over for a sec…(wait for it)…(wait for it)…well, ok. I suppose I can settle for Fangos. I will be starting rain dance practice next week, weather permitting.
Didn’t get a buzz on last night but it is the end of a 3 week cycle for me. I went to bed and woke up pretty pooped, so I skipped the early morning ride. Sets of 20, 30, 45, and 60 second sprints didn’t seem like it would sit well today.