After the race, it’ll be time to break down the bike and put it away for the winter.  I’m strongly thinking about having Jacob Rathe clean it.  I’ve heard nothing but good things about the work he’s done.

Also sort of up in the air about a new bike next year.  Not ‘if’ but ‘which one’…road or mtb.  I’m about 90/10 towards the mtb based on a) my existing mtb is running like a beat up 1988 Dodge K car.  Not good.  b) I can probably squeeze one last good year out of the Lemond.  And c) Presto has a lot of off-road riders.  I’d like to race more with them.

Based on that, we had a meeting last week to look & hear about the new rides.  More than a few of us were looking hard at the Anthem X2.  All XT.  4″ of travel.  Solidly made.  I’m having a hard time thinking that I need any more ‘bike’ than that as it’s a steep jump to XTR or SRAM X.0 and better brakes & shocks.

Anyway, there’s tons of fun stuff going on.

First is the delightful Kolsch I made Sunday.  First brew in the new fermenter which is very exciting.  It’ll take a couple brews to work out how best to use it.  For now though, it’s a champ.

The beer itself should come out great.  I hit all the target temperatures, didn’t abuse it during transfers, stayed clean through the cooling, and pitched plenty of yeast.  I even dumped the cold break.

For now, it’s set in the garage with the temp. controller on 56-58°F.  My work is largely done so it’s all up to the yeast.  I’m trying a forced ferment in the basement on about 200 mL to quickly find the final gravity.  I’ll use that to determine when the main ferment is done.

For the most part, my brewing techniques haven’t changed much.  It’s been about 9 months since I brewed last and since then I’ve read a few of the newer books on the subject and also picked up the new fermenter.  I’m trying out a few new things here to see if they make the process any easier or more predictable.   But basically, the bottom line is if any of these changes will produce a better beer.  We’ll see in a few weeks, maybe by the holidays.

Next is a bunch of basketball.  Owen and I are going to a couple games coming up.  First is the Blazers next Friday.  He got a free ticket from the Summer Reading Program through the library so I just needed to pay for mine.  The seats aren’t great but it’ll still be fun.  If we’re too far up, we’ve got the Jumbotron to watch although Greg Oden’s head should be easy enough to see without it.  All I can think of is So I Married an Axe Murderer.  HEAD!  MOVE!

The one I’m really excited about is the one in Seattle: UConn / Gonzaga.  Both will likely stay ranked in the top 5 assuming UConn can run the dreaded Buffalo and Stony Brook gauntlet and the Zags can get through Indiana, WSU and Arizona.  Owen and I will take the train up and back.  Should be a really fun day.

Oh yeah, plus I had a non-existent birthday on Tuesday….more like a Happy Un-Birthday if you will.  I hadn’t even had time to catch up on that.

Bought myself a nice treat of Patron Añejo Friday.  That was dumb.  That shit is so good.  Reminds me of the time I talked a Peets barista out of a sample of 100% Kona coffee.  Made everything else taste like Folders for a week after that.

Back to my birthday…like I said, it got a little glossed over.  Rachel had her first neighborhood meeting as president that night.  I had to check out a tenant at 10 pm too.  So we made a quick dinner, I took care of the kids while Rach was out, talked to the fam on the east coast for a bit, and then enjoyed a riveting game of Indiana Jones Lego on the laptop until 10 pm.  I was too busy to recognize it at the time but at the week wore on, I feel a little cheated.

Moving on to ‘cross.

Rest week before the final push to Crusade finals and USGP.  Barton – PIR – Wash. Co.  I’m a fan of Barton.  I’ve always done relatively well there.  I’m looking forward to that.  I hope the run-up in the back of the course is still there.

Finally heard back from Schwalbe.  They’re looking into my warrantly claim but did note that they’re out of the Racing Ralph tubulars until next spring.  In some ways, I’m ok with that.  At least I won’t wait around for it.  I should get Fangos on Monday at the team meeting and can glue them up to the Eastons for the rest of the season.

My dad asked me on Tuesday if, at 38, I’m starting to feel a little old.  Seeing as I regularly get my ass handed to me by 40+ year olds on the cross course, I’d have to say no.  I still feel as excited and energetic about stuff as I did when I was 28.  I just feel a little smarter about how to handle my body in terms of level of exertion and recovery.  I told him to talk to me in 10 years and I may have a different answer.  Seems like 50 is the new 40.

And then there’s beer.

Looking ahead, cross season isn’t all that far away from being done for the winter.  I’m already thinking about the brewing I’ll do over the winter.  I set up another page to put brewing related stuff there; recipes, brewing logs, and whatever else I can think of.

I’m going to order a new 14 gallon fermenter which will allow me to move back up to 10 gallon batches.  It’s something I’ve wanted for years.  Takes the same time as 5 gallons but I double the capacity.  I’ve just never had a stable and sanitary fermenter for that batch size.  So I finally saved enough allowance money to take the plunge.  I’ll order it so I can hopefully get a brew in between Cross finals and USGP.


So what’s new…

I’ll most likely be taking May off from racing.  First, my right hand is a long ways from being 100%.  I’m getting it worked on now but I know from the riding I have done that a lot of pressure, like from a sprint, is not possible yet.  Second, we’ve got some work around the house to do that will keep me busy for most, if not all, the weekends in May.  I’d love to be able to sneak out for something like Bear Springs but odds are that I’ll have to pass.

Off-road racing isn’t all that much of an option anyway as my eggbeaters are on their way back to Crank Bros. in CA.  I’ve had them a year and a half so they snuck in under the 2 year warranty.  I’m a little concerned because I don’t thrash them that much and certainly don’t use them on a day to day basis.  I may look into different options for cross.  I hear Time pedals/clips work ok.  We’ll see.

Even though I’m not racing, a smart person would be banking miles for TOE 50.  A smarter person would also be getting their ass to Alpenrose during the week for Track Development.  More on that later.

It’s rags to riches with beer lately.  A slew of brewing in April, a few 2-a-days, have me with a pretty exciting inventory of beer for the summer; ipa, imperial ipa, imperial red, stout, porter, pilsner, and a low-gravity bitter.  More beer, combined with the new nitro creamer tap I picked up last month, will make for a hopalicious summer.

The bitter just finished fermenting under the Pacman yeast from Rogue.  Ideally I’d be repitching this yeast once or twice more because yeast is pretty expensive.  I need to think if I have time to brew.  Not every beer is suitable for the nitro tap so I need to pick a decent style or two.  An ESB and a nut brown ale are sounding good right now.

After the Mudslinger crash, my dad noted “You’re not having that great a start to your season, are you?”.  No.  No I am not.  After May, I do hope that I enter short track season fairly healthy, relatively rested, and motivated for cross training in the heat of the summer.  I have the feeling I’ll be needing to put a little extra time to stay competitive up in Master A’s.  I haven’t set a goal for cross yet except ‘go faster’.  Duh.

Ingrid was barfy the past couple days, so it was my turn to stay home with her.  Apparently a bug has been going around her preschool.  Great.  I think I washed the top 3 layers of skin off my hands throughout the day.  She was mostly better yesterday so with the nice weather we went out to do some errands.

We ended up at River City to look for a tire for this weekend (Hornings).  I checked Fat Tire Farm earlier in the week.  They had a decent selection but nothing just right.  They had plenty of UST (which I don’t have), huge DH tires, and a small selection of 29′ers.  They had a bunch of straight 26″ but like I said, nothing really grabbed my eye.

Bike Gallery had maybe 8-10 tires total for anything resembling XC racing or training.  River City had a fair selection.  After a few minutes of comparing, I ended up with the Michelin A/T.  I was hoping for the Mud but they didn’t carry it.

Kris Schamp noted earlier in the week that the course wasn’t that muddy so I’m hoping the A/T’s work.  With rain in the forecast, who knows.  FR1 in Forest Park was fairly soft and loose on Tuesday.  I’ll bring a couple of my extras.  I’ve got a front Velociraptor lying around.  Not the fastest tire in the world but it works.  I forget the others.  Anyway, I’m going to try to get there early and look at the course.

So to finalize my prep for Sunday, I made sure my excuses were in order:

1. Significant recent component change (switch from grip shifters to new SRAM X.9 trigger shifters): Check
2. Erratic and slightly disorganized early-season training schedule: Check.
3. First race of the year: Check.
4. Upgrade to new category (sport to expert): Check.

I’d say everything is in order.  I’ll check back in Sunday or Monday with the details.

Coffee is my shepherd; I shall not doze.
It maketh me to wake in green pastures, It leadeth me beyond the sleeping masses.
It restoreth my brain, It leadeth me in the paths of consciousness for it’s name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of sleep,
I will fear no artificial sweetener for thou art with me; Thy cream and thy sugar they comfort me.
Thou preparest a carafe before me in the presence of my zzz’s, Thou anointest my day with sunlight;
My cup runneth over.
Surely richness and flavor shall follow me all the days of my life:

and I will dwell in the house of Cappuccino forever…

Let us sip… or whatever…

Random News:

• 3 days until the release of the Deschutes Abyss. That’s exciting. I’m still up in the air on exactly how much I’ll get. Note to self – don’t drink them all right away.

• Burton is offering a $5k reward to the snowboarder who can poach on the remaining ski areas that still ban snowboarders: Mad River, Alta, and a couple others. Do you ever wonder why snowboarders were banned in the first place?

• The Belgian Dubbel is still bubbling away in the garage, but it’s tapered off considerably. The temperature controller is hitting the heating element more frequently meaning fermentation is slowing down. I’ll have to watch it over the weekend. Once it slows to one fart through the airlock every 30 sec, I’ll test it and see where we’re at.

• There’s a recipe in Zymurgy for a ridiculously strong Imperial Stout, reportedly clocking in at 17-18% abv.  It uses something like 30 pounds of grain per 5 gallon batch (typical strength batches take 8 to 11#’s).  I have the recipe entered into ProMash but I’m on the fence if I’ll make it or not.  Brewing a monster like that which actually turns out drinkable will take every bit of mojo I can muster.  I need to mull this one over some more.

First, not rushing around. Rushing around and excessive multitasking are my biggest faults here. If I don’t get stuff organized the day/night before, I’m in trouble. Getting ready basically involves weighing and crushing the grain, weighing and sorting the hops, measuring water & adding whatever salts are needed, and getting the equipment where it needs to be with any hoses and LP tanks connected.

Ideally, I just like to wake up and start the burner under the hot water tank. If I don’t get this stuff ready, I feel like I’m behind the 8 ball the rest of the day. It turns what should be a really fun day into a chore.
Second, have the yeast ready. You can get the best ingredients and spend hours brewing a fantastic beer. But if the yeast isn’t ready to do it’s job, you’ve just wasted your time. I’d say yeast management is arguably the number one culprit behind that ‘homebrewey’ taste that a lot of beginners get. The final effects behind not adding enough yeast and the subsequent care and feeding of that yeast are enormous: off-flavors, increased esters, increased chance of infection, and premature end of fermentation are just the start.

Luckily, Wyeast has a decent calculator on their site that allows you to estimate your yeast pitching rate. Granted, there’s a ton of variables involved in building yeast volume but I’m very glad somebody figured this out.

This batch was 5 gallons at about 19°P meaning I needed about 19 million cells per ml. Going from the simple smack pack to a 3 liter starter on my stir plate yielded (in theory at least) 19M cells. Seeing as I had visible activity in the fermenter within 6 hours, I’d say I was pretty close.

Last, and by no means least, have Rachel on board with the brewing day. I spend upwards of 4 to 6 hours in and out of the garage. It’s not solid work but there’s periods where I need to check out and stay for a half hour at a time.

What else makes a good brew session?

Hitting target mash temperatures is one. With a little corn in the grain bill, I used a 3 step infusion mash. Using boiling water for the temp increases, I nailed all 3 steps within 1°F. That makes me very happy.

A reasonably efficient mash is another. Depending on which mash tun and mash method I use, I’ll estimate between 50 and 80% efficiency. I got about 75% out of this one which is pretty decent. I yielded about 8.5 gallons of about 14°P wort that I boiled down to 5.25 gallons of 19°P wort in 75 minutes.

An easy, stress-free cooling is a third. I’m a bit of a freak about saving water. While I have an incredibly efficient counterflow chiller, I still save the water to use in something else – wash the car, add to the clothes washer, or add to the hot tub if it’s low. I can typically cool 5+ gallons of boiling wort to 68°F in 10 minutes using around 10 gallons of water. Like I said, it’s pretty efficient. Anyway, there’s a balancing act between getting all the wort out of the kettle while leaving behind the protein and hop gunk (it’s called ‘trub’).

Once I’m done cooling, I pitch the yeast and aerate for 20 minutes or so and then set it in the fermenter fridge. This beer I set to go between 72-75°F. I pitched it at around 2 yesterday afternoon and it was really rocking by 8.

The beer, from what it looked and tasted like out of the kettle, should be good. A beautiful red mahogany color with a touch of hops and coriander seed in the nose and sweetness from the candy sugar. I’m fairly optimistic about this one.

Basically, my work is done here and it’s up to the yeast now. I bet it’ll ferment out by next weekend. I’ll try it then and rack to a keg to condition for a few weeks. I’m up in the air about bottling (which I despise) or kegging (disappears fast). Regardless, it should be ready by mid-February.

I hate waiting.